>> I'm still waiting to see hard evidence that "millions of people 
>> actually do use templates without Word crashing".
> 
> Well most of the people in my company worldwide use our standard 
> corporate templates, as did everyone at the previous company I worked 
> for.  Plus everything I've seen coming out of companies like Nokia, Sony 
> Ericson, BMW, Ford, Daimler is in standard format - I *highly* doubt 
> they have not used templates to create these documents.  That's probably 
> well over a million people using templates in just the area of industry 
> I work in.  Do you really think all these people would use templates if 
> they were always prone to crashing?

Well we churn out seemingly identical documents every month. Word 
crashes quite a lot, but the poor souls using it just start again. And 
again. And again. Until eventually they get to the finished product. All 
the reports look identical because a dedicated team scrutinises every 
individual page, line by line, before the document is allowed to be 
released. (This has nothing to do with Word - the regulations require 
such scrutiny to check that there are no erroneous statements or 
ambiguities in the text.)

Presumably Word crashes like hell for everybody else too, and they just 
work around it.

>> Spending many, many hours correcting formatting glitches *is* 
>> practically their entire job description.
> 
> So surely they should have been on numerous training courses to get the 
> absolute maximum out of Word as efficiently as possible?  But they don't 
> know how to use styles?  I still can't believe that.

Training? You think the company I work for offers TRAINING? Have you not 
been reading lately? ;-)

>> But I've never seen them attempt to use styles...]
> 
> Why don't you teach them?

Because *I* can't get Word styles to work either?

(Last time I tried it, my copy of Word ended up permanently broken until 
I erased my normal template and deleted a chunk of my per-user registry.)

> It will save them hours of work - per day!

I can see that happening - I mean, if styles could be made to be 
reliable and stuff...

> Really, are they manually setting the font size, alignment, style etc 
> for EVERY single heading/subheading/caption in every document?  What a 
> complete and utter waste of time.

Well no, they start with a blank report document that contains all the 
section headings and standard text, already formatted. Then they change 
all the appropriate fields, insert the data for this specific project, 
etc., and then clean up all the formatting that breaks in the process.

>> Seems to me they're all just resigned to the fact that Word is 
>> horribly awkward to use? *shrugs*
> 
> But it just smacks of complete incompetence when a) they should have 
> been trained for this if it's their main job, and b) they don't ask 
> anyone if there's a more efficient way to do it.  Especially when there 
> usually *is* a more efficient way than just typing as if it is wordpad.

Training? I won't argue with that one.

As to whether it's possible to use Word efficiently, I'm not so sure. 
But I imagine it could probably be _more_ efficient than what they 
currently do, sure.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> Presumably Word crashes like hell for everybody else too,

No.

> (Last time I tried it, my copy of Word ended up permanently broken until I 
> erased my normal template and deleted a chunk of my per-user registry.)

Never heard of that before.  Put your pointer inside a heading, then click 
the arrow next to that little box that says "Normal" at the top, and choose 
"Heading 1".  Do that for all the titles.  Then, to change that style, go to 
Format->Styles, click the little menu arrow next to the one you want to 
change and "Modify...".  ANd then, once you've made your changes, it applies 
them to everything in the document with that style!!!!  Clever eh?

> I can see that happening - I mean, if styles could be made to be reliable 
> and stuff...

You really mean the above explanation doesn't work on any of your computers? 
It's not complicated!

> Well no, they start with a blank report document that contains all the 
> section headings and standard text, already formatted.

So it's not blank then ;-)  Sounds to me like maybe that document is corrupt 
somehow, so every single "new" document they make still is based on this 
corrupt file.  Try, just once, opening the file with "Open and repair" and 
then save it again.  Then get them to use this one in future.

Post a reply to this message

>> Presumably Word crashes like hell for everybody else too,
> 
> No.

Are you seriously suggesting that there are people for whom Word doesn't 
crash?

>> (Last time I tried it, my copy of Word ended up permanently broken 
>> until I erased my normal template and deleted a chunk of my per-user 
>> registry.)
> 
> Never heard of that before.  Put your pointer inside a heading, then 
> click the arrow next to that little box that says "Normal" at the top, 
> and choose "Heading 1".  Do that for all the titles.  Then, to change 
> that style, go to Format->Styles, click the little menu arrow next to 
> the one you want to change and "Modify...".  ANd then, once you've made 
> your changes, it applies them to everything in the document with that 
> style!!!!  Clever eh?

I guess my mistake was in attempting to *change* the default styles. You 
know, permanently. Seemed to screw up just about everything Word-related.

On the other hand, having to spent 20 minutes changing all the ugly 
style defaults to what *I* want them to be every single time I open Word 
just seems like way too much work...

>> Well no, they start with a blank report document that contains all the 
>> section headings and standard text, already formatted.
> 
> So it's not blank then ;-)  Sounds to me like maybe that document is 
> corrupt somehow, so every single "new" document they make still is based 
> on this corrupt file.  Try, just once, opening the file with "Open and 
> repair" and then save it again.  Then get them to use this one in future.

The documents built from this "blank report" document are reasonably 
reliable. The ones built from customer-supplied templates tend to crash 
incessently. So yes, I would imagine these templates are corrupted.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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487f5efe$1@news.povray.org...
> Well we churn out seemingly identical documents every month. Word crashes 
> quite a lot, but the poor souls using it just start again. And again. And 
> again. Until eventually they get to the finished product.

Well, that's just abnormal. Word versions post Word 97 are stable. They may 
crash once in a blue moon, but certainly not on a regular basis unless 
there's a very specific reason, which should be described in the KB and a 
few thousands dedicated forums. If the problem is so widespread, it should 
have been solved by your IT people by now. The last time I've seen stuff 
like this, it turned out that the IT department hadn't bothered to patch 
Office so the users were suffering from bugs fixed by MS years ago.

G.

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Well, that's just abnormal. Word versions post Word 97 are stable. They may 
> crash once in a blue moon, but certainly not on a regular basis unless 
> there's a very specific reason, which should be described in the KB and a 
> few thousands dedicated forums. If the problem is so widespread, it should 
> have been solved by your IT people by now. The last time I've seen stuff 
> like this, it turned out that the IT department hadn't bothered to patch 
> Office so the users were suffering from bugs fixed by MS years ago.

I've mentioned the problem that certain customer-supplied document 
templates seem to massively increase the frequency of crashes. 
(Presumably these templates are just corrupted internally.) Other than 
that, the users generally avoid certain features because they either 
don't work properly or make Word unstable. By this method of feature 
avoidance, we manage to keep crashes to a reasonably small number.

I guess I would install some newer SRs and see if it makes any 
difference at all. But I don't hold out much hope. From what I've seen, 
these seem to fix specific issues like "if you press X and then press Y, 
it does something strange", rather than general issues like "numbered 
lists never work correctly".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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487f687f$1@news.povray.org...
> (Presumably these templates are just corrupted internally.) Other than 
> that, the users generally avoid certain features because they either don't 
> work properly or make Word unstable. By this method of feature avoidance, 
> we manage to keep crashes to a reasonably small number.

And did anyone look up the KB or the MS groups to see whether there were 
some issues with those particular features? I've been using Office heavily 
for a long time now, and one good thing is that it's so massively used that 
the tiniest issues are documented (*). At worse, they're a terse message in 
the KB saying "we know there's a problem there but don't have a solution 
yet" but major stuff like crashes tend to be documented and fixed. As I 
said, Word from the 2000 version onward is stable now, if it doesn't work 
properly there's something fishy on your end. And yes, at least make sure 
that you have the latest service packs.

G.

(*) see the latest "important" Vista update. I resisted a couple of days 
before installing a 56 Mb file + reboot, looked up the WU number in the KB 
and found this gem:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/11/vista_update/

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Presumably Word crashes like hell for everybody else too,
>>
>> No.
> 
> Are you seriously suggesting that there are people for whom Word doesn't 
> crash?

FWIW, I've not had word crash since I got the version after Word 97. 
(So, call it 10 years.) :-)  Nor excel, for that matter.

Also, my XP doesn't crash, except recently I seem to have some hardware 
problems.  (It doesn't crash so much as about once a month randomly 
powers off in the middle of something.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:487f6620@news.povray.org...
> >> Presumably Word crashes like hell for everybody else too,
> >
> > No.
>
> Are you seriously suggesting that there are people for whom Word doesn't
> crash?
>

I don't think I've ever had Word crash on me.
I've had SQL Server crash and burn several times. I've had Windows 2000
bluescreen and shutdown more than once (it's in dire need of a reinstall).
I've had powerpoint simply close in the middle of a presentation.
However those are the exceptions, not the norm. If the products crashed like
hell, I wouldn't use them.

I also seem to recall that this is not the first time (or the second) we've
told you that your experience with Word is not normal.

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:487f687f$1@news.povray.org...
>  rather than general issues like "numbered lists never work correctly".
>

They don't? Please explain more.

btw, if you have a bug to report or a suggestion on an MS product, you can
log it at http://connect.microsoft.com
Anything posted there goes directly to the relevant product development
team.

Post a reply to this message

>> Are you seriously suggesting that there are people for whom Word 
>> doesn't crash?
> 
> FWIW, I've not had word crash since I got the version after Word 97. 
> (So, call it 10 years.) :-)  Nor excel, for that matter.

Don't think I've ever seen Excel crash - or any other element of Office, 
just Word.

(BTW, did you ever see the flight simulator?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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