The Office XPerience

Okay, I'm sorry... I need to get this off my chest:

OFFICE XP IS THE MOST WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP ON EARTH! I'd rather write all my documents using the MS-DOS line editor than this "suite" of junk!

OK, here's the thing:

Microsoft has somehow come across this brilliant idea that it's a good idea for applications running on the same system to be able to cooperate with one another.

Where they got this incredible idea is anybody's guess because it's not like anybody ever had this brilliant idea before. I guess we should all just be grateful for Microsoft's incredible innovation and insight.

Anyway... this causes, in true Microsoft form, about 10x as many problems as it solves. For example:

I copy an email body from one Outlook message.
I paste it to another email message.

Now, one would think that because I'm copying from one window to another within the same app, the resulting pasted text would look the same. No. It's totally

bungled. And heaven help you if you try to edit it:

I start trying to delete the text on the end of a hyperlink so I can change it. All goes well, but as I'm typing the new text, I make a mistake and have to delete something, so I hit backspace. It deletes the character, but also deletes the line break to the RIGHT of the cursor, and all the line breaks that make up a whole line (i.e. all the blank lines until the next chunk of text) which squeezes the next paragraph up against the one I'm trying to work in. I hit Undo. Nothing happens. I hit undo. Nothing happens. I hit undo. Nothing happens. I hit undo. Ok, it undoes the change. I hit backspace. The whole line I'm working on loses its hypertext and turns bold. WTF? There's no bold text anywhere near it! (Repeat the undo thing). F@!# it! Close the window, open the old message, and just retype all the text manually.

Yea.. productivity suites at their best. This is by far my favorite though. Before we get started, I'd just like to point out that the whole rant can be summed up in: "I can't type the word 'the' in Word". That's just really pathetic...

Opened up word to write up some documentation. I was typing merrily along closign incessant popups and undoing changes that word took it upon itself to make, when I noticed that I had mistyped 'the' as 'te'. I went back, place my cursor like so: 't|e' and hit 'h'. I got: 'te'. Um... 'h'. Result: 'te'. Huh. Must've lost my 'h' key? Open notepad and type 'h'. Result: 'h'. Repeat test in FrontPage, Excel, DOS, and IE. Result each time: 'h'. Grrrr! Return to word and type:

'H'. Result: 'tHe'. Angrily delete the whole word and retype it from the beginning. Result: 'e'. $&@%^!&*$!@!!!!! Presumably, this could have gone on forever until Word finally decided that I didn't need any letters in the alphabet except: q, x, and z. I, however, outsmarted it by closing the application and using wordpad instead.

Of course, all worked fairly well while Office97 was still installed. However, IT decided to 'upgrade' everyone to XP... presumably because Microsoft is pure evil and told them if they didn't they'd get no support and be left in a technological graveyard by the handful of fortune 500 companies who are still stupid enough to use MS products (and I suspect after they upgrade to XP, we'll see them rapidly slide back the 500 list until the fall off of it onto the 1000 list until the fall off that and finally just fall off the face of the planet... I won't miss them). I asked the nice IT folks whom I get along with and like very much (not sarcasm.. they really are nice and I do like them) to remove XP and put 97 back in because it's severely hindering my productivity (oh... those problems above are but the tip of an iceberg that could sink a whole freakin' continent... never mind the Titanic). However, I've been informed that they can't do that because then my PC would be non-standard. I'm not the only person who has complained about XP 'upgrade' problems and asked to have XP removed. Apparently, the standard, however, is to have non-functional PCs....

....and the next person that tells me that copy and pasting on Linux is a headache gets a fat lip....

[edit]
Don't know where those funky line breaks came from, but I just fixed 'em
[/edit]

Glad to see your having a good day Ct

ctb,
This isn't the first time you've had problems with Outlook. I stick to my original story that you have something wrong with your computer. Most likely a software problem. Something I never recommend to anyone with a MS product is to do an upgrade. Trusting MS to do an upgrade correctly is like trusting Clinton not to cheat on Hillary. I always make my clients do fresh installations.

It sounds like your IT dept simply did upgrades from 97 to XP. So, not only did they trust an upgrade, they also upgraded and skipped Office 2000. That is asking for more problems.

I manage about a dozen networks that range from 5-50 computers, all running XP Pro and Office XP. They all use Outlook. None have any problems with Outlook. Word and Excel cause some problems occasionally, but minor stuff.

I use Outlook XP myself, for email, the calendaring functions, contacts, tasks, etc. I sync it with my Palm Pilot. No problems whatsoever. Admittedly, if I didn't have to use Windows I would be using Linux and Evolution.

It's not that Outlook is mis-behaving. Au contrair - the previous problems that you are referencing have been resolved by the XP installation. I now have an Actions menu and my right-click menu.

Instead, it's that the XP suite is behaving STUPIDLY. I point you to the mangled code that is produced in FrontPage when I try to copy from Outlook, Excel, or Word and paste into FP. Granted, before FP made ugly, mangled code, but at least it worked the way I expected in IE (intranet - IE only), but now it doesn't even do that, it just doesn't work at all (and when you look at the code, it's pretty obvious why...).

I don't know what the hell that problem with Word was all about. I haven't used Word since then, soooooo... we'll see if it comes back.

And it's not even just problems, it's stupid things like the "Clipboard" that it uses now. When I copy and paste from Word to Excel, I have to explictly tell it each time to use the DESTINATION formatting, not the source. Why the hell would I want to use the source formatting? Does it not occur to these people that I would likely have the Excel document formatted already? And why isn't there a way to say which you want to use by default: source or destination (at least not that I could find)?

And man... you ought to see the size of the files it produces.... some of the file sizes jumped 25% from 97 to XP ..... even though they're the same files... ugh

What irks me the most though is that IT just arbitrarily decides this sort of thing. Like one day the directory wakes up and says: "Oo! Today everyone's going to start using tool x whether they need or want it or not!" It doesn't occur to them even once that I don't benefit from having XP installed, I don't benefit from being stuck on Windows Workstation, I don't benefti from being told I have to use IIS, I don't benefit from MS-SQL, I don't benefit from Multi-Edit.... it never ONCE occurs to these people that these are not tools I need or want, but I have to have them anyway. I realize it helps the IT group to define a standard for groups of users so that it's easier to support them, but give me a break... I develop. I don't write the "laid off department of the month" newsletter like our execs. But eveybody in the company is viewed as one homogenous group... so everybody gets stuck with the same ****ty tools. Frankly, I would be much happier if they just said: "Fine, you do whatever you want with that one computer, but you don't get any support from our group" and left me alone.

PHB-thinking really, really, really, pisses me off in case you didn't catch it....

Of course they do this. They have to justify their jobs. If they never upgrade (break) things and therefore never have anything to fix, the high mukity-mucks might decide they aren't necessary....

I suppose it's possible that IT depts do work like that, but I know that I don't push an upgrade on anyone until they absolutely need it or demand that I do it. Believe it or not most of us network guys don't want to upgrade you and hear all the bitching. We like it when things go nice and smoothly, it lets us catch up on the 5 million windows security patches, and how they will crash the server when applied.

As for mangled code in FP, so what else is new? I don't remember that it ever produced decent code. I had a client that wanted me to develop their site in FP, I told them to go away. That program should be banned.

I think you may be able to adjust the clipboard settings by going to Tools/Options, then the Edit tab. Look about 2/3's of the way down the window, there are cut and paste options as well as a settings button. I don't know if that will do what you are looking for, but....

Oh yeah, there's a new thing out it's called decaf

Couldn't resist

Whats the point of that? You may as well drink water!

dude,

Methinks thou dost protest too much...

seriously, lighten up. I'm sure there are PLENTY of IT depts that don't work as I described. Unfortunately, there are PLENTY that do....

Heretic!

Yea, I know FP always mangled code, but the point is that at least before it was still usable on IE, the only browser I needed it for. Now it doesn't work at ALL.

I'll have to look at that. Hopefully I can get that setup for my situation.. it'll save a helluva a lot of time.

I'll solve the whole fricking problem:


Ahhhh..... peaceful

Can you just uninstall Office XP and go back to 97? Who cares what they want you to do

I guess he doesn't have permissions and they have to do it 4 him...

Hey ctb mate

Have a look at this http://www.suodenjoki.dk/produktion...ion_article.asp

Integrating the program HTML Tidy into Frontpage so you can fix up its crap code.

here is your solution ctb
knoppix