Help files gettin worse (Office XP)

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Hey, gang. The next time you need to vacuum the carpet, try using the help files in Office XP instead of your Hoover. You might find the help files suck more.

What ever happened to the “Find” tab that would show every page in the system where the word was used? It’s been replaced with “Index” which is really just the “Answer Wizard” in redundancy using a different syntax. It only displays pages where the term is part of the topic, not usage in the body. Type “print” in the Index and then “Change the page number for the first page”. Try to find “print” in the page. It’s not there. Big waste of time.

Good luck in doing a word search in the Help files. Because MS opted for HTML pages, your sought word might be buried in one of the expandable links on the page. In older versions, help expanded into separate pages. This allowed the specific page to be displayed for a search, not the entire chapter. Jeez.

I’ve already reported to MS about the Answer Wizard bug that disallows a user to edit their text entry. It’s a real pain in the as I was saying, the help files suck compared to previous versions.

Have you noticed that as Office gets great improvements even in complex areas, it gets worse in simple areas? Thinking about it just makes me want to… well, it makes me want to dance. Let’s do the Microsoft shuffle… one step forward… two steps back…

-Lenny

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Setting aside the question of whether it is legal, I wonder whether anyone has tried to recompile the Office help as an old-fashioned winhelp file. I think there are tools “out there” that will do this, but I don’t want to pay $500 to test the theory.

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Let’s see now … convert all the help pages to documents, insert all the hot spots to replace hyperlinks, insert all the contextIDs into all the apps that (supposedly) use the help, uh … Nope, I think I’ll pass on that experiment.

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Aw shucks, the Help in VS .NET is even worse.
I won’t even begin to describe it.

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One would think that three releases worth of escalating complaints about HTML help would get *someone’s* attention at Microsoft. There must be an ego wrapped up in that technology somewhere in Redmond.

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It’s more than ego.
Users would not believe what lies behind such decisions at the large companies.
I saw this at DG and DEC and am aware of cases at others.

For example, DEC had a great “PC” a bit over 20 years ago called Rainbow.
One of the reasons the product failed was that the floppies had 1 extra sector per track, which was incompatible wit h IBM PCs.

I, and others, beat up on the guy responsible for this stupid decision, but he would not relent, so the product got out the door anyway. A few months (less than a year later), the product was changed to handle bot the “better” DEC format and the IBM PC format, but by then it was too late.

Talk about ego!

And then there’s the case of …!

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Howard:

A DEC Rainbow was my first computer purchase. Remember the dual screen display? … and the “dual operating systems? (CPM and “sort of” MSDOS). Also I remember that to run Lotus 1-2-3 (release 1A – DEC version) — or any program for that matter — we needed the program disk in drive a: since there weren’t many of us who could afford the king’s ransom for a tiny “hard disk”.

I guess your comments explain why DEC’s application versions, even though “MSDOS” were different from the rest of the emerging computer world. Thanks for the insider’s look.

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I completely subscribe to the same suspicion. There’s no apparent logic, it must be ego or not wanting to write off the gazillions in R&D for a failed system. They need to cut their losses and move on if they want to please consumers. But since when has that been high on thier agenda?

Gee, this kinda reminds me of the Office Assistant. Millions of dollars of R&D for Microsoft Bob, and when that bombed, they make it into a little creature called Clippy and force it on the Office users. It’s like old food in the fridge, let’s give it to the dogs. After years of protests they stand by the feature that no one wants (at least not in the pesky form it was).

Now that they finally publicly admit it’s a piece of junk and made a way to disable it, they save face by calling the disable mechanism an enhancement feature worthy of spending money to upgrade. Gimme a break. They are actually promoting that they removed a problem they deliberately installed and defended for years. We’re supposed to jump for joy that they did something several years later that should have been done long ago. We’re supposed to be thankful that they finally listened to us when the truth is they ignored us and claimed we were wrong for all those years. They got some huevos!

-Lenny

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They got some huevos!

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[/indent] Eggs?

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I now see why the KB is getting so bad.

I have trouble printing lots of KB articles using IE 6.

Yesterfay, I looked a the source for a few of them.

tags are missing all over the place.
I guess MSFT is using very inexperienced, or inept, people to create the HTML.

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Howard,
Give us a link to a few of the pages that you are haiving problems with. I have NOT have any problems in printing the KB pages.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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There are rwo issues:

1. The improper HTML, e.g., missing

tags.
2. Inability to print directly from MSFT site.

Examples include Q311452.

Might matter which version of IE 6 is being used.
And, VS .NET is installed as the default HTML editor, dunno if this makes a difference.

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Time for a new thread?

I’ve been unable to print a number of MSKB articles for a few weeks now. (IE 5.5 SP1). “Explorer.exe has generated errors and will close” which it promptly does. Ever since the re-designed KB was launched about half the pages I try to print cause this error. Old and new articles too on both PostScript and PCL drivers. One of our printer folks is looking into this problem now, I’d be eager to hear of a solution.

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This is amazing. Try to print, browser dies. When I preview, it dies then too, but at least I can see that something interesting is going on with the layout at print time. I put “support.microsoft.com” into the Restricted Zone to stop scripts from running, but it still crashes. The stylesheet manipulates the display options at print time using this definition:

@media print 
{
	.ftr_copyright_text{font-size: 12px ; font-family:Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica; 
color: black;}
	.tpl_left_nav_cell { display: none; }
	.tpl_top_banner { display: none; }
	.tpl_header_icon { display: none; }
	#idToolbar { display: none; }
	#idICPBanner { display: none; }
	.noprint { display: none; }
}

I don’t know if there’s a flaw in the definition or in the browser itself. (I use IE 5.5 SP2.) Whether this justifies a new thread, I don’t know, but it’s completely intolerable for MSKB not to work with IE!

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Your not much better than MS, you need to run spell checker on your posts and learn how to post a link.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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They must have fixed it. I just printed the article w/o problems. Maybe they heard you.

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Alas, no. I can print that article, but not this one, nor many others: Q197420. They print OK if I use Postscript driver, but not PCL. Some of them print OK with PCL but not with PS. Very annoying — “IExplore has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program.”

At least the Lounge pages print well…

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Hmmm. I don’t know what’s happening. I can print that article with either Netscape 4.75 (although the print graphic doesn’t show up, so I have to use the Print toolbar button) or IE 6. I’m using an HP Laserjet 5P with a PCL driver (I think).

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I forgot to mention that I often save files in IE, that later I cannot open if IE, but can open with FrontPage.

Clearly, MSFT has to better train its HTML writers.

I expect tat MSFT’s primary goal is showing us how pretty it can make its web pages,. but the PRIMARY concern MUST be the information content.

Ever try saving a page from the MSDN libray?
I’m successful ONLY when I View Source, which opens the page in Notepad, and then save the source as a text file.

P.S. A few years ago, I reported problems wit MSFT’s web pages to MSFT and they were rapidly fixed. In one case, probably less than a nour afte rI reported the problem. IMHO, the folkes in charge of creating the technical info in th KB, MSDN, and, say, white papers are either “under”experienced, or don’t give a darn.

HTML pages containg technical info must be capable of easily being saved on the local computer and printed correctly usin the usual browsers and common printer drivers for PCL, Postscript and Acrobat.

Heck, I cannot waste any more time on this topic.

Bye bye!

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Howard,

As I said, I have someone researching the problem of MSKB pages crashing my browser on print and I thank you for the time you spent posting the suspect HTML tags. I will forward them to my troubleshooter. I hope to have an answer soon and will post it here.

One of my other co-workers is able to print from IE 6.0, so it isn’t an Explorer version problem. We’re stumped — some printer driver issue, but then printer drivers (PCL 6 and PS) for the big HP (8100 and 8150) printers have been a major thorn in my side since we upgraded to Win2K.

Jefferson and DaveA — please post any information you come across regarding this problem. For customer support, I have frequently printed the KB articles as “proof” for incredulous users who refuse to believe things I tell them and I am loathe to forego the convenience of hard copy. “Microsoft has acknowledged this to be a problem” works better in tangible black & white.

How can we “snip” this part of the thread and post it to the Explorer board? Hmm, I haven’t searched there yet…off I go.

Thanks.

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> How can we “snip” this part of the thread and post it to the Explorer board?

Would if I could, but this sub-thread is actually split in such a way that it cannot be knitted back together by mere mortal moderators: admin assistance would be required.

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No. It’s a polite way of saying cahones in a Spanish speaking country I once lived.

-Lenny

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Where I come from, that’s a j, not an h, in cojones.

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What’s your point?

-Lenny

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Have you noticed that as Office gets great improvements even in complex areas, it gets worse in simple areas?

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[/indent]Hi Lenny:
I completely agree!! In Word 6 & 7, you could use the Find/Replace box without having to click “More”. Cell height & width had your most common table adjustments; now you have to go to Table properties…, click on a tab, & often options to make changes. And remember when you could open a document & use Shift+F5 to go back to your last edit; they broke that in Word 2000 (you need a set of macros in the normal template to close your document to preserve that option). I’m waiting until they have a mandatory dialog box that comes up every time you press a letter on the keyboard that says something like, “Are you sure you meant to type a “j”; maybe your finger slipped. Of course, even that will be better than the version after that, which will “automatically update” the “j” key to “h” if you ever made a typo. Eventually there will be only one way to avoid “intellisense”–we’ll need to go back to chisel & stone.

I feel better now.

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Shift+F5 to go back to your last edit; they broke that in Word 2000

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I skipped v2000, so I missed all the fun. But I noticed it seems to work in 2002, thank goodness, cuz I can’t live without that feature. I never have and still don’t understand why Word doesn’t open automatically to the last page viewed by design. You know like the other programs do. I guess I could install an open macro that launches Shift F5.

Do you have such a macro in your code library?

-Lenny

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Do you have such a macro in your code library?

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[/indent]Not exactly a library–more like a pile in the corner–but

Sub AutoOpen()
Application.GoBack
End Sub

in the normal template will do the trick.

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I’m calling it “intelli-nonsense.” In addition to everyone else’s spot on complaints, I can’t stand how the help windows now slap open, whack, whack, whack and obscure my editing window….ugh, it’s horrible. At least the Find window doesn’t land ON TOP of what I was looking for anymore…

One of my good friends in Seattle is on a panel of non-softie “users” who evaluate “usability” for Microsoft. This guy has minimal computer skills and would not be able to give informed feedback, but for greatest marketability M$ wants novices to be able to use their products without having to think…

From ComputerWorld Aug. 12, 2002 p. 28: “When a system is designed so that fools can use it, only fools can use it.”

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Now, on top of everything else, I notice I cannot paste into the Answer Wizard text box. Paste or Cntrl+V is deactivated. Copying and pasting is the most basic of functions in any application. To look something up now, you have to type it in manually. So, why in the world would they have done that? I’ll bet they spent more money disabling that feature than having left it there.

I know they have a Wish List, and I chuck stuff in it all the time. But here’s my ultimate wish that I’m sure would go against thier grain… things that work, leave it alone!

-Lenny

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I think the idea is to encourage you to use F1 to launch context-sensitive help … assuming that the help engine hasn’t broken again as it frequently does in Office 2k. I’m not sure copy and paste is really useful in the answer wizard anyhow, since you usually have to get just the right combination of words to get a useful list of topics, and it generally requires more than a single word or brief phrase.

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