after 2 weeks with the Beta

[larune]

following are my experiences so far with office & outlook beta-

in outlook

- "rightclick to download pictures" doesn't work in e-mail messages

- download search window appears each invokation. should have option to
remind in 1 wk/month/never. overhead of 1 time index should be warned and
scheduled (it crippled my PC performance, and should only be run overnight)

- it didn't take long to start to get used and appreciate the new interface,
but the Outlook main console now looks strangely out of date with "file edit"
etc menu bar. Please apply the new interface consistently. I keep thinking
I loaded Outlook 2003 by mistake!

- when I have closed outlook and try to start it again it doesn't come up -
nothing happens. I have to kill outlook.exe from task manager and then it
will come up again, asking if I want safe mode because it failed to start
properly before.

- often when I start the computer fresh & open outlook it closes with a
"problem and needs to close" message then starts ok

installing
- unknown publisher! Microsoft has put great emphasis on security and
rightly so. I know this is Beta code but security should still be paramount.
Please get an authentication certificate, otherwise spoofers could imitate
the beta emails and fool some users into downloading malware.


general office 2007

- need more than 9 recent documents list esp for excel, word, ppt - if there
has to be a limit, make it 50 or 99

- I need a concise, printable summary of the 2003 to 2007 command converter,
at least for the most often used commands (for which statistics are collected)

- intuitively I expect the drop down menus to list sub menus when hovering
on them, but they only activate when I move the curser to the arrow at
right. It would be nice to work also over the commands - eg file/print/print
preview.

- the list of available printers appears in different sort order from
different programs - can this be made consistent, with options to sort by
name or type?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

- "rightclick to download pictures" doesn't work in e-mail messages
You mean the option doesn't exist at all? I see that to too, but I don't
know if this is final or will change later

- download search window appears each invokation. should have option to
remind in 1 wk/month/never. overhead of 1 time index should be warned and
scheduled (it crippled my PC performance, and should only be run overnight)

If you don't have WDS installed at all, there is a setting in the
Options dialog where you can turn of the notifications. If you don't see
the settings, there are registry keys that can be modified.

- it didn't take long to start to get used and appreciate the new interface,
but the Outlook main console now looks strangely out of date with "file edit"
etc menu bar. Please apply the new interface consistently. I keep thinking
I loaded Outlook 2003 by mistake!

Won't happen. Microsoft ran out of resources to attack that interface as
well. It might sound strange, but Outlook required the most UI design
effort as it has the most ribbons (Access, Excel, PPT and Word have one
ribbon only. Outlook has one ribbon for each different item you can use
in it, that is 10+ in total). They just couldn't do the main window as
well.

- when I have closed outlook and try to start it again it doesn't come up -
nothing happens. I have to kill outlook.exe from task manager and then it
will come up again, asking if I want safe mode because it failed to start
properly before.

Disable all your add-ins and see if the problem persist.

- often when I start the computer fresh & open outlook it closes with a
"problem and needs to close" message then starts ok

Again, disable your add-ins.

installing
- unknown publisher! Microsoft has put great emphasis on security and
rightly so. I know this is Beta code but security should still be paramount.
Please get an authentication certificate, otherwise spoofers could imitate
the beta emails and fool some users into downloading malware.

Where do you get the unknown publisher warning?

general office 2007

- need more than 9 recent documents list esp for excel, word, ppt - if there
has to be a limit, make it 50 or 99

Office button, Options, Advanced tab. Scroll to the section that is
headed Display. First item there is "Number of documents in the Recent
Documents list". 50 is the upper limit.

- I need a concise, printable summary of the 2003 to 2007 command converter,
at least for the most often used commands (for which statistics are collected)

Besides the flash presentations, I have seen Word documents that had
tables of the command conversions. I don't know where they put them
though online with Beta 2.

- intuitively I expect the drop down menus to list sub menus when hovering
on them, but they only activate when I move the curser to the arrow at
right. It would be nice to work also over the commands - eg file/print/print
preview.

I think you are talking about split buttons. File, Print is one e.g.. If
you click on print itself, you trigger print. To see the sub menus,
you'd need to hover over the arrow. There are also split menus on the
ribbon, e.g. Paste. When you click on the icon, you execute Paste, when
you click on the label/arrow, you get the menu.

- the list of available printers appears in different sort order from
different programs - can this be made consistent, with options to sort by
name or type?

Can you tell me which programs have a different sort order? I can submit
the info to MS so that they can look into it.

Patrick Schmid