Snapshot (A2k)

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Microsoft web site says

“In Access 2000 and Office 2000, Snapshot Viewer 9.0 is automatically installed the first time you create or view a snapshot report.”

Having just Emailed a snapshot report to a colleague without Access, Outlook just came up with a message about unknown file type!
Who do I blame MS or our IT Dept.??

Peter

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If they didn’t install snapshot viewer as Run on 1st Use then I’d blame the IT Dept for their installation. Actually, it would have been better if the installed it to run from the machine. However, if the colleague doesn’t have Access, it’s highly unlikely that the snapshot viewer was installed at all.

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Perhaps I should just forward it to “All Users” on the network and point them towards IT?

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That sounds appropriate.

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Why did MS think it necessary to make yet another format for this sort of thing. Practically everyone has Acrobat already, so why couldn’t MS just go with that? Are they really so greedy that they have to make everything work only in their own format? Just bugs me that they are so arrogant towards users.

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Microsoft came up with the snapshot format because some of the report formatting gets lost when you convert to an rtf document, as well as after transfers to Excel/Word format.

As for why they didn’t include an option for a pdf format, I think it has to do with licensing. (Not totally sure.) Since Microsoft and Adobe are competitors, it’s not likely we’ll see a lot of collaboration between the two.

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I can see why they did not use PDF for it but I cant see why they could not have a decent HTML export though.
PowerPoint quite happily exports graphs and things in to it!

Peter

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However, HTML is editable from all sorts of applications, and snapshots are not editable at all, which is part of their reason for existing.

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yes, but the lack of choice still means that the only way I have of sending a report electronically is to get everyone concerned to download and install the SnapShot viewer. HTML could just have been put on a read only drive if there was thought to be a problem with meddling fingers.

I like Snapshot, but would have liked more choice as well! have things improved at all in versions after 2k?

Peter

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