G
Guest
I think I've found a bug, or at least a Very Cryptic Error Message
(TM), in Microsoft Office 2003.
Scenario: for whatever reason, the current user does not have write
permissions for the AutoCorrect file "%USERPROFILE%\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office\MSO1033.acl". (Or substitute your own locale ID
if it's not 1033, U.S.)
Then that user attempts to add, update, or delete an AutoCorrect entry
in any Office application that uses the AutoCorrect module (e.g., Word
and Excel.)
A very cryptic Unicode error message results. On one test machine, the
error message was several rows of boxes. On another (with better
Unicode support, I guess,) most of the boxes were replaced with
Kanji-looking characters. I'm not sure if it was Japanese, Chinese,
Korean, or what.
I found a couple newsgroup posts from people that were probably
experiencing the same issue. See:
http://tinyurl.com/aaa5l
http://tinyurl.com/advhh
The solution, of course, is to restore the user's write permissions. A
legible error message would've saved me a lot of time tracking this
problem down.
On the machines that I was able to test this on, the illegible error
message occurs on Office 2003, both with and without Service Pack 1.
I was also able to try this on a machine with Office 2000. The error
message is quite legible and helpful: "Your AutoCorrect file, <path>,
could not be saved. The file may be read-only, or you may not have
permission to modify the file." Perhaps something got changed along
the way to 2003?
By the way -- the lack of write permissions can come about through the
Read-Only attribute being set, or the NTFS permissions not being set,
or something else like the file being locked (I've only tested with the
former two, and doubt that it has any bearing on the error message you
get in Office.)
Can anyone confirm that this is an issue with Office 2003? And if it
is, how would one go about reporting it to Microsoft? (Or have I just
done so?) Thanks.
(TM), in Microsoft Office 2003.
Scenario: for whatever reason, the current user does not have write
permissions for the AutoCorrect file "%USERPROFILE%\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office\MSO1033.acl". (Or substitute your own locale ID
if it's not 1033, U.S.)
Then that user attempts to add, update, or delete an AutoCorrect entry
in any Office application that uses the AutoCorrect module (e.g., Word
and Excel.)
A very cryptic Unicode error message results. On one test machine, the
error message was several rows of boxes. On another (with better
Unicode support, I guess,) most of the boxes were replaced with
Kanji-looking characters. I'm not sure if it was Japanese, Chinese,
Korean, or what.
I found a couple newsgroup posts from people that were probably
experiencing the same issue. See:
http://tinyurl.com/aaa5l
http://tinyurl.com/advhh
The solution, of course, is to restore the user's write permissions. A
legible error message would've saved me a lot of time tracking this
problem down.
On the machines that I was able to test this on, the illegible error
message occurs on Office 2003, both with and without Service Pack 1.
I was also able to try this on a machine with Office 2000. The error
message is quite legible and helpful: "Your AutoCorrect file, <path>,
could not be saved. The file may be read-only, or you may not have
permission to modify the file." Perhaps something got changed along
the way to 2003?
By the way -- the lack of write permissions can come about through the
Read-Only attribute being set, or the NTFS permissions not being set,
or something else like the file being locked (I've only tested with the
former two, and doubt that it has any bearing on the error message you
get in Office.)
Can anyone confirm that this is an issue with Office 2003? And if it
is, how would one go about reporting it to Microsoft? (Or have I just
done so?) Thanks.