Grrrrr!

[lostcarpark]

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 I noticed the table of contents in the document was out of date, so I right-clicked it to update.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?"

Comments

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know how to use styles properly, but much of the time I prefer to have a proper tab at the start of a paragraph than an indent. That way the style won't get accidently changed, losing it. It also gets a bit messy having one style for the first paragraph, and another for continuing paragraphs. Fine for a long document, but not worth the hassle for something quick.

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.

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Altho' indents can be part of styles, tabs aren't a style thing, they're a table and section layout thing.

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.