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Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy"
walterbyrd writes with a warning: "Microsoft is pushing Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy.' Please don't let your friends and relatives install Microsoft 'trial' software. When Microsoft tells you 'try-before-you-buy,' the 'buy' part is not meant to be an option. Once you 'try' a Microsoft 'upgrade' you can not easily go back, because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read." The ChannelRegister article also notes how Microsoft's push goes against the grain of the consumer revolt against "crapware." Read on for an account of walterbyrd's experience with a previous Microsoft trial upgrade.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I can't speak for the other components of MS Office such as Outlook, Microsoft does provide a compatibility pack for word, excel and powerpoint formats which allow someone with an older version of office (XP) view the newer documents.
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office 2007.
How, then, is this even a story? The submitter warns of the impending danger of the 07 trial, goes over his experiences with the 03 trial, and then admits he hasn't even tried the 07 trial.
A friend of mine bought a Toshiba Satellite with vista from Best Buy, and it came preinstalled with the Office 2007 trial. He used it for a week. He then uninstalled the 2007 trial via the control panel, installed his retail license of 2003 (he was not a fan of the ribbon...), and imported his files without any compatibility issues, including his entire Outlook file, contacts, email, everything.
I encountered no difficulties when switching from the Office 2007 trial to OpenOffice.org. It's funny, OpenOffice.org in no way supports the 2007 file format. What happens with Outlook I'm not sure, but the rest of the Office suite doesn't convert any files unless you choose to. It's really not hard to select 'Save in Office 97-2003 format' from a drop down menu on the save dialogue.
Nuff said.
trial
Function: noun
Etymology: Anglo-French, from trier to try
3: a test of faith, patience, or stamina through subjection to suffering or temptation; broadly : a source of vexation or annoyance
You get what you deserve.
I have no sympathy. I am not suprised. It's not as if nobody knows Microsoft are unredeemably crooked pedlers of defective rubbish. Maybe eventually, when you have been punched in the face, kicked and abused enough, maybe then you will learn.
Hey walterbyrd (same one from GL?) what about doing *everything as plain ASCII txt ?
C|N>K
If you save files as "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)" (or whatever, depending on application) they are backwards compatible. If you save files as "Word Document (*.docx)" they are not, but you can get a plugin for Office 2003 to read them.
I'm sure the average user will not realize they need to do this, but if you know to look for it it's right there.
The article doesn't say anything regarding the behavior of Office 2007 when installed on a machine with an older version of Office. It's a bare-bones commentary on OEM installations of trials of Office 2007. There is absolutely no indication that the problems encountered by the submitter will come up again.
So, this scare-tactic post amounts to someone asserting that something bad happened in the past, and might, possibly, maybe, could happen in the future.
Wow, thanks for the information, I never would have thought of that on my own.
(Furthermore, does any company that uses trial-ware want you to do anything besides buy the software? Game companies use demos all of the time, AND THEY DON"T WANT YOU TO CONSIDER BUYING THE GAME TO BE OPTIONAL EITHER. But, because this is and MS story on Slashdot, we just have to bash them for every perfectly normal thing that they do.)
Pathetic.
We had the much same experience where I was working when Office 98 came out. Somebody brought in Office 98 installation media from home and installed it on their computer. Once the cool new features had been seen by others, the media was passed around. It was entertaining to watch the windoze guys scramble around for a few days trying to figure out where all the incompatible versions of important documents were coming from. Not to mention the stern lectures from management about software licensing, viruses, etc. And this was at one of the big outsourcing vendors, too. I won't say which one this episode happened at, but I've seen similar things at each of CSC, EDS, IBM, and AA (now Acenture).
IT excellent the way Microsoft are doing a great job promoting reasons to switch to Linux.
Clearly their remaining users are all windows fanboys who will put up with absolutely anything and then come back for more. So Microsoft, how about using that for some really intrusive stuff like putting advertising functionality directly in the kernel or add even more snooping software?
Oh its all ready gone live on windows update you say...
Ever hear of backups? You know...the thing you do to data before installing a new piece of software? Yeah Outlook 2003 changes the .pst file, but so what? If you took the extra few seconds to copy it before installing 2003 you wouldn't have this problem now, would you? BTW a .pst file is something you ought to be backing up ANYWAY unless you really don't need to read those saved e-mails again. Disk failure, anyone?
I also have both Outlook 2000 and 2003 clients in an Exchange environment and there is no problem with individual users using either version. The only real source of grief are occasional MINOR formatting hiccups when files are opened with different versions and documents that reference a database for merging purposes, but these are merely annoyances, not critical failures.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Well, maybe YOU would touch it with a ten foot pole, but I surely wouldn't!
I thought the lessons were generally accepted by this time and for the most part, I think they are. When Windows XP came out, people switched over fairly quickly, but business was a bit slower to migrate. Vista gets released and I have yet to see a business site actually migrate over though I have witnessed a few individuals giving Vista a try... some going back to XP; some still trying to learn Vista's quirks. But so far, there's no business case for rolling out Vista.
The same goes for rolling out Office 2007. I don't see a business case for it. I have known one business to start migrating over to Office 2007 because there is some collaboration tool they've just *got* to have. I think it's a mistake. But then again, this is a decision made by the same IT "MCSE" leadership that couldn't manage to get Exchange 2003 successfully installed and "lost" their Blackberry server CDs... (As if they couldn't download the software from RIM's site.)
If there is a business case for Office 2007 or for Vista, I'd be really happy to hear it. But for the moment, I see no functions or features that we need to get our work done or that could help us get it done any better.
Speculation is a great thing, but it quickly loses its luster when stated as fact. The little disclaimer you stuck on the bottom should be right under the headline.
I'll give people some credit in the past as a Word 97 file and an Word 2003 file are both .DOC just with some different contents. However Office 2007's format is .DOCX, and it'll still save DOC just fine. So you can choose if you want the backward compatible version or the new version, and it is easy to know what you chose. Currently we have a some Office 2007 at work but mostly Office 2003. No problems thus far, as the 2007 people know to keep using the old formats and everyone is happy.
The company I work for provides custom document templates for presenting images and information, and we've started getting calls from people who previously had no problem with the templates, but decided (for whatever dumb reason) to just "upgrade" to Office 2007 (after all, the number 2007 is bigger than 2003). Now they're saying the templates no longer work in 2007.
At first we thought we would have to completely redo them for this new release, but it turns out that it's just part of Microsoft's attempt to increase "security", by automatically blocking all macros (even if the user previously allowed macros in an earlier version) and apparently not even giving you a notice that they were blocked. The workarounds are simple enough, but I foresee much more time spent on tech support fixing these dumb non-issues.
Yay for productivity!
This entire "article" is FUD. Say what you will about Microsoft formats, but so long as you're using Word, Excel, or Powerpoint (i.e. not Outlook), there's nothing to worry about. And for the record, I've tried importing the mail from an Outlook 2007 PST file in Outlook 2003, and it works perfectly fine. There's also apparently workarounds for importing 2007 PST files into earlier versions of Outlook - including 2003 into XP, 2000, and so forth - as described here.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Microsoft allows programs to install into any directory they want to and modify just about any file. There is no such thing as root access either because every program has it.
.dlls which any program can change and result in causing programs to crash.
Also M$ uses
Finally you have the registry which is deliberately made complex so the user can't figure out what the last program they ran put onto their computer.
I'd say these are just flaws with Windows and not really flaws with new Microsoft software.
God spoke to me.
I'm not a fan of microsoft, but I criticize them for things that are actually true. Lets go though your blather.
.pst file format as outlook 2000 (the new 2003 .pst format is unreadable by outlook 2000). But if you have an existing .pst file, outlook 2003 will not convert it to the new 2003 format. In fact, outlook cannot convert a .pst file to the new format, which is pretty annoying. You need to create a new .pst file, then import your old email.
.dlls installed at the same time.
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003.
Not true. Outlook 2003 can use the exact same
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry.
Not true at all. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall your trial software, then reinstall your old software. If you can't uninstall software, then your PC is very messed up, which has nothing to do with outlook.
And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
Also not true. You cannot have multiple versions of outlook on the same PC, but the rest of office is easy - just install into a different directory. The default for office 2003 installs is to remove office 2000, but you have an easy choice during installation to keep your existing software and install 2003 to a new directory.
The reason for multiple versions of outlook is that the exchange connectivity is very different in outlook, and you can't have both
dude, this is a bunch of crap- i have office 2007, and it respects old formats. it won't write over it w/ the newer format unless you specifically tell it to.
Forced upgrades to new versions of MS Office is a normal experience in a large company. Typical senerio:
One week after a new version of MS Office is release, someone in the company gets a new computer. Unless the company has a strict policy that controls all incoming computer hardware and makes sures that said hardware is reinstalled with a standard baseline image, the company is about to go through a forced upgrage. The new computer is going to have the latest version of MS Office installed. Since it's a new computer, someone important (management) is getting said computer. The first thing the user does is open some important Excel spreadsheet or Access database that is has been deemed critical to day-to-day operations. Because it's a new version of MS Office, the user is asked if they'd like to upgrade the format that the file is formated/saved in. Of course the user will click "OK". Now, this user is the only person that can open and edit this critical file. The next thing the user does after getting a new version of MS Office is create some Word document. As soon as the user saves this document, they email it to everyone in the company. Complaints about not being able to open this document flood the HelpDesk as soon as the user hit the Send button. Instead of complaining about how the latest version of MS Office was allowed into the company without authorization, everyone complains that "so and so has the latest version of MS Office. Why don't I have the latest version of MS Office?" And the company has to shell out $LARGE_SUM to bring everyone up-to-date with the latest version of MS Office one week after it's released.
Sinse, repeat.... has it really only been 4 years since that last forced upgrage of MS Office?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
If they've done this before with other trial software, why give them another opportunity to pull their tricks again. "Once burned, twice shy" is not an entirely bad philosophy. I wouldn't expect Snow White to readily eat another apple.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I'm using the free version of Microsoft Office Accounting - they made it free in order to muscle into QuickBooks market (the free version is equivalent to the 90$ version of quickbooks).
Problems so far:
It depends on a version of SQL server it installs as a service (why does it have to run as soon as I power on the machine?) which sometimes (for no reason) balloons up to over a gigabyte of ram use. Also SQL didn't install properly the first time because it refuses to install in a compressed directory - well as easily as they could test that the directory is compressed, they could have made their subdirectory uncompressed. After all they're installing it as a fucking service and that takes admin access.
It has fucking AVERTISEMENTS running in the main window the time. Not only is there no way to turn them off or to rearrange the window so it doesn't take up 100% of the screen real estate, but the system stops for a few minutes retrying on the fucking ADVERTS every time my internet connection goes down. That's right, you can't do any accounting for fucking minutes because their fucking advertisement is more important!
Really, this all seems like a great reason to pay $200 for a good version of Quickbooks. If the free Office Accounting is bad, is there any reason to believe that the other one, say DOESN'T have adverts? Or that it lets you use your screen for things other than a huge menue designed to force you to watch those averts?
So you can choose if you want the backward compatible version or the new version, and it is easy to know what you chose. Currently we have a some Office 2007 at work but mostly Office 2003. No problems thus far, as the 2007 people know to keep using the old formats and everyone is happy.
The menu for types is confusing and makes interchange a PITA. There are three options, "default", "Office97-2003" and "other". If this version is like all of the rest, conversion is one way - in but not out - and 97-2003 will be a mess. The other formats are way too confusing for the average user with multiple types defined for the same version of word processor name. Once you get past all of that, you have Vista's default behavior of hiding file extensions to keep you from knowing which file is what.
All of this confusion and complexity has one aim: to make sure people buy a new M$ word processor every few years. The file formats change around to keep other programs from being able to use them. The new formats themselves are used to force others to buy Word. This routine has worked several times.
The only real question is how many times can M$ pull the old switcheroo before people revolt. It's such a transparent rip off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
>>What happens with Outlook I'm not sure
The story was basically about the difficulties I had with Outlook. So how can you say the whole story is "FUD" while admitting that you don't know what happens with Outlook?
I bought a copy of Office 2007 for $20 bucks (our campus has a volume license) to try it out. It is without a doubt the worst piece of crapware I have ever had the misfortune to try, not even taking into account file compatibility issues. The very worst bit is that there is no way for you to customize the ribbons unless you learn how to code XML. If you look up online help for the ribbon, Microsoft explicitly states this. One of the things I always liked about earlier versions of Office is the ability to customize the toolbars to optimize your own personal workflow; you add buttons you use more, and take away ones you don't. Now with Office 2007 you are pretty much stuck with what they decide are the "key" tools. Some functions are hidden in the contextual menu, which is the ONLY place they are accessible. I am switching back to Office 2003, which is actually pretty decent.
NO CARRIER
I've been an avid 'slahdotter' for awhile now, and this just took me for a spell of sorts. I've never created an account or even commented once. By no means am I an avid Microsoft Fanboy, or an Apple Fanboy, or even a Linux Fanboy, even though I tend to lean more towards Linux and opensource, I completely enjoy Microsoft Office and have since Office 97, when I personally started using it. This is a personal biased by no means is it helping or doing any good as a story, and as the flame wars are already running on this little comment board, and probably will so after my comment it doesn't really matter. Arguing on the internet is like beating a retard in a footrace, no matter what you're still a loser. That being said, this consumer doesn't seem technically savvy, and by his great justification and backing seems to show a plethora of knowledge about Micro$oft Office, and by plethora I mean little to none at all. By a matter of a few options can you import export and save data in older non-traditional (non-new) formats and on older formats as was stated prior are able to import from newer versions. I think this story should be /j #cut.
Also, IIRC Outlook 2003 has a downgrader for .pst to the earlier versions, in the File menu.
Slashdot: Your source of daily anti-Microsoft FUD. I'm going to get modded down as troll/flamebait for this and probably lose my karma bonus, but I've noticed kdawson is the worst. Sorry to call you out.
I use 2002 at work and 2003 on all my home/school machines. I can't for the life of me imagine a scenario where Office has or should be changed dramatically enough requiring an upgrade to 2007. I'm assuming that a few years out there will still be a student version of Office for about $100 where you get to install it on any 3 machines simultaneously. If not, and I doubt it, given the big presence Office has in college bookstores, which is the only reason now to specifically replace a machine or buy a new one, I'll just put on whatever Open Office is current and point it to store in Office 2002/3 formats. If the latest formats are an absolute requirement because of some dumbass teacher then I assume the school will provide a discounted version to support it. Just because Redmond thinks they can force you to upgrade, there aren't too many circumstances where they can.
Wow!!! It's shocking to read the comments above. There is no sympathy whatsoever for the average user, who has little technical knowledge, or for companies with IT departments that get caught in the abuse. Quote: "I have no sympathy. ... It's not as if nobody knows
Microsoft are unredeemably crooked peddlers of defective rubbish." I think people with no technical knowledge don't know this.
... so long as you're using
Word, Excel, or Powerpoint (i.e. not Outlook), there's nothing to worry
about." The words "not Outlook" admit an exception. That comment links to a
Microsoft article that shows how to convert the new Outlook format to the old.
But most users won't know how to find the Microsoft article.
The article linked in the Slashdot article mentions Microsoft's apparent motivation: "Previous editions of Office have shipped below target, with just 15 percent of PCs running Office 2003 two years after that suite shipped, instead of Microsoft's stated goal for two thirds of PCs to be running Office 2003 by 2005."
There are problems: "Anyone with custom macros... watch out"
This Slashdot comment is typical: "This entire "article" is FUD.
The issue is that people with insufficient technical knowledge who buy new computers may not find any option other than paying for another version of Microsoft Office. That is abusive. Microsoft provides big companies methods they may or may not know about, but apparently tries to dominate most users with sneaky methods.
At the time I am writing this, only this comment shows an understanding of the issue: Forced Upgrade: "Forced upgrades to new versions of MS Office is a normal experience in a large company."
Thare are several social issues here:
1) Slashdot comments often take the position, "If you don't know as much as I do, then I have no sympathy for you." It's macho posturing.
2) Slashdot comments often come from a quirky viewpoint: "I will try to find an interpretation of what you said that could possibly be wrong, ignore any interpretations that are correct, and pretend that there could be no correct interpretations."
3) People are often not able to protect themselves from abuse, especially when abusers exploit their weaknesses.
4) Not only are people often not able to protect themselves from abuse, a significant percentage of people are themselves abusers. The weaker abusers use the actions of the more powerful abusers as a shield.
5) Microsoft managers apparently feel they are unable to compete honestly. The apparently feel that, without tricks, they cannot compete. Apparently they don't know how to compete by making a good product, or for some reason they cannot make a good product. Possibly inside Microsoft making a good product is politically impossible.
6) Many people depend on the income from the problems Microsoft creates. Those who feel they have no other way of making a living often attack anything negative about Microsoft, apparently because they see negative information about Microsoft as potentially lowering their income, which is probably true.
>But if you have an existing .pst file, outlook 2003 will not convert it to the new 2003 format.
.pst file was in an outlook-2003 format. That much I can tell you for sure. I believe both his old messages, and new messages, were in the 2003 format. Care to tell me how that happend? Maybe he allowed when he should have canceled, or something?
.dlls installed at the same time.
When my brother-in-law's trial period was over, his
> Not true at all. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall your trial software, then reinstall your old software.
Oh, it removes the trial software. But when you try to reinstall the old software, it won't let you. It detects a newer version, even though the newer version been technically removed. Symantec does the same thing. BTW: I can you from a *lot* of experience that msft's "add/remove software" is not worth crap. This is one of the reasons that registries get gunked up over time. Also, this sort of thing is a fairly common occurance.
> And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
As I recall, the install would not let us do that. Maybe if the disk had been partitioned, or something. We were trying to install office-2000, on XP-home, if that matters.
> You cannot have multiple versions of outlook on the same PC
Well, there you go. The problem was with Outlook.
> The reason for multiple versions of outlook is that the exchange connectivity is very different in outlook, and you can't have both
Whatever the reason, it wrecked his computer to the point that I had to re-format his HDD.
You do what you want. But, after my experience, I can assure you that I have no intention of every installing any msft "trail" software on my PC. I warn as many people as can about this. Msft is not the only company that plays this game. I don't use Symantec anymore either.
You can think whatever you want about my intentions. Say I'm trying to spread FUD, or whatever. But, I promise you, the story is true. And I don't want it to happen to others.
I have used Office 2007 some, and found that I benefited from the improvements (things like more than 3 ways to sort in excel), but what I really noticed is when I compared it to my trial of OpenOffice. It was unbelievable how many little shortcuts that make using Excel so much easier didn't exist in OpenOffice. Just the different ways to handle copy/pastes and functions, I felt that using Openoffice was a much more arduous task than using Excel. I also noticed that the performance was much worse using Openoffice than Excel on a windows machine, the performance was a little better between windows and linux (for OOo) but still not as good as Excel 2003 in Windows. Am I the only person who has seen this? Or is there a larger issue at stake? I've seen how much every business uses Excel, and feel that if they can't solve these little problems, that OpenOffice will never have a chance to steal significant market share from MSFT
The explanation is obvious. Office 2007 is just office 2003 with a tie. And this guy actually works for MS, but wants to stay anonymous.
You see? Everything can make sense if you try hard enough.
While it sounds like the article doesn't talk specifically about Office 2007, I can say from first hand experience that Microsoft hasn't really changed their ways since the Office 2003 trial. I had a client a couple of months back who downloaded and installed the Office 2007 try-before-you-buy trial and installed it on his system which already had Office 2000 installed. Luckily, if we can use that word here, he had already purchased and switched over to Outlook 2007, so his mail was fine, but Office 2007 totally screwed up his install of Office 2000. Most of the older components wouldn't run and all the files he worked on were converted to new formats by Office 2007. Anyways, it caused a whole host of problems for him, interrupting his business.
What's even better is that he was fine with the new software and so we actually tried to register it for him on two separate occasions, and we failed both times with some idiotic error about a shipping method... for a downloaded product. How stupid is that? Finally we gave up and I was able to uninstall every version of Office (he also had some 2003 components for some reason) and reinstalled Office 2000 from a disk I had, in the process weaning him off of using Publisher ever again, since his Publisher files were no longer readable by any version of Publisher except the new version that had messed with the file. Thanks, Microsoft.
Yeah, he was definitely not the most computer literate person, but when I trial application goes around changing old files and saving new files in a format that can't be read by any older version of the software, you can't entirely blame that on the user. Everyone should be warned to backup their files before installing any Microsoft trial software. If he'd wanted to return to a previous version of Outlook I honestly don't have a clue what I would have done. It probably would have been easier to switch him over to Thunderbird.
in the accounting department. 5 new Dells with XP-Pro and Office 2007 installed. The IT guy who set them up made sure the default was set to save files in Office 97-2003 mode. It's just the old forced upgrade trick from MS, as usual. I'm in Engineering where we're still using Office 2000. No business case for "upgrading" that I can see.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Also, part of my profession is being extremely literate in Word, and they changed so damn much that my years of daily usage now leave me fumbling about. Figuring out where all my menus went is a colossal pain. There were plenty of things worth updating in Word, but the user interface hasn't significantly changed for the last 10 years. Who decided this was a good idea?
A Slashdot "editor" modding down posts critical of themselves again. How cute.
Why don't you come back when you actually try the thing you're freaking out about? Hmm? Might be a good thing to actually
try-before-you-cry
Camping on quad since 1996.
FWIW I've been using Office 2007 for several months now & (neglecting my opinion of the "ribbon" and all the other changes which could be discussed ad infinitim) the thing is just BUGGY.
Just every little thing, big and little. Today I was typing and somehow Word let the cursor scroll off the bottom of the window. So now I'm typing blind. This happened like 20 times in a row.
When you do mail merge and want to filter (to send to only selected recipients in your database) there are strange (and sometimes random) bugs.
And on and on. It's just buggy & inconsistent.
Result--when I had a really important project to actually get done the past couple of days, I reverted to Excel '97--which worked just fine.
(I have Office 97 & 2007 installed side by side & no problems with that end of things so far . . . )
I think you mean "flaccid", rather than "placid".
Only in my case it was a 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI, and the problem was soft paint. Every little grain of sand that hit that car cut through the black finish to the white primer. It looked like shit. Eventually I was able to get VW to repaint the car, but they insisted I pay $60 to repaint one of the panels. There was no logic to this, but the division rep said, "Well, if you don't want to do that, I'll just keep repainting your panels one at a time as the scratches come," so I went along with the scam. Anyway, I haven't tried a VW product in over 20 years, but I would recommend you keep yourself and your loved ones away from this car company.
I'm not kidding - I've had several good rescues using OpenOffice. I have heard complaints that OO's calc isn't as capable as Excel, but I'm in no position to judge - my work with spreadsheets never gets so complicated that I need anything heavy (as long as my invoices get produced and paid I'm happy :-).
However, where it does get heavy is documentation, and for that I would not ever go back to MS Office. In OpenOffice, styles WORK. It doesn't end up this complete screaming mess that you get with cut & paste in Word, and I frequently 'rescue' other people's work which won't even load anymore in Word by just pulling it into OO and tidying it up. Not to mention word prediction, especially when you work with complex terms it seriously lowers your error rate. AutoCorrect IMHO creates an addiction, because your fingers never unlearn the 'wrong' word (anyone noticing the increase of "teh" instead of "the"? There's your answer).
I'm astonished that MS can't get it right after so many years. Or maybe that wasn't the focus - I've come to the conclusion that they take the consultants' approach to fixing a problem: never fix it completely, and always keep the hope alive that the next engagement will be closure. Yeah - right..
Insert
Don't install software on your mission critical machines before you've tested it *elsewhere*.
For those of you who don't have a spare machine and can't be bothered to get the FREE Virtual PC or VMWare player, Microsoft offers live "remote desktop" style trials on their site.
Wow, golly gee whiz, that's soooo interesting!
mainly because it's not widely appreciated that it can be difficult to go back to the older file format.
To my astonishment, within a couple of hours Brian Jones, who is a program manager working on the Office XML functionality had posted a comment to the blog to point out the 27 Meg compatibility pack. http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/03/ 12/how-to-create-and-consume-openxml-formats.aspx
Wow, this is a little law student website on the other side of the planet from Microsoft, and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments ?
Why not use OpenOffice.org instead ? Agreed, Microsoft Office 2007 is very beautiful to look at and also has made a number of advances in usability. But that does not condone its history of changing the MSWord file format even across different versions of MSWord as well as locking the users to its proprietary format.
Microsoft has to learn to support open file formats as people now a days are becoming more and more aware of the hazards of vendor lock in.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
While I've never used the trial version, I can say that I have no problems moving files between 2003 and 2007 and back to 2003 as long as you either:
a) Save As the 2003 format from within 2007, or
b) Install the free Compatibility Pack onto Office 2003
Further, if you open a 2003 file in Office 2007, it opens in "Compatibility Mode" and will ONLY save as a 2003 file unless you specifically tell it otherwise. It even disables features that are strictly 2007-only.
And uninstalling 2007 to put 2003 on was a piece of cake. On one machine, I even have *both* running at the same time and can easily switch between them. The only exception to this is Outlook, which you cannot have an old version on the same machine as a new one.
-David
Seems just a little more reasonable than "actively patrolling blogs".
WTF are you talking about? The old versions do get uninstalled when new versions are installed, but it doesn't F with things so bad that you can't uninstall the new one and put the old one back. For me, that'd mean all I have to do is add --force-downgrade to dpkg when I reinstall the old version. Using apt the .debs stick around, but that's like when you leave all your setup.exe's sitting on your desktop. At least there's a setting in Synaptic to automatically remove them when installations finish and a command to remove them all at once if you don't want it to be automatic. Can't tell Windows to automatically delete all setup.exe's from the Desktop after they install.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
The story was about Office 2007, which you admitted you haven't even tried. If that isn't enough to make it FUD, I wonder what would be.
And there are plenty of reactions from people who did use it, showing the fear is unfounded.
There is no "consumer revolt against crapware." Consumers gleefully upgrade to the latest product in time, no matter what, and then will complain endlessly about how much they hate computers. The complaints are irrelevant--they don't punish companies for bad software, and they don't stop buying computers or software altogether.
Fundamentally, most people don't actually realise that computers don't have to suck. They don't know that it's possible to have a good, reliable, easy-to-use computer that does what they want in a reasonable time (and amount of computing resources), so they don't demand it. They just 'hate computers.'
There is no revolt. There has never been one in computing, and there probably never will be either.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
When I was still working at Dell(not to long ago) it was a big problem because we would load it onto the computers if you didn't order any processing software. There was nothing indicating that the software was trial software and when office 2007 first came out we would have someone get escalated to me about every other week because they couldn't get there files. Pretty much all of them thought it was pretty low.
This whole story is untrue except for Outlook. I've been through this and Office 2007 is installed completely separately from Office 2003. The only application that is overwritten is Outlook 2003 because they cannot coexist because of DLL issues. Other than that, this is completely false
"Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry."
Wow! I'd love to be able to downgrade Office, but hacking the registry sounds like a total nightmare! I bet very few people in the world can truly say they're able to do something as extreme as that! It'd be amazing if someone came up with a program to allow someone to edit the registry in a relatively straightforward manner! Only in our dreams...
Oh, wait.
There are programs to customize the Ribbon. It's fully customisable, just not from within Office.
d ex.php, and I suspect a full-featured OSS solution will be available soon, if there is the demand for it.
A quick google search threw up http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/in
"Journals (Science [biggest journal, of the America Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)], and Nature) have prohibited taking OOXML documents, because they do not correspond to existing standards such as MathML and SVG and are not backwards compatible to Word 2003 and previous. Compatibility packs do not even help.[2][3] As Microsoft will stop selling Word 2003 by July 1, 2007[4], this is a very bad precedent for future-proofing documents.
. dtl "Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new .docx format produced through Microsoft Word 2007, either for initial submission or for revision. Users of this release of Word should convert these files to a format compatible with Word 2003 or Word for Macintosh 2004 (or, for initial submission, to a PDF file) before submitting to Science"
.docx format produced through Microsoft Word 2007, either for initial submission or for revision."
p -marked-down.html "Math markup marked down"0 07/06/04/scientists_hold_off_on_that_upgrade_to_of fice_2007.html
p plications/the_pointless_office_converter_delay.ht ml "The Pointless Office Converter Delay"
1] http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/docx
"Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new
"Users of Word 2007 should also be aware that equations created with the default equation editor included in Microsoft Word 2007 will be unacceptable in revision, even if the file is converted to a format compatible with earlier versions of Word; this is because conversion will render equations as graphics and prevent electronic printing of equations, and because the default equation editor packaged with Word 2007 -- for reasons that, quite frankly, utterly baffle us -- was not designed to be compatible with MathML."
[3]http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/math-marku
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12608/1023/
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2
Nature's analysis of OOXML:
"We currently cannot accept files saved in Microsoft Office 2007 formats. Equations and special characters (for example, Greek letters) cannot be edited and are incompatible with Nature's own editing and typesetting programs"
[4] http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=519 "July 1: No more Office 2003 for OEMs" by Mary Jo Foley"
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_a
"Two important Microsoft topics--interoperability and Office file formats--intersect on the Mac desktop, and they brutally cross like swords.
Two weeks ago, Microsoft broke a promise made in December: The spring beta release of OOXML (Office Open XML) converters for Mac Office. "
Is it just me or is TFA, the summary and the story totally unrelated?
(I guess I would get the answer by reading the current 165 comments but I just felt like making a comment and yet adding absolutely nothing to the discussion...)
I mean, I may have missed it since I haven't had my required levels of caffeine yet, but your story is not the 'same thing' in so many ways that I can't even be asked to point them all out.
Do you have a habit of randomly posting anything that comes into your head as a reply or have you been smoking something shady?
From the web site that is allowing you to try MS Office 2007 - there is a FAQ ! http://us1.trymicrosoftoffice.com/faq.aspx?culture =en-US
"How do I uninstall the trial ..." is the question that would address this issue.
--
The premise for this slashdot story is analogous to "My great grandpa got his arm broke hand cranking one of those Ford horseless carriages. So you should be wary of the 2008 Ford products, or your arm could wind up busted."
Not too far distant future, in a galaxy that is essentially this one:
Happy-go-lucky users were using Office 2000 in a XP era just chugging along quite nicely, thx.
Someone on the other end of a shared database upgraded (did not setup, just supported) to Office
Xp and hosed out ability to open said DB because of the built in incompatability.
So, upgrade time came about and I and fellow workers (with boss' blessing and shark's grin) did
the upgrade to 2003 just to share the 'fun' of Office format wars.
Not a big deal you say?
Normally I'd agree, but the thing is it "was my job" plus a bit of schadenfreude on behalf of my
users toward people that inadvertantly (I think) put us on the upgrade treadmill became on of
the guilty pleasures of being an SA.
Honestly, I think MS is well aware of the psychology of what does and doesn't motivate upgrades
and counts on incompatibility to be one of the things that pushes upgrades, plus the desire
to mess with those that piss us off.
Even those of us that know better (me included, though I tried to initally push "Office 2k"
formats) fall victim to those "pressures and cleavages" (BSG's Baltar quote) despite knowing
or thinking better.
One way or another the master manipulators are at work alongside the programmers and marketers.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
So thats the two most widely known OSs, and they both contribute to the ignorance of it's users. Thanks for pointing that out, Miss Mack.
FUD tastes bad. Don't you have anything better? Awww, methinks someone needs to actually read the FUD article before they opine, yes? Or better yet, browse this one at +3 and see what your "friends" are saying? I'm sure *all* of them are "M$ PR astroturfer shills", right?
What he describes is exactly what Scoble and his team did. He talked about it before stepping down. There are also other similar initiatives there as well. One infamous group from way back was Team99.
The whole thing operates like a cult.
Maybe there should be a warning that installing a new version means... um... you are installing a new version.
Well-behaved upgradable software saves enough information to be able to revert - in particular if it is a TRIAL!
Maybe you like bad software instead? Maybe you even write bad software? Maybe you like driving nails into your hand as well? Don't expect others to be as forgiving.
We need a "-1, Redmond lapdog" moderation.
and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments ?
:-)
Naah... they just google for them
It would seem, (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/9280 91), that you can install both Office 2003 and 2007 on the same system. Personally, I think you'd be nuts to do it, but if you want to trial and compare features....
Should not be trialing s/w on your production system anyway IMHO.
If you must, backup everything first, and just keep a copy of your email messages on the server. If you have to downgrade afterwards, restore your old outlook *.pst files and re-download the new mails. You'll not get the 'sent' mails, tho..
"Try before you buy", is totally different to "try before you decide to buy"
Slashdot resorts to making crap up?
/. headlines can we expect next?
..................
What in the hell is happening to this site. Once a good source of fairly trusted information or stories from around the net and now we are finding duplicates of stories everyday, biased submitter comments that don't even understand the articles they are posting and NOW we get opinion on subjects that are complete incompetence or flat out lies.
How can someone talk about using 2007 Office when they admit they never used it?
How can we trust an article where the user is SO STUPID that they reinstalled Office to import data when the software installed ALREADY does this automatically if they would just have freaking looked at the options instead of assuming MS is evil and forcing users to into their software.
This isn't even about MS or Office or Office 2007. This is about an really incompetent computer user proporting themselves as an 'expert' and yet having less knowledge than an average user in the same circumstances.
Do you think MS would bait people with a new version of Office and then want to pay for 'free' support calls to get the users back to their original versions? Just from a $$ standpoint, this would be STUPID for MS to do, and why this DOES NOT happen as the submitted story suggests.
Slashdot, this is now to the point where your main articles are making up crap just to try to push the anti-MS FUD.
So what insane
"Don't install evil Vista because my 3yr old ate keys off the keyboard"
"Don't use evil Windows Server, when I installed NT 3.51 Server my audio in doom stopped working"
"Stay away from MS, I drove by their headquarters and bigfoot attacked my car and raped me"
"I am too stupid to breathe most of the time, but after installing Vista, I forgot how to breathe altogether"
"MS forces evil DRM on me in Vista because it has something called protect processes that secures parts of the OS from other processes, and even though it wasn't designed for DRM, idiots like me see it as DRM because we are too f**king stupid to know what we are talking about"
Geesh
My experience was this: I had a new PC with Office 2003 trial, and wanted to use my old version of Office to begin with. As such, I installed my earlier version of Office. The two programs would not coexist well at all. Office 2003 consistently annoyed me with unexpected attempts to start up.
As far as I could figure out, Office 2003 maps registry keys that earlier versions of Office 2000 do not. The result is that you can't effectively have Office 2003 and an earlier version of Office on the same PC, with the earlier version having preference. Every so often, the new version of Office would be started via one of the new registry keys, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I even refused to click Agree on th EULA, and Excel 2003 eventually decided to run anyway.
The solution was to uninstall both Office 2003 and the earlier version of Office, and then reinstall the desired version of Office. Currently, I just uninstall the trial versions of Office immediately, and do not allow them to run even once. This seems to work fairly well.
The original poster was essentially correct. If you do not know enough to uninstall all versions of Office, and then install the desired version, then you will have problems. If you try to "manually correct" things, you will probably wind up reinstalling Windows XP. Myself, I think if you want to have multiple versions of Office on the same PC, you probably want to install virtualization software like VMWware.
To this date, I still have not deliberately used Office 2003 or agreed to its EULA, and I haven't missed it either.
It sounds like the OP was either using a bootleg copy or had no idea what he was doing:
* Because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read. - Utter rubbish, no they won't. Nothing is converted at all by default. Not your e-mails nor your documents.
* His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003, and Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003 - Again rubbish the e-mail format in Outlook 2000 is identical in 2003. Plain Text, RTF or HTML, all standards. If you mean the PST format as another member has said it doesn't automatically convert this, you need to manually convert it. I run the old PST format in Office 2007 without any problems at all.
* Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry - Rubbish it works fine, it sounds like a dodgy pc of which the Windows Installer Clean Up utility should solve the problem.
* And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC - Again rubbish, Office 2003 easily installs over the top of old versions, in what is called Hybrid mode.
Even if what you say is true I fail to see why a bit of Googling and registry fixing is slower than completely wiping the PC, and re-installing everything.
It's never wise to assume your problems are problems of the software in general.
Wow!!! It's shocking to read the comments above. There is no sympathy whatsoever for the average user, who has little technical knowledge, or for companies with IT departments that get caught in the abuse.
;-)
I can symphatize with individual users who happen not to be IT experts. Even smaller companies who cannot afford a bunch of specialists to manage their computers.
But if a company is large enough to have an IT department, that department should have enough collective knowledge to avoid the problem of forced upgrades. And management should trust their own IT department more than the friendly salesman from Microsoft.
If said large company still gets caught by Microsoft abuse more than once, they had it coming
C - the footgun of programming languages
I found this little gem, which is a mini version of the free OpenOffice, which can be placed on a standard USB2 Disk key. It comes in handy when using someone's computer that may not have a complete office setup, such as not having a spreadsheet. Simply place your data in a folder, on your Disk Key, and this stand-alone application in another folder labeled, Applications. Now, you can travel and leave your laptop at home; just use a friend's computer without having to install extra software they may not want. http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_por table
Although I can't speak on the downloadable trial software, I can tell you there is a perfectly legitimate reason for the pre-installed 60-day trial Office System 2007 software.
Basically, most people (home users who are not small business/corporate) will buy a Windows box from a vendor without Office in an attempt to save some cash, but will end up running out to Best Buy, etc. to buy a retail copy of Office at some point (because unless they know about OpenOffice.org, etc. they are going to be forced to at some point).
By pre-installing the Office System 2007 60-day trial, the customer now has the option to purchase whatever level of Office 2007 fits their needs (Basic, Small Business, Professional) and can get the key over the web (via the 60-day trial software) with little hassle. No running out to the store, and it is probably overall a bit cheaper process as well.
Of course, pre-installing OpenOffice.org would be even cheaper option, but that's an argument for another day!
-S
How are new formats designed to make sure people buy a new word processor when Microsoft release compatibility packs for older versions so they can open the new formats?
Because the "compatibility packs" are never perfect and usually work best as translators into the new format. The ultimate cost of their making money is you doing more work. This is why their supposedly "open" xml format specification has goofey things like, "do this exactly like Word 5 for Mac" without further advice. Their formats never were portable because they never have cared about your effort.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The trial version will only save in "open"Xml. And users will have to download a frigging "compatibility pack" (IF they notice that the free version of office is saving in bogus formats) Ain't it ridiculous such basic things like the translator are separate software? Most users will simply not use that thing nor recognize its existance... most users don't really know about this MS power trip to become a standard....
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I've heard of this great "try before you buy" software called Azureus. You can download what ever you want: Office 2007, Windows Vista, etc. The great part is, if you like it, you can keep it for free!
"...and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments?"
They aren't replying to negative comments, they are correcting or expanding upon incomplete or erroneous information. Nowehre in hsis comments did he say you were wrong, he mentioned that Microsoft ahs a way around this and porvided a link to your readers so they can decide for themselves if you're telling the truth or just a fucking idiot.
read read read, these people have something against Microsoft? i think so, if u don't like Windows don't buy it then, if u don't like Office don't buy it, is that so complicated?
So organizations that have automated processed around working with specific file formats are having trouble when a new file format is introduced. Big shock. These same fuckers also don't accept PDF, ODF, or anything that isn't Word 2000 compatible DOC.
Now the equation problem is an interesting one, but not a surprising one. Word 2007 is the first version of Office to actually introduce a native equation editor. All previous versions used OLE to embed equations edited using an external library, Microsoft Equation 3.0. Guess what, you can still use Microsoft Equation 3.0 in Word 2007 documents, then save them as Word 2003 (or earlier) documents and have them work just fine. Go to the Insert tab, under the Text section click on the Object drop down and select Object. In the dialog that appears select Microsoft Equation 3.0. Then edit the equation exactly as you did in Word 2003. I bet Nature couldn't even tell the difference.
Even more interesting is that Word 2003 didn't store equations in MathML either. They are stored as a WMF for rendering and as a COM BLOB for metadata and editing. So the comment about MathML doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The new equation editor in Word 2007 does support MathML, it's just not the underlying storage mechanism. In the Equations Tool tab (which appears when working with an equation) you can select to copy the equation to the clipboard as MathML instead of as an inline representation of the equation, and you can always copy MathML directly into Word 2007 and it will translate it just fine.
The biggest problem is not a technical problem at all. These journals have an extensive workflow based around peer review. That means different people in different organizations would have to agree to move forward almost all at once. This always happens when you build the workflow around a specific version of a specific technology instead of abstracting the workflow from the technology. Why these guys don't support even PDF for the actual submission baffles me.
As for "promises" of betas, if Microsoft has not established a solid specific release date then it is just a tentative goal and you can almost guarantee that it will slip. The developers and project managers dictate beta cycles, not the marketting droids, which is A Good Thing(TM). The damned June beta for the entities library wasn't released until July. You think they should start rushing QA just to ensure that some prerelease gets delivered to the masses before some arbitrary deadline?
In general one sometimes needs to upgrade a file format, yes, but this is NOT what's happening with Office 2007. I have the most unbelievably INCREDIBLY SIMPLE Excel spreadsheets from the previous Office (believe me, just a few columns with numbers and a sum is enough to trigger this shit), and when I try save them with the new Excel 2007, I get all sorts of dire-sounding warnings suggesting I'm going to lose all sorts of information if I don't save under the new format, every time I save. Then I also continually get hassled almost every time I open and save a document about how the format it's in is not secure enough and that it could be more 'secure' if I used the new file formats. And so on and so forth - one gets hassled so much that eventually any sane person is either going to break the screen, or just acquiesce and start using the new formats, and THAT'S what Microsoft is after, because the moment I do that (I'm the owner of a small business) it means upgrading every machine I interchange documents with, i.e. our whole network. So far I'm still "holding out" on principle, but everyone has their limit, and as Office 2007 gains 'critical mass' it becomes easier to give in.
They are just 100% doing their usual nonsense of forcing people into unnecessary upgrades and lock-ins that they don't need.
Office 2007 sucks ass, it's a POS. The interface is impossible to "get used to" no matter how long you use it (I've been using it for a long time now, and you cannot get faster than the old menu system with it - it makes OpenOffice look/feel good to use!), and the better aesthetic look* is only there to make you feel less bad about the fact that you're spending money on an upgrade that you don't need. I'm not aware of any new feature that I want/need, actually, and I long to uninstall this thing and put Office 2003 on instead, but it's a 2007 license.
The reality is that you actively and continually have to work at PREVENTING 2007 from saving under the new formats. I have older Excel documents that I often work with and every single time I open them and work on them and save I get sometimes multiple warnings about various reasons why I "should" save as the new format - with defaults always set to save as the new file format. The reasons include highly exaggerated dire-sounding warnings that I'm going to lose information (even for the most basic spreadsheets imaginable) or that my documents are 'not secure' - serious-sounding things that ANY naive non-technically literate user would naturally say 'yes' to). I have to be *continually* vigilant, if I just once accidentally press 'Enter' or something on the default out of all the times I continually get hassled - every single day! - it'll save a document under the new file format. 2007 is so damn eager to convert my documents to the new file format it's really continuous work preventing it from doing its DEFAULT behaviour of doing so.
Oh sure it's "trivial", if your dictionary defines "trivial" as "something that only a tiny percentage of the most computer literate users would ever be inclined to do or even understand and realise you can do".
Out there in the real world "trivial" means something else entirely - fortunately for Microsoft.
You said, "If said large company still gets caught by Microsoft abuse more than once, they had it coming ;-)"
That doesn't seem right to me. Microsoft's adversarial behavior makes maintenance far more expensive. It's very difficult for one person, or even a whole IT department, to be aware of all the tricks, and the work-arounds for all the tricks. Even if they are completely aware, there is a cost of getting that education. And it is unpleasant to spend part of your day defending yourself from abuse. Microsoft's behavior lowers the quality of life of people who work in IT.
(see subject)
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
... a comment from someone who has a grasp of how things work in the "real world".
.. "Microsoft ignores its business model" yeah right.)
Just because you *can*, theoretically, if you are technically literate, manage to keep using the old formats, does not mean that it's pragmatically feasible on a large scale in corporate/government etc. environments. (And do you think a company that spends so many billions on "usability testing", and whose business model is based on network effects, doesn't understand that? That would be so absurd as to be surreal
Also it's worse than just the manager clicking "OK" - 2007 actually gives (every time you open and save a file) very severe-sounding warnings if you use the old formats along the lines of that you will 'lose information' unless you click OK or that your old documents are 'not secure' unless you click OK. NATURALLY any regular person will 'click OK'.
Wow, this is a little law student website on the other side of the planet from Microsoft, and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments ?
Because it's impossible that somebody else reading your blog just happened to know a program manager at Microsoft and asked him about it? And he decided to reply directly instead of through that somebody else? Ever played the game "6 degrees of seperation?"
Christ, either you're really paranoid, or you have a hugely inflated sense of your own importance if you think Microsoft has staff dedicated to everything you write. Of course I guess those both end up equivalent to "paranoid."
Secondly, your post was pure flamebait. You even included a picture of a handcuffs, WTF? You come across as a total asshole, reading that. I hope that blog isn't sponsored by the school.
Thirdly, Brian Jones, instead of calling-out your flamebate post, simply posted a link with the compatibility pack and mentioned that even OpenOffice supports opening the new Office formats now. It's not like he's calling you a liar, or countering any of the claims you make.
That said: I agree that it's mildly deceptive for the Office 2007 trial to not support "Save As..." to older versions of the file format. It's not some huge conspiracy, it's just a minor usability bug that should have been fixed.
Comment of the year
I guess you are not aware of the existence of the entire class of 'online reputation management' services? Most of this stuff is even automated, and there are companies that specialise in it, so basically you go to one of these companies, ask them "what are people saying about us" and their systems do the rest. A company like Microsoft unquestionably makes use of such services.
Even apart from that, it's natural for a manager of any software product to now and then google and sample what people are saying out there. In fact (as one) I find it hard to imagine that there might be a software product manager out there who *doesn't*.
In that case, we also need "-1, Ad hominem" and "-1, Confrontational speculation posing as argument" tags.
I tried Office 2007 and it worked fine. No problems, nothing. Couldn't afford it, so I un-installed it; still, no problems.
Of course they can. However, in this wonderful special case, Word documents from later versions will not open in earlier versions, due to massive shifts in the way the document format works. Of course, the most obvious is OOXML, since that's a recent product of Microsoft. Also, the old Word for Mac and Word for Windows formats are completely different in structure. "Modern" binary Office documents have a layout which resembles a file system. This isn't too unnatural when you consider it, but the older formats are simply binary-translated RTF (e.g. where the RTF formatting codes are replaced with codes representing the formatting, much like what UTF-8 does with ASCII). Hence, the formats are totally different (but may still carry the .doc extension).
It should also be noted that, due to feature-bloat in newer versions of Office, that older versions capable of reading the basic format will likely be unable to read a lot of the data.
I'll chime in as part of the slowly growing class of transition-ripe users. I smiled knowingly at the Word/Excel 95-97-2000-2003 routine. Most of my documents survived the transitions intact. The key was that MS had announced its worldwide ownership of the .doc extension, the .xls extension, and that was fine by me.
... ditched it themselves. Pure corporate CalvinBall. We all know that major decisions occur when there are TWO choices on the table, not Challenger-vs-Incumbent. So now, the decision became: "Bang head on Office 2007... or use the window of opportunity to develop a non-MS alternative."
.docx and .xlsx??! (Since when do extensions become 4 characters?) Cue the Half-Hour-Discussion with everyone you send a file to. Nope.
On the slow side of suddenly, Open Office came around to being a 75% solution, which is good enough to start the discussion. (Yea, bloated, a little sludgy, so what.) The only factor stemming the tide was InertiaFUD. "Well, my brother's friend told me about that, but I *already have* Office 2003, so there's no reason to switch out of spite and risk my workflow."
Then MS made what I see as the key error. After pulverizing any company who didn't follow MS's 15-year-old recommended software layout design, MS
The tip-off came when they had to add a LETTER to the extenson.
Actually switching the full OS is harder to convince the boss with; they're ready to pounce should something go wrong. (Guys ever notice that? It's okay to be a Newbie on "computers" (MS), but NOT okay to be a newbie trying to introduce Linux?) The only solution I see at this point is to practice-sandbox at home until I'm ready. Sadly, I'm a little clumsy on the uptake, so it could be a while. But if there ever was an opening, this is it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
None. But the "File -> Export" to the Outlook 2000 PST format should work just fine. FYI, the new Outlook 2003 format (also called "Unicode PST", vs "ANSI PST" for the old one) removes the 2 GB limitation of the old format, so there really is a benefit to be had if you're dealing with people with huge mailboxes.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Wasn't Microsoft nailed a few years back for sending free copies of their new versions of Office to company heads?
They'd install their free version of Office, produce multitudes of documents using the updated format (which was illegible by all previous versions of Office), and force the company to upgrade hundreds of other licenses just so they could read what their superiors were sending them.
This "die before you buy" technique doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software...
Emphasis on the last part mine. It is common for many companies to build highly integrated software even on top of proprietary software. Therefore when the proprietary vendor releases a new version (in this case MS), all of the custom in-house stuff breaks on the new version. Because of that many companies and organizations are slow to adopt the latest and greatest regardless of if it is open source or proprietary.
My guess is they have a lot of custom software that is based on the older versions, therefore the compatibility pack for microsoft-only software will not help them without adding another step to their processes.
I've been running windows as a vmware workstation guest OS on linux and the Revert button is my best friend. I install whatever trial software I want, and when I'm done with it, the revert button takes me back to my last snapshot. Far easier than rebuilding a system for the nth time.
It came preinstalled on a major oem system I was setting up for my mom.
The program had compatibility issues, and I don't use expireware based on past experience. We had bought O2k7 at the same time as the hardware anyway, but at the last minute mom decided 2k3 would be more familiar and we had a leftover license for that.
2003 will install over the 2007 demo, but then will not validate or be usable. I rolled back to a waypoint image to try again.
2007 demo components must be uninstalled in a particular order. If you uninstall the wrong components first, the remainder will refuse to uninstall. Even with all the components uninstalled it will leave a legacy of non-deletable directory trees, dlls and protected registry entries. This is not acceptable to me.
Ultimately I found the oem software that burns the omitted installation media. I did a wipe and install from that and added drivers downloaded from the oem's site to get a clean base install. From there everything was easy.
lessons: Do not use the OEM OS install, unless it's osX. Do not use expireware. Never uninstall - restore a waypoint image instead. Do not write long slashdot posts on your Blackberry.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
People are quick to bitch about Microsoft's actions, but what the hell is a non-tech-savvy user doing installing a trial of Office 2007 anyway ? If they already have 2000 or 2003 preinstalled on their system, they should stick with that.
Because they want to try the lastest and greatest? Or because they want to make sure it suits their wants and needs? Do you buy a car without test driving it?
The compatibility readers are available for free, as they've always been since Office 95!
The only version of Office I have is 97, and I once tried to open a newer doc with it. Not only was I not asked if I wanted to download a module that would allow me to open the doc, but Office crashed on me. I shutdown, unplugged my PC, then after a few minutes I rebooted and it did the same thing.
think of backing up their important files on a regular basis, or AT THE VERY LEAST backing up before replacing a major piece of software, welllll...
Don't just think of backing up when upgrading, actually backup at least occassionally. I don't have removable media backups, but I'm looking for a dl dvd drive so I can store backups my files offsite. Even using a dld dvd though it's take at least 20-25 disks to backup all my files, I've got more than 160GB on my hdds. RSN I plan on getting a Macbook Pro so I may use it's dvd drive to backup.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This isn't some neferious attempt to ruin your office files.
It IS EVIL if some trialware you're trying converts all of your files so that your old software can't properly read and display the converted docs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Should a software vendor be responsible for every previous format older versions were compatible with?
YES! If a vender can't bother to use open formats then they should be required to maintain a method old formats can be opened and displayed properly. If I have an old document, say a spreadsheet or a contract, backed up and 5, or 10, years later I want or need to I should be able to open it. And without having to convert it. Though I'm not sure if it's true I heard lawyers have to keep documents at least 7 years, and what of medical records?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I downloaded Office 2007 using some distribution technology called a downpour or torrent or something. I did it using Windows so it must be a Microsoft thing.
It seems to work just fine while I am trying it out.
It hasn't asked me for any money so I am just going to keep trying it. Bargain!
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I could add to your suggestions and say we should add on "-1 anti-MS FUD", "-1 Lunix Zealotry", and "-1 FOSSie hypocrisy", but those three would account for 99.9999% of all posts on Slashdot.
Enough Said.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6183476.html
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
you tell me!
...one reason software is so crappy is because of customers like you. It's never the software companies problem, it's the user for not knowing the idiosyncrasies of the software and how to work around it's flaws. And just because the software company cornholed you the last time, is no reason to look skeptically at their new release.
factually incorrect.
I don't know if it is or not, nor do I plan on finding out. The latest MS Office I have is Office 97 and I don't really need a newer version. Heck I haven't used 97 in 2 or 3 years. And because MS wants to treat me like a criminal, that's what Activation, WGA, and WPA do amoung other things, I'm even switching my OS. The PC I'm typing this on runs Windows however last year I got a new PC with Linux preinstalled, I'm using it as a server right now. And when I get a laptop, RSN, I'll get a Macbook Pro. As it is now I'll stay as far away from MS products as I can.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I didn't even get this far.
I bought a new laptop and once home and through the setup process, I began to remove those applications I did not need. I need the Windows OS, but I use all other OpenSource Apps. There are two Office 2007 entries. One is for the Office 2007 Trial Activation and the other is for the 2007 Trial Student Edition. The Trial Activation program will not uninstall as there isn't a "version" of Office installed. I had already uninstalled the trial office, and the solution was to re-install the trial software and then remove the Activation App. I tried that, and even went so far as to download and install the trial standard edition -- the activation app would not uninstall at all.
Seems that Microsoft wants a reminder that you need Office 2007 and will not let you clean up the programs on "your" computer. It really is one step closer to not being "Where do you want to go today?" but "Here is where we will let you go..."
Sig? What's a Sig?
Have you actually tried the scenario that I discribed?
For example, when you post that: "you can easily remove the trial version, and reinstall the old version." Are you posting from actual experience, or from what you think should be possible?
BTW: even if trial software doesn't change your existing file formats, what about the files that were created during the trial period? At best, it's a headache trying to change all of those files to another format. And does an average end-user know about these compatibility packs? And do the compatibility packs actually work?
In my case, there was no compatibility pack to change the Outlook-2003 email back to Outlook-2000 email. Sure, my brother-in-law could have exported to a different format before the trial period ended, but we are talking about an average end-user here.
Call it FUD, or whatever you like, but I firmly believe that msft is trying to make end-users feel that they have to upgrade. Yes, there are ways around being actually forced, after all, msft has to have plausible deniability. But, I believe millions of end-users will feel compelled to buy msft's newest offering after having used the trial.
Again, if you have friends, or family, who are not msft experts, you may want to advise them to avoid such "trialware."
it's called "backwards compatability". There's a different term for a newer version being compatible with an older one: "forward compatability". But that breaks the locking and upgrade cycle.
rage
Yea, facts like Activation, WGA, WPA, and spyware, all of which enrage me.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Well, the program warns the user of this scenario should the user decide to not upgrade after the trial (yes, I know 'cus I tried it). Furthermore, it's generally accepted that files created with program XYZ may not work after uninstalling program XYZ. The program respects your old files, and warns you about the new files ahead of time.
If your Joe User still does not grasp that Office 2007 creates Office 2007 files, I suggest replacing Joe's PC with a SNES and a copy of Mario Paint and leave this "typing" thing to the professionals.
The answer is to install more unwanted software. If I do that, will this new stuff uninstall afterward or will I need yet another application from a fourth vendor? And why do I need to install software from Sysinternals to uninstall a Microsoft application from a Microsoft OS? So Microsoft can disclaim liability if I destroy my system trying to complete the job their uninstaller failed to do? What is trivial about this?
That's an example of a file that's not deletable, when you said there's no such thing. What's special about it is that it's open by a system dll. Does Office not hook and/or replace various system dll's? Is there a way to know for sure if it does or not? Is there a list somewhere of all the files they open? That there is such a file creates the possibility there may be others that must be considered.Ok, we'll go with what you said. Instead of "tampering is unwise" we'll use the phraseology "you need to be be careful when modifying these parts". I'll stick with the best way to be careful when tampering with undocumented parts of the registry that "affect behavior" whatever that means, is not to do it at all. It is just more reliable to wipe and reinstall the OS.
My point exactly. It doesn't completely uninstall and cleaning up the mess it leaves is not trivial.
Hence my point about doing a clean OS install when this junk comes preinstalled as bloatware. Since many vendors preinstall this garbage, they leave end users with little choice but to install the OS manually from CD. If a user's going to have to do that anyway, they may as well install a real operating system while they're at it and run Windows in a virtual machine where it belongs.
Help stamp out iliturcy.