MS Office rant...

Dano

Dano

Dano

Soldato
Joined
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I don't think I've ever come across a suite of programs so incompatible with it's differing versions and anything else that offers similar resources, have just run into the whole winmail.dat attachment issue with a client and the grief it's caused just because they wanted to send their contact list to a third party.

Not to mention all the different versions of word that can't read each others files unless they were installed with the conversion filters which never seems to be defined as any of the default options and thus never get installed.

The more I use Outlook the less I like it, hopefully newer versions will go down the same route as Windows Mail and store contacts and emails as individual files using text/XML.

Anyway, rant over :)
 
MarcLister said:
And therein lies your problem. :p You hate Office 2007 but whilst OpenOffice is free it really is quite poor I feel. Microsoft have very little competition in the office suite. :(
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I don't really hate office, I just hate all the stupid inconsistancies that come with it's various versions. Open office doesn't stand up at all well to it in my opinion, either way it is not my choice to run office, it is that of my clients.
 
Dano said:
I don't really hate office, I just hate all the stupid inconsistancies that come with it's various versions. Open office doesn't stand up at all well to it in my opinion, either way it is not my choice to run office, it is that of my clients.
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There is only one inconsistency - the format hasn't changed between Word 2000 (binary .doc) and Word 2007 (.docx, which is an XML based, open format). Because these files have completely different extensions and MIME types, I wouldn't even call it an 'inconsistency' - especially as all versions of Office support .doc and .docx (albeit older versions need you to download a small .docx adapter from Microsoft).
 
Hatter The Mad said:
There is only one inconsistency - the format hasn't changed between Word 2000 (binary .doc) and Word 2007 (.docx, which is an XML based, open format). Because these files have completely different extensions and MIME types, I wouldn't even call it an 'inconsistency' - especially as all versions of Office support .doc and .docx (albeit older versions need you to download a small .docx adapter from Microsoft).
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Office isn't just Word though is it, and even then why should you need to download an adapter for such a small change, this should be installed by default specifically to alleviate any compatability issues.
 
Dano said:
Office isn't just Word though is it, and even then why should you need to download an adapter for such a small change, this should be installed by default specifically to alleviate any compatability issues.
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How can it be installed by default? How do you expect them to know that they'll be inventing a new document format in 6 years time (when they made Office 2000)?

And what do you mean by "small change"? You do understand that .doc and .docx (and .xls and .xlsx) share zero similarities and are completely different in every way?
 
Hatter The Mad said:
How can it be installed by default? How do you expect them to know that they'll be inventing a new document format in 6 years time (when they made Office 2000)?
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No, but office 2007 damn well knows the exact format that was used in prior versions and the converters that are on the disc should be loaded by default.

And what do you mean by "small change"? You do understand that .doc and .docx (and .xls and .xlsx) share zero similarities and are completely different in every way?
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My bad, I mis-read your earlier post.
 
Dano said:
No, but office 2007 damn well knows the exact format that was used in prior versions and the converters that are on the disc should be loaded by default.
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Office 2007 can load all of the old formats, out of the box, without an adapter. The old versions of office need an adapter to load Office 2007 formats. I don't understand what your gripe is...
 
i can't stand Office 2007, so i still use 2003 (not to mention, i see no reason to buy new software when the old stuff works perfectly).

to microsofts credit, after installing office 03 in windows 7, windows update popped up with a bunch of updates automatically, after which all of the new formats opened perfectly.

MS are only a bunch of cretins occasionally (like when they did OpenGL in Windows Vista & 7) but usually their stuff is good.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Office 2007 can load all of the old formats, out of the box, without an adapter. The old versions of office need an adapter to load Office 2007 formats. I don't understand what your gripe is...
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Not in my experience it can't, or possibly it's 2003 that has issues I forget, either way I have come across the issue more than enough times for it to be coincidence.
 
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Dano said:
Not in my experience it can't, or possibly it's 2003 that has issues I forget, either way I have come across the issue more than enough times for it to be coincidence.
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In my experience 2003 & 2007 can open all of my previous documents without installing anything additional.

Perhaps there was some fancy formatting/macros in the documents you were trying to open?
 
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