livid

[Sen]

I'm posting this mainly to vent!

Working all morning on a manuscript deadline, using MSWord 2008 on my
mac pro with gobs of memory with all the latest software updates, the
damn program crashed, apparently simply as a result of having cut and
pasted a reference from another MSWord 2008 file. No problem, says I,
as I'm autosaving every 5 minutes.

Sure enough, the program reloads with my recovered file. Whew. So, I
promptly save it, and the program crashes AGAIN! When it reloads the
second time, no more recovered file. I check finder to see if it was
saved. No! GONZO!

Five hours of hard work, all morning, right down the drain!

Now I'm trying to recreate my hours of brilliant and meticulous word-
smithing, no longer quite as jazzed about meeting my deadline. Oh
well, Sh*t happens. So I start up my old file using the "open recent"
function in MS Word, and when it loads, all I have access to is the
finder menu bar! Huh?! So I try reloading my file using the "open
with" function in finder. Behold, the Word menu bar.

Still skeptical, I change one (yes, just one single) character in my
file and manually save. Guess what, on my dual quad mac with 8 MB of
memory and nothing else running, with the spinning beach ball taunting
me, it repeatedly takes over 30 seconds to save the file.

My current level of trust in continuing to use this program: ZERO!

I had a few other choice words about all of this, but you had to be
here...

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

open 2008 without a doucument. go to help and click on Feedback. Vent
there. There very rarely if ever in the word group is a Live MS
employee. Now is a little different in the Excel group there is one
nice individual that is often answering question (not daily though).

I'm posting this mainly to vent!

Working all morning on a manuscript deadline, using MSWord 2008 on my
mac pro with gobs of memory with all the latest software updates, the
damn program crashed, apparently simply as a result of having cut and
pasted a reference from another MSWord 2008 file. No problem, says I,
as I'm autosaving every 5 minutes.

Sure enough, the program reloads with my recovered file. Whew. So, I
promptly save it, and the program crashes AGAIN! When it reloads the
second time, no more recovered file. I check finder to see if it was
saved. No! GONZO!

Five hours of hard work, all morning, right down the drain!

Now I'm trying to recreate my hours of brilliant and meticulous word-
smithing, no longer quite as jazzed about meeting my deadline. Oh
well, Sh*t happens. So I start up my old file using the "open recent"
function in MS Word, and when it loads, all I have access to is the
finder menu bar! Huh?! So I try reloading my file using the "open
with" function in finder. Behold, the Word menu bar.

Still skeptical, I change one (yes, just one single) character in my
file and manually save. Guess what, on my dual quad mac with 8 MB of
memory and nothing else running, with the spinning beach ball taunting
me, it repeatedly takes over 30 seconds to save the file.

My current level of trust in continuing to use this program: ZERO!

I had a few other choice words about all of this, but you had to be
here...

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET mailto[email protected]
If it's "fixed", don't "break it"! http://www.vpea.org
http://www.phillipmjones.net
G4-500 Mac 1.5 GB RAM OSX.3.9 G4-1.67 GB PowerBook 17" 2GB RAM OSX.4.11
------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[MC]

I'm posting this mainly to vent!

Working all morning on a manuscript deadline, using MSWord 2008 on my
mac pro with gobs of memory with all the latest software updates, the
damn program crashed, apparently simply as a result of having cut and
pasted a reference from another MSWord 2008 file. No problem, says I,
as I'm autosaving every 5 minutes.

Sure enough, the program reloads with my recovered file. Whew. So, I
promptly save it, and the program crashes AGAIN! When it reloads the
second time, no more recovered file. I check finder to see if it was
saved. No! GONZO!

Five hours of hard work, all morning, right down the drain!

Now I'm trying to recreate my hours of brilliant and meticulous word-
smithing, no longer quite as jazzed about meeting my deadline. Oh
well, Sh*t happens. So I start up my old file using the "open recent"
function in MS Word, and when it loads, all I have access to is the
finder menu bar! Huh?! So I try reloading my file using the "open
with" function in finder. Behold, the Word menu bar.

Still skeptical, I change one (yes, just one single) character in my
file and manually save. Guess what, on my dual quad mac with 8 MB of
memory and nothing else running, with the spinning beach ball taunting
me, it repeatedly takes over 30 seconds to save the file.

My current level of trust in continuing to use this program: ZERO!

I had a few other choice words about all of this, but you had to be
here...

Do you by any chance have Time Machine running under Leopard?

Puhleeeeeze let it be so, because it can probably find some trace of
your work, if not the whole thing before the crash.

This is no help or consolation right now, but for future reference it
might help: but I use a multibutton mouse (a Microsoft one, oddly
enough) and I have one of the buttons mapped at Cmd-S -- and I'm in the
habit of saving all the time. It's such second nature to me that I don't
even think about it.

 

[Sen]

Do you by any chance have Time Machine running under Leopard?

Puhleeeeeze let it be so, because it can probably find some trace of
your work, if not the whole thing before the crash.

This is no help or consolation right now, but for future reference it
might help:  but I use a multibutton mouse (a Microsoft one, oddly
enough) and I have one of the buttons mapped at Cmd-S -- and I'm in the
habit of saving all the time. It's such second nature to me that I don't
even think about it.

--

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency
the reputation which carried him into it.
 -Thomas Jefferson

Thanks MC, good suggestions. I do have time machine, but, alas, it
appears to me that it will only reinstate files that were saved, not
autosaved. My lesson, which may benefit others, autosave is not the
same as save... who knew?

 

[Sen]

open 2008 without a doucument. go to help and click on Feedback. Vent
there. There very rarely if ever in the word group is a Live MS
employee.  Now is a little different in the Excel group there is one
nice individual that is often answering question (not daily though).











--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET                         mailto[email protected]
If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!                  http://www.vpea.org
                                             http://www.phillipmjones.net
G4-500 Mac 1.5 GB RAM OSX.3.9  G4-1.67 GB PowerBook 17" 2GB RAM OSX.4.11
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the suggestion and advice Phil. I wasn't seeking solutions,
though, just sharing experiences, for whatever they are worth. I can
appreciate, by the way, that complex software will always have bugs,
and that finding 'work-arounds' is often a necessary stopgap. That was
my first post by the way, and this will hopefully be my last. I'm
presuming sharing experiences is the purpose of this group. If I'm
missing something, though, let me know. PS. If I was a CEO of MS (not
that I would ever want to be) I'd most definitely have someone at
least *monitoring* a group like this full time.

 

[John McGhie]

Well, some thoughts come to mind here...

I'm posting this mainly to vent!

You're wasting your breath Only fellow users in here, and we all have
our own war stories -- and ours are much, much more tragic than yours --
because they happened to US! If you want to send a message to Microsoft,
use Help>Send Feedback. And don't include any naughty words, or the Naughty
Word Machine will delete it before they get to read it

Working all morning on a manuscript deadline, using MSWord 2008 on my
mac pro with gobs of memory with all the latest software updates, the
damn program crashed, apparently simply as a result of having cut and
pasted a reference from another MSWord 2008 file. No problem, says I,
as I'm autosaving every 5 minutes.

That's the problem, right there Word does not HAVE an AutoSave.

What Word has is AutoRecover, and it is useless: does not protect against
the things you need. I have been saying this for ten years. I have also
been pleading for AutoSAVE for ten years!

The difference is: AutoRecover saves a list of changes to the original
document in a "transaction files". If the original is broken, then there is
nothing to apply the changes to and you lose the entire document.

Sure enough, the program reloads with my recovered file. Whew. So, I
promptly save it,

So your saved version is on the hard disk, right where you saved it??

and the program crashes AGAIN! When it reloads the
second time, no more recovered file.

Which there wouldn't be, because you had not changed the file since you
saved it. The saved version is right up-to-date so no changes were saved.

Five hours of hard work, all morning, right down the drain!

No! They are sitting there in the folder you saved to, under the file name
you saved to!

Still skeptical, I change one (yes, just one single) character in my
file and manually save. Guess what, on my dual quad mac with 8 MB of
memory and nothing else running, with the spinning beach ball taunting
me, it repeatedly takes over 30 seconds to save the file.

Yeah, the document is damaged, which is what caused the crash in the first
place. The 30 seconds are the time Word is spending fixing up the document.

I had a few other choice words about all of this, but you had to be
here...

Glad I wasn't! I had a 450-page document blow up on ME yesterday. In this
case, it was caused by ten years of people who do not know how to drive Word
hacking and chopping, which mangled the section-breaks. And because they
don't know how to drive Word, there are 80 section breaks. {Sigh}...

Perhaps the only suggestion I could make that will help in the future is
"Never edit with your paragraph marks hidden." If you can't see the
non-printing characters in a document, the chances of breaking it with a
simple cut-and-paste are extremely high!

Hope this helps

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Sen]

Well, some thoughts come to mind here...



You're wasting your breath  Only fellow users in here, and we all have
our own war stories -- and ours are much, much more tragic than yours --
because they happened to US!  If you want to send a message to Microsoft,
use Help>Send Feedback.  And don't include any naughty words, or the Naughty
Word Machine will delete it before they get to read it




That's the problem, right there  Word does not HAVE an AutoSave.

What Word has is AutoRecover, and it is useless: does not protect against
the things you need.  I have been saying this for ten years.  I have also
been pleading for AutoSAVE for ten years!

The difference is:  AutoRecover saves a list of changes to the original
document in a "transaction files".  If the original is broken, then there is
nothing to apply the changes to and you lose the entire document.




So your saved version is on the hard disk, right where you saved it??


Which there wouldn't be, because you had not changed the file since you
saved it.  The saved version is right up-to-date so no changes were saved.


No!  They are sitting there in the folder you saved to, under the file name
you saved to!


Yeah, the document is damaged, which is what caused the crash in the first
place.  The 30 seconds are the time Word is spending fixing up the document.


Glad I wasn't!  I had a 450-page document blow up on ME yesterday.  In this
case, it was caused by ten years of people who do not know how to drive Word
hacking and chopping, which mangled the section-breaks.  And because they
don't know how to drive Word, there are 80 section breaks.  {Sigh}...

Perhaps the only suggestion I could make that will help in the future is
"Never edit with your paragraph marks hidden."  If you can't see the
non-printing characters in a document, the chances of breaking it with a
simple cut-and-paste are extremely high!

Hope this helps

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group.  Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia.  mailto:[email protected]

Thanks John, for the reminder and helpful suggestion... Sorry to hear
of your own misfortune! Glad I wasn't THERE :^) Regarding my faux
relief: it was in naively mistaking, as you said AutoRecover for an
AutoSave function... live and learn!

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Please don't leave.

There are a lot of Geniuses under the captions MVPs That can often help
with problems.

Even a poor dumb all-so-ran like myself can occasionally give good advice.

You would be well served to stay on group and even ask questions, and
even give advice.

Thanks for the suggestion and advice Phil. I wasn't seeking solutions,
though, just sharing experiences, for whatever they are worth. I can
appreciate, by the way, that complex software will always have bugs,
and that finding 'work-arounds' is often a necessary stopgap. That was
my first post by the way, and this will hopefully be my last. I'm
presuming sharing experiences is the purpose of this group. If I'm
missing something, though, let me know. PS. If I was a CEO of MS (not
that I would ever want to be) I'd most definitely have someone at
least *monitoring* a group like this full time.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET mailto[email protected]
If it's "fixed", don't "break it"! http://www.vpea.org
http://www.phillipmjones.net
G4-500 Mac 1.5 GB RAM OSX.3.9 G4-1.67 GB PowerBook 17" 2GB RAM OSX.4.11
------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

John I know on 2004 you can usually fix a document my copying all but
last paragraph Mark into new document to fix a document. Would that work
on the 2008 version if it was saved as a .doc Document.

I think I have heard on the new Docx format yo do nothing to document if
it will open then save as an html Document then save the html document
back to a new Docx document works. Would this work?


WE're trying to help the fellow if he is willing to be helped.

Well, some thoughts come to mind here...



You're wasting your breath Only fellow users in here, and we all have
our own war stories -- and ours are much, much more tragic than yours --
because they happened to US! If you want to send a message to Microsoft,
use Help>Send Feedback. And don't include any naughty words, or the Naughty
Word Machine will delete it before they get to read it

That's the problem, right there Word does not HAVE an AutoSave.

What Word has is AutoRecover, and it is useless: does not protect against
the things you need. I have been saying this for ten years. I have also
been pleading for AutoSAVE for ten years!

The difference is: AutoRecover saves a list of changes to the original
document in a "transaction files". If the original is broken, then there is
nothing to apply the changes to and you lose the entire document.

So your saved version is on the hard disk, right where you saved it??


Which there wouldn't be, because you had not changed the file since you
saved it. The saved version is right up-to-date so no changes were saved.


No! They are sitting there in the folder you saved to, under the file name
you saved to!


Yeah, the document is damaged, which is what caused the crash in the first
place. The 30 seconds are the time Word is spending fixing up the document.


Glad I wasn't! I had a 450-page document blow up on ME yesterday. In this
case, it was caused by ten years of people who do not know how to drive Word
hacking and chopping, which mangled the section-breaks. And because they
don't know how to drive Word, there are 80 section breaks. {Sigh}...

Perhaps the only suggestion I could make that will help in the future is
"Never edit with your paragraph marks hidden." If you can't see the
non-printing characters in a document, the chances of breaking it with a
simple cut-and-paste are extremely high!

Hope this helps

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET mailto[email protected]
If it's "fixed", don't "break it"! http://www.vpea.org
http://www.phillipmjones.net
G4-500 Mac 1.5 GB RAM OSX.3.9 G4-1.67 GB PowerBook 17" 2GB RAM OSX.4.11
------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

presuming sharing experiences is the purpose of this group. If I'm

missing something, though, let me know. PS. If I was a CEO of MS (not
that I would ever want to be) I'd most definitely have someone at
least *monitoring* a group like this full time.

I can't speak for the Mac Office group but I can tell you that many of
the other product groups at MS *DO* have one or more people who monitor
the newsgroups. Most of them don't post; they just lurk, read and
learn. Some of them do post, however.

And as an MVP I have frequent contact with the product group for the
products I'm most involved with (Outlook and OneNote mostly) and I can
tell you that if I see an especially interesting post in the newsgroups
for those products that I will be sure to try and bring it to the
attention of the appropriate member of the product group in Redmond.
Sometimes they've already seen it; sometimes they haven't. I would
guess, but again don't want to speak for them, that the Mac Office MVPs
do something similar.


-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q