lostcarpark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lostcarpark) wrote2004-07-13 05:17 pm
lostcarpark) wrote2004-07-13 05:17 pm
Grrrrr!
Microsoft Word has just pissed me off. I noticed the table of contents in the document was out of date, so I right-clicked it to update. Crash!
I tried opening the document again, and was told it's in use by another user (despite being on my local drive). No sign of the recovery options. I'm about to reboot, which should get rid of the in use error, and maybe, just maybe, bring back the auto-recover version. But my hopes aren't high. I've probably lost about two hours work.
Please don't tell me how fab and groovy OpenOffice is. I know already, but I really can't install it at work. I expect it would work fine, but if there was ever a problem with one of my documents, the immediate response would be "why aren't you using the group standard?"
I tried opening the document again, and was told it's in use by another user (despite being on my local drive). No sign of the recovery options. I'm about to reboot, which should get rid of the in use error, and maybe, just maybe, bring back the auto-recover version. But my hopes aren't high. I've probably lost about two hours work.
Please don't tell me how fab and groovy OpenOffice is. I know already, but I really can't install it at work. I expect it would work fine, but if there was ever a problem with one of my documents, the immediate response would be "why aren't you using the group standard?"
no subject
But it does work, and it's exceptionally good at reading and recovering corrupted MS Office files.
Mail the file to yourself at home, install OOo there, recover the file, send it back to work?
Install OOo, recover the file, deinstall it again?
no subject
I suppose that any office suite modelled Microsoft's cobbled-together mess is likely to suffer the same fate.
I would just love to know how MSWord decides, when I press the "Tab" key, whether to insert an actual tab or to indent the paragraph. This is for me, the single most annoying feature of the package, as pressing tab at the start of two apparently identicle lines can have a totally different effect.
Anyway I probably could get away with installing OpenOffice, and you're right, it would be handy for recovering damaged documents. We have to be able to show licenses for software installed on our PCs, so I'd just show them the GPL. However I think I'd still have to actually work on MS Office, because if anything did go wrong (and we all know, something will eventually), the fact that I was using something other than the standard would immediately be picked up on, even if it had nothing to do with the problem.
no subject
> why can't we have an option to save the actual document every ten
> minutes
You have.
Tools/Options/Save/AutoSave every [x] min
Autorecover only works when the program crashes /between/ autosaves. Also disable "enable fast saves" in that option - it corrupts files and makes crossplatform import/export very hard. "Fast save" merely appends a list of edits and changes onto the existing file; Word "replays" all those edits on loading to reconstruct the edited doc. Pointless except on floppies or other very slow media, and you should NEVER EVER save or load directly onto removable media from ANY multitasking operating system if you value the data at all.
The Tab thing is autocorrect/autoformat. I tend to just disable it.
I must admit there's no way I'd use OOo in preference to MS Office. However, I'd rather use a native Linux app - and a free one - than a Windows one running under a slightly flakey emulator.
WordPerfect, yes, if there were a current Mac or Linux version; Ami/WordPro yes, or MacWrite, or others. However, as a professional writer, at least some of the time, MS Word has been my favourite WP program for about 14 years now - since around Word 4 for DOS and Mac.
no subject
I generally agree about Word being my favourite word processer. I like the overall feel of it, and it does have some really useful features. But there are an awful lot of things that they've added to try to make life easier, which often end up being just annoying. Like the tab thing. How is that supposed to help me? Especially if I export my document and all the tabs disappear because they're not real tabs, only pretend ones. I wouldn't mind if it was consistent, or if I could remember where to turn that particular feature off.
Sorry, don't mean to rant!
no subject
You are on the latest service release plus hotfixes, aren't you? SP2a for O97, SP3a + HFs for O2K. If not, I have no sympathy at all.
The vast majority of WP users don't know how to set tab stops and indents and properly /use/ these features. They just bang in tabs as if they were on a fucking Selectric typewriter. Word /attempts/ to smartly automate this. It sometimes gets it wrong. The failure, really, is that users were too dumb to learn to do it right, requiring this clumsy kludge in the app to address the problem.
[A former professional trainer on how to do WP and DTP writes]
It's not really Word's fault, except that using tabs and rulers needs to be MUCH easier, and that's a hard one to crack. I seldom ever use them myself, and I *do* know how.
no subject
I can understand the motivation for wanting to fix up common user errors. However, the problem with this is that the user often doesn't see what's going on, and they fight even harder against it. The other problem is when if detects we're doing something "the wrong way", when in fact we're doing something entirely different, and have very good reasons for wanting it to be that way. So while the intention may be good, in practice it really doesn't help.
I know I have service packs installed at home. Can't be sure about work.
no subject
Yes, you're right, sometimes people do fight it; in many cases, though, they just relax and let it happen, as one of those pointless mysterious things computers do.
Patches at work: conceded.