Office 2003

[timwhit]

I installed Office 2003 tonight, because Word 2000 was acting funky. I'm not so sure I really like the new Office suite much. I used XP for a short time after it came out, but I went back to 2000 pretty quickly when I figured out that XP only offered more annoyances than 2000.

Anyways, here are some of the things that suck in 2003. Note: Thus far, I have only used Word and Access, but I'm sure the other applications have just as much suck as these two.

Word:
1. Help is by default told to connect to the internet to search for your query. You have to dig into a sub-screen of options in order to change this so that it will just use the help that is stored so conveniently on your hard drive.

2. The stupid menus where half the options are not there. When I click File, I want to see every option available to me, not the ones that I use the most. This has to be the most annoying feature in the world.

3. Research? There is now an option in word to help you do research. I thought neat, maybe it can give me some useful information since I am writing a research paper on the effects of Stalin's five year plans. Wrong. I type in "five year plan" and hit search. No Results. So, I try "Soviet Union". No Results. F*** this. Another useless feature that has found its way into the standard toolbar.

4. Smart Tags: These things are stupid. I don’t want an annoying little thing to pop up every time I paste something. When I wanted the smart tab to pop up, it didn’t. I copied a link for a website and pasted it into a paragraph; for some reason the whole paragraph is now in a different font. So I think where is that handy little smart tag so I can change it to match destination formatting and get rid of this different font. Not there. The one time I want it, the smart tag fails me.

Access:
1. Access isn’t the best application in the world, but 2000 was at least usable. I use it to store information on my DVDs, Books, etc. I tried to open up my books database so I could add some new entries, and I have to jump through hoops on security just to get this simple database, with one table, no macros, and no VBA code open. First it tells me that: “Security Warning: Unsafe expressions are not blocked, do you want to block unsafe expressions.” I assume this will mean that I won’t be able to use my database the way I’m accustomed to, so I tell it NO. Then it has the gall to ask me if I really want to open this file, along with a giant explanation telling me why I shouldn’t do it. I click YES. Then up pops another window, titled “Security Warning,” asking me for the second time if I want to open this database. I choose Open. So I figure no big deal, I will turn this crap off. Well, it took me about 10 minutes, but I found a way to turn it off as I was writing this. It wasn’t in options as someone might expect. No it was under Macros in the tools menu. I couldn’t tell you why.

Overall, I will give the package a couple days, and see if I can tweak the options enough to make it usable. If not I will uninstall and go back to Office 2000.

 

[jtr1962]

I think your experiences with both XP and Office 2003 show that upgrading makes no sense if you're happy with the way things work now. I'm still using Office 97. Would it ever make any sense for me to upgrade to 2000? Did you find that Office 2000 offered anything that Office 97 didn't, especially with Excel, which is the part of Office I use the most by far with Word a distant second. I don't use PowerPoint, Publisher, or Access at all. Just curious if I should even think about upgrading.

I just looked at Publisher. Wow, templates to create paper airplanes! Just what I always wanted. :roll: Seriously, though, I can't think of anything that I could do in Publisher that I couldn't do in Word.

Regarding your observations of Office 2000 vs Office 2003, I think each new version of M$ software becomes more bloated with useless features and at the same time more dumbed down as far as options goes. From what I've read everywhere regarding XP, it seems pointless to bother upgrading if you already have 2000. XP seems like a dumbed down version of 2000 with a lot of useless added features and of course PA which I remain philosophically opposed to. I'm still debating whether to go from Win98 to 2000, and if the hassle of upgrading would be worthwhile.

As I said in the beginning of this post, if it does what you want it to, then I see no point in upgrading. Why do you think Tannin still uses OS2 on the systems in his computer shop?

 

[timwhit]

I can't remember what features Office 2000 added, because I haven't used Office 97 since the end of 1999, about 4 years. But, as I remember 2000 added enough useful features that I found it a good upgrade.

On the subject of upgrading from Win98 to Win2000, I couldn't stand to use 98. If I were you, I would upgrade immediately.

 

[Mercutio]

The only place where I notice an improvement between Office versions is Outlook. The first couple versions were really, really, really, really awful.

Outlook XP is only really really awful, so there's been improvement.

The thing I notice about Office 2003 - I'm the only person I know using it - is that it seems to create a sort of general slowdown while I have an Office App open. I'm not talking about something that could be easily explained. This is more of a "45 seconds to open task manager to see what's wrong" thing. It's transient, too. It'll be there for a few minutes, then everything will be fine.

I figure Office is doing something in the background, but I'm not sure what, or why, and I haven't had time to investigate.

 

[timwhit]

Haven't noticed any slowdown at all using Office 2003 yet. Will definately post here if I notice that kind of thing happening.

 

[CougTek]

The first couple versions were really, really, really, really awful.

Outlook XP is only really really awful, so there's been improvement.

Merc the Disappointed Harpy. It's been a while since I've stopped wondering about Outlook. I gave up on it long ago. You can't imagine how happy I am to know that it's getting better. Soon, I'll feel like I'm missing something.

 

[mubs]

I only use Word (a lot) and Excel (some). For these, IMHO, Office 2000 is the best release - the most stable, the easiest to use, and the most intuitive (once you set the options correctly). Unless there is a whole new paradigm for the GUI (there are some innovative ones out there; and not from MS!), then I'll think about upgrading.

Smart Tags are for XML, and will become important as businesses start to use it. An IT type person will need to know all about them.

 

[Handruin]

Merc, try disabling that online help thing that timwhit mentioned. I noticed with my office XP that every time I opened word, it tried to connect to the net. My sygate firewall would inform me, and I would block it. Because it was blocked, word would hang for 30-40 seconds.

I didn't know at the time that this was related to the help system trying to connect online. (Thanks timwhit) Maybe the same thing is happening to you?

Other than that, I don’t have any real problem with office XP or 2000. Now, if Microsoft would produce a lightweight version of office with many less features, I might be interested. I would guess that I use only 5% of the functionality in office. I stopped using outlook even though I never had any problems with it. One thing I have to give Microsoft credit to for is their spell checker. It’s by far the best I’ve used. For those of you who are excellent spells, you may never notice this.

 

[Buck]

Now, if . . . a lightweight version of office with many less features, I might be interested. I would guess that I use only 5% of the functionality in office.

Open Office

 

[blakerwry]

yeah, my gf was constantly complaining of officeXP doing stupid crap while she was trying to write a document... then I got her open Office...

I did find it annoying that windows no longer comes with a JAVA VM and you are informed that you dont have a VM on your machine when you install open office.

 

[Buck]

I did find it annoying that windows no longer comes with a JAVA VM and you are informed that you dont have a VM on your machine when you install open office.

I dont' recall seeing that. I'll have to install it again.

 

[blakerwry]

winXP SP1a removes the JAVA VM... when I installed the newest version of open office(on a couple computers) it said that I didnt have a VM installed.. I was able to install without it, but some features would be disabled...

All I did was goto JAVA.com and install the VM and then alt-tab back to the install and it picked up the newly installed VM.

On my gf's machine I just chose to install without the VM and if she had any problems I'd put a VM on her machine and reconfigure open Office.

 

[Buck]

Ah, yes, I install the Java client from Sun on my systems.

 

[Howell]

Anyways, here are some of the things that suck in 2003. Note: Thus far, I have only used Word and Access, but I'm sure the other applications have just as much suck as these two.

Thanks for the run down, Merc.

RE Publisher: I have also wondered why in the world anyone would need Publisher when they have Word. The best explaination I have been able to come up with is that Word is content focused and Publisher is presentation focused.

RE Lightweight version of office: Isn't that supposed to be MS Works. At least these days Works produces standard MS file formats.

 

[Mercutio]

The first couple versions were really, really, really, really awful.

Outlook XP is only really really awful, so there's been improvement.

Merc the Disappointed Harpy. It's been a while since I've stopped wondering about Outlook. I gave up on it long ago. You can't imagine how happy I am to know that it's getting better. Soon, I'll feel like I'm missing something.

Unfortunately, Outlook is one of those things you can't get away from in the business world. I discourage its use whenever possible, but there's always some dumbass who actually WANTS to sync all the crap with their PocketPC instead of playing games with it like a normal person, or the asstard who thinks Exchange is a good way to handle scheduling (ok, granted, it is, but that's why Microsoft made Schedule+) and thinks Outlook is needed to interface with that or...

Given the choice of inhaling a bucket of paint thinner and dealing with Outlook 98 again, I think I'd say "Bring on the Toulene!"

With Outlook XP, I'd at least give it a moment's thought first.

WRT Office 2003 slowdowns, disabling "Search the Internet for Help" didn't seem to fix anything.

 

[timwhit]

What Office 2003 app are you using when you get the slowdown? What are you doing at the time?

 

[Mercutio]

I pretty much have 2 or 3 word docs open at all times. I don't even have access or powerpoint installed (or outlook, but that should go without saying).

 

[blakerwry]

I too discourage the use of outlook(that comes with office).... outlook Express is a decent product, but it shits itself alot... Mozilla/Thunderbird is great...

Incredimail is an OE wannabe that has absolutely useless error messages that are often completely wrong (I cant stand error messages that lie about the problem... stupid A$$ coders)

I dont have anything against Eudora, but I dont personally prefer it.

I didnt personally like Ximian evolution last time I tried using it... it had weird bugs that made it unusable for me...

 

[blakerwry]

outlook Express is a decent product

well.... except for its security history.

 

[zx]

For the sake of posting a different opinion....

First of all, I think that Office 2000 is the most annoying Office suite (comparing office 97, 2000 and XP). It had this tendency to always request the office cd to do I-don't-know-what (maintenance maybe). I was caught off guard when I was using an access application. It was the app that manages a regional mountain bike event (live). Imagine, you have many people waiting for you to get the results out (officials, athletes and of course, parents) and &*?#$?*?% access asks for a cd. My next thought was: Office 2000, banned for life.

I like Office 97 (except for outlook). It was more stable and took less memory. And there were less uncontrollable auto-stuff.

XP is also fine, but to slow on old computers. Office XP eliminates many annoyances in 2000. Overall I think it's a good product, and I did not experience more annoyances than in the 2000 and 97 editions. And I agree, the spell checker is excellent!

BTW, you can disable the very annoying "personalized menus".

 

[Adcadet]

I needed to get my CV out to a prof for distribution to other people, but didn't really want to email the Word document for fear that it might get altered inadvertantly. Open Office's PDF creator feature came in very handy. I just scanned the document for formatting oddities (there were a few which were easily correctable), hit the "export directly as PDF" botton, and was done. Not sure if there are free Word plug ins that will do that - anyone know?

 

[Mercutio]

For the sake of posting a different opinion....

XP is also fine, but to slow on old computers. Office XP eliminates many annoyances in 2000. Overall I think it's a good product, and I did not experience more annoyances than in the 2000 and 97 editions. And I agree, the spell checker is excellent!

BTW, you can disable the very annoying "personalized menus".

The XP version tends to operate FASTER on decent hardware.
For real hell, try installing several versions within the same Windows installation. One of the women I work with has Office 95, 97, 2000 and XP, all installed on the same PC. Stuff is *always* breaking on that thing.

I think in Office 97, it's Tools, Options, Customize. Uncheck "Show Recently Used Commands First".

Why no, that's NOT on the list of the very first things I do when I sit down at a PC.

 

[mubs]

There are plug-ins, but I don't know any that are free. Yo can, however, get a free printer-driver, and print anything to it, and it will create a flawless pdf file. Let me know if you want details, I'll look it up for you.

 

[Mercutio]

I needed to get my CV out to a prof for distribution to other people, but didn't really want to email the Word document for fear that it might get altered inadvertantly. Open Office's PDF creator feature came in very handy. I just scanned the document for formatting oddities (there were a few which were easily correctable), hit the "export directly as PDF" botton, and was done. Not sure if there are free Word plug ins that will do that - anyone know?

You're probably making things harder than they need to be by using PDF. Granted, you're in academia, so maybe everyone isn't a total moron,, but in general, resumes should be in $%#ing Word format for minimum confusion. People who collect resumes can write all kinds of programs to manipulate and easily analyse word documents, and if the outfit is any kind of big, they probably have.

Ghostview for Windows can make PDFs. It works just fine. So can Photoshop.

 

[Adcadet]

There are plug-ins, but I don't know any that are free. Yo can, however, get a free printer-driver, and print anything to it, and it will create a flawless pdf file. Let me know if you want details, I'll look it up for you.

Yeah, if you know of where I can get more details, that would be great. Thanks!

 

[Adcadet]

I needed to get my CV out to a prof for distribution to other people, but didn't really want to email the Word document for fear that it might get altered inadvertantly. Open Office's PDF creator feature came in very handy. I just scanned the document for formatting oddities (there were a few which were easily correctable), hit the "export directly as PDF" botton, and was done. Not sure if there are free Word plug ins that will do that - anyone know?

You're probably making things harder than they need to be

that's what I do in life

by using PDF. Granted, you're in academia, so maybe everyone isn't a total moron,, but in general, resumes should be in $%#ing Word format for minimum confusion. People who collect resumes can write all kinds of programs to manipulate and easily analyse word documents, and if the outfit is any kind of big, they probably have.

Well, I don't want anybody to easily analyze my CV (it's NOT a resume - for one, it's 6 pages long) and I sure don't want them manipulating or collecting my CV. I didn't submit it to Monster.com, I gave it to a pseudo-advisor for her information and to pass on to any of her colleagues who might have a suitable (clinical research) position for me.

And we certainly have bone-heads in academia. Had a prof (a PhD) come to give a lecture to my class today who did not bring her presentation nor a computer to present it on. And the only thing she knew about getting her presentation (from her mailbox....for some reason, luckily for her, she emailed it to herself, probably by mistake knowing her) was that she had to use "Netscape."

 

[SteveC]

There are plug-ins, but I don't know any that are free. Yo can, however, get a free printer-driver, and print anything to it, and it will create a flawless pdf file. Let me know if you want details, I'll look it up for you.

Yeah, if you know of where I can get more details, that would be great. Thanks!

I use PDFCreator.

 

[Mercutio]

The PhDs I work for at the local Purdue campus stand among the biggest group of (childish, immature, egotistical) boneheads I've ever met. There was more than a little sarcasm in my remark.

 

[Adcadet]

There are plug-ins, but I don't know any that are free. Yo can, however, get a free printer-driver, and print anything to it, and it will create a flawless pdf file. Let me know if you want details, I'll look it up for you.

Yeah, if you know of where I can get more details, that would be great. Thanks!

I use PDFCreator.

Thanks for the head up. I'll give it a shot.

 

[mubs]

PDF995. It's free for personal use; but will open a browser window each time you use it unless you pay for it (pretty inexpensive). IIRC, I checked out a few free ones before settling on this one. It uses GhostScript in the background; you can download a single combined program that does everything for you. Output quality was flawless.

 

[Howell]

I am interested in one that has good support available but is fairly cheap. Anyone?

 

[e_dawg]

Unfortunately, Outlook is one of those things you can't get away from in the business world. I discourage its use whenever possible, but there's always some dumbass who actually WANTS to sync all the crap with their PocketPC instead of playing games with it like a normal person

Dumbass, eh? Asstard? Merc, you smug mother...

You're the only person I know who can remember dozens of meetings, appointments, deliverables, and to-do's without the assistance of a PDA. Most people can't. You want to get ahead in business, you gotta be organized and network effectively. And if you're away from your desk at meetings and such half the time, what's the point of entering commitments into your PC when you won't have it with you at meetings and appointments when additional scheduling always takes place?

 

[Mercutio]

I *own* a PDA. It's a little Toshiba deal I use for surveying 802.11 networks. Sometimes, when I'm bored, I play Defender or Breakout. I'd certainly never do anything so silly as actually try to input something on it.

If you need scheduling software, my best advice is this: Try something that's not Outlook. Schedule+ is pretty much exactly the outlook schedule interface, is lightning quick to load up and to use, and talks to the same Exchange data stores. Or you could try About Time or find an old copy of Sidekick or Ecco Pro.

 

[e_dawg]

I *own* a PDA. It's a little Toshiba deal [...] I'd certainly never do anything so silly as actually try to input something on it.

If you sync with your PC, you can do the majority of your data entry on the PC and jot down shorthand appointments/meetings that you make while you're away from your desk from the PDA. At the end of the day, sync it, expand the shorthand, re-sync, and you're set.

If you need scheduling software, my best advice is this: Try something that's not Outlook. Schedule+ is pretty much exactly the outlook schedule interface, is lightning quick to load up and to use, and talks to the same Exchange data stores. Or you could try About Time or find an old copy of Sidekick or Ecco Pro.

That's all fine and dandy if your company has a chaotic IT policy and allows you to mess around with your own software, but most companies are standardized on a specific client, and that happens to be Outlook and Notes 1 and 2 by a huge margin. Not to mention, Outlook and Notes handle e-mail and scheduling quite well in a single program and sync quite well with PDA's. Can't say that about other e-mail/scheduling clients.

 

[Adcadet]

I'll be getting a copy of Office 2003 from my school next week - I'll let ya'all know what I think.

 

[Adcadet]

I've been using Office 2003 for a good chunk of the evening. Word is word. No big change. The only thing I really noticed was the "reading" layout which puts two pages side-by-side. Word uses 35 MB when I've got a single document open, which is not appreciated on my school-owned laptop that runs XP with only 256 MB or RAM. Open Office is about the same, as is Adobe Acrobat (to open the same word file converted to PDF).

I'm really impressed with Outlook, however. The change in viewing styles makes it much more efficient to run the new Outlook compared to the old Outlook. Also, I seem to remember the memory footprint of the old Outlook being rather large - >20 MB of RAM. Outlook 2003, sitting in my task bar, only uses 6 MB. Not sure if the new layout helps the Calendar layout any. I'll have to wait and see if I use Ooutlook or Palm Desktop for PDA Calendar sync-ing. But most importantly, Outlook actually feels snappy on my system. The old Outlook was horribly slow, which is why I went with Thunderbird. I also missed out on all the email viruses....I guess now that I'm using Outlook agian I'll get to test out my school's antivirus system.

Is there any reason to use HTML-formatted email messages? I may end up sending out "cute" emails for recruiting purposes (Internal Medicine Interest Group).

 

[Mercutio]

There is no reason to send out rich-text Email. I believe I've ranted on that subject before.

 

[Pradeep]

Got my final version of Office 2003 yesterday with my action pack sub. Works fine. Good thing casue my beta had expired and I couldn't save anymore. Thought I was going to lose my emails as I couldn't export the PST, but even tho the beta was uninstalled before the final was installed everything was hunky dory when 2003 started. One thing I do like is the streamlined Office Update, much easier to get all the patches without crawling thru the old Office update website. And Outlook 2003 is a nice improvement over XP. Grouping inbox, blocking those filthy spam 1 pixel images etc by default. Calendar works better too.

Haven't really noticed any big change in mem footprint, they both drop nicely in size when minimised.

 

[Pradeep]

Hmm, is it possible to automatically transfer email accounts/settings from Outlook 2k to Outlook 2003? It seems to only want to do that for OE etc.

 

[Pradeep]

No matter I did it manually. I really like the fade in box above the task bar that shows the title of a newly received email too