Date and time problems

[Scott]

Someone asked me about a problem they were having in Word 04, where if
they started typing the date the autocomplete date that was generated
was for the *previous* day's date. I started to compose an emailed reply
about checking their system date, when I happened to check it myself.
Sure enough, *I* was getting the wrong date! Right now (January 28th),
if I start to type the date, Word fills in January 27. This happens
whether I type "Janu" and accept the autocomplete screentip, then a
space (and get the screentip with the date), or if I type "January" and
a space (and get the month and date in the screentip).

Entourage has the correct date highlighted in its calendar.

What's going on?

 

[matt neuburg]

Someone asked me about a problem they were having in Word 04, where if
they started typing the date the autocomplete date that was generated
was for the *previous* day's date. I started to compose an emailed reply
about checking their system date, when I happened to check it myself.
Sure enough, *I* was getting the wrong date! Right now (January 28th),
if I start to type the date, Word fills in January 27. This happens
whether I type "Janu" and accept the autocomplete screentip, then a
space (and get the screentip with the date), or if I type "January" and
a space (and get the month and date in the screentip).

Works fine here. But in fact I don't use this feature (I'm turning it
back off now). To insert the date, choose Insert > Date and Time. m.

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi,
Word picks up the system's date during the start up process. If you open
Word on the 27th and you do not quit it at some point, it will keep using
that date, whether it's the 27th or the 28th (or any other day after that).
The solution is, you may have guessed it by now, to quit Word and relaunch
it at the beginning of every day, so that it picks up the new date.

 

[Scott]

Hi,
Word picks up the system's date during the start up process. If you open
Word on the 27th and you do not quit it at some point, it will keep using
that date, whether it's the 27th or the 28th (or any other day after that).
The solution is, you may have guessed it by now, to quit Word and relaunch
it at the beginning of every day, so that it picks up the new date.

Thanks for the answer; I hadn't thought it would be such a funky problem!

 

[Elliott Roper]

Not that it isn't a problem now, but it isn't a brain-damaged design bug,
it's a design decision made back in the days when you had to shut down a
computer every day anyhow. In fact, I'd say that Office 2004 is the first
version that people might be running for more than a day at time, based on
comments made about Word X being a little glitchy, and that fact that I
don't recall this complaint coming up until recently (in both Word and
Entourage).

Obviously it needs to be changed now.

Nope. It was always a very poor assumption that your computer was so
unreliable that it had to be rebooted every day.
Almost certainly somebody cut a corner that said you could rely on a
date read at start up, beacause that was easier than going out to the
OS when the user asked for a date.

That was a brain-damaged design bug. No argument.

Fifteen years ago I was shipping systems that expected never to be shut
down. We had uptimes measured in years and years on some of our sites.
The most common reason for restarting was the failure of the
Uninterrptible Power Supply at the client's premises.

This hopeless toy computer mentality is still with us. The whole world
is pockmarked with people that never knew any better.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

I agree. It's very definitely a "bug" -- the only thing we could possibly
discuss is which of several Microsoft employees' brains was the site of the
damage.

The fact that the bug doesn't exist in the PC product tends to narrow down
the field of likely suspects a bit.

A bug is "When an error means software does not do what the user wants".

It makes no difference who made the error, it's still a bug. The fact that
this one was produced by laziness and is maintained by stupidity does not
alter the fact. It's a bug.

The fact that they won't change the five lines of code needed to fix it
shows us exactly how much of an investment they are prepared to make in us,
their customers.

Do I know for sure that it's only "five lines of code"? Of course I don't.
But if it involved any more than that, I definitely would not want to be the
ones explaining "why" to Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates.

Cheers

Nope. It was always a very poor assumption that your computer was so
unreliable that it had to be rebooted every day.
Almost certainly somebody cut a corner that said you could rely on a
date read at start up, beacause that was easier than going out to the
OS when the user asked for a date.

That was a brain-damaged design bug. No argument.

Fifteen years ago I was shipping systems that expected never to be shut
down. We had uptimes measured in years and years on some of our sites.
The most common reason for restarting was the failure of the
Uninterrptible Power Supply at the client's premises.

This hopeless toy computer mentality is still with us. The whole world
is pockmarked with people that never knew any better.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I agree. It's very definitely a "bug" -- the only thing we could possibly
discuss is which of several Microsoft employees' brains was the site of the
damage.

The fact that the bug doesn't exist in the PC product tends to narrow down
the field of likely suspects a bit.

It doesn't? I'm pretty sure I learned that Word picks up the AutoComplete
date at launch from the WinWord newsgroups. Perhaps for older versions.

Daiya