MS Office "Save" dialog obscures the document you are saving??

[Dennis Fleisher]

I've just moved to Mac OSX (Panther) from OS9.2. I've been using MS Word for years.

In Office X, Microsoft, again, appears to be using it's own "Save" dialog rather than the ones that are part of the Mac OS. (Microsoft has done this in all previous versions of Word and Excel, and that included the "Save," "Save As . . . ", and "Open . . . " dialogs. And, yes, I know I am dating myself by calling these "Dialog" boxes.)

But, it appears that the Office X "Save" dialog obscures at least the upper half of the file you are saving, and the save box is "attached" to the file window and can't be moved. This means that if, for example, you want to see the date, salutation, spelling, etc., in the file that you are saving, you can't see it because the dialog box in hiding the file window.

This seems so illogical and user-unfriendly that I can't believe that I'm not doing something wrong or missing an obvious workaround or alternative.

Any suggestions?

Thank you,

Dennis

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Actually, that's an Apple innovation called Sheets, not a Microsoft
invention (as you can see if you export an image from Apple's Preview
application). The theory is that sheets are preferable to traditional
dialog boxes because they allow the user to do other things without closing
the dialog. You can learn more about it here under the heading "Styling
Sheets":
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/aqua/>

It was one of the big new features of OS X 10.0, but it hasn't been as
publicized with the more recent versions.

 

[Dennis Fleisher]

Hmm. I am new to Panther, but I gathered that while Sheets were used extensively in Jaguar and before, they been pretty well replace by Finder Windows in Panther. And, I just checked all my major apps, and Office X is the only app(s) that use this form of save window. For example, Photoshop uses a more standard and movable save box that, initially, pops up in the center of the screen, and is not attached to the file window

Could it be that Microsoft just hasn't caught up to the Panther way? Or am I completely off base here? Again, I've only been on Panther for 2 weeks, and I moved directly from OS9, without ever having used the previous versions of OSX

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I've surely got more studying to do. Old dog - new triX

Dennis

 

[Dennis Fleisher]

Good evening again, Mickey

And, the plot thickens

I just looked at Mac's Preview app and sure enough it has the same Save Sheets as in OfficeX. So does Safari v1.1. I've just never saved any files in those programs

But, Internet Explorer 5.2.3 has the centered Save box, not the sheet.

Now I'm going to give away my age and "tendencies." The Open and Save routines were just calls to the Mac Toolbox. And, there were actually a few different flavors and switches (and patches) that could be plugged into those. But, I'm guessing that this is really old stuff, and Carbon apps are not done with this old-style programming

But, then, I guess the question is, is there a hack or patch (or 3rd-party utility) that would allow me to use my preferred form of Save and Open "dialogs"

Thanks for putting up with a really crusty old Toolbox and ResEdit tinkerer. (I go all the way back to Lisa Pascal and the very first version of Word on the Mac.

Denni

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Hi Dennis,

Good evening again, Mickey,
And, the plot thickens.

I just looked at Mac's Preview app and sure enough it has the same Save Sheets
as in OfficeX. So does Safari v1.1. I've just never saved any files in those
programs.

But, Internet Explorer 5.2.3 has the centered Save box, not the sheet.

I think that applications have to make special calls to take advantage of
sheets. That's why some applications, like Internet Explorer, don't use
them.

Now I'm going to give away my age and "tendencies." The Open and Save routines
were just calls to the Mac Toolbox. And, there were actually a few different
flavors and switches (and patches) that could be plugged into those. But, I'm
guessing that this is really old stuff, and Carbon apps are not done with this
old-style programming.

But, then, I guess the question is, is there a hack or patch (or 3rd-party
utility) that would allow me to use my preferred form of Save and Open
"dialogs"?

There very well might be. I just don't know of any. I don't know whether
themes can control this sort of thing, but that might be somewhat extreme
just to control sheets.

I think this might be a good preference option for future versions of the
Mac OS. Send feedback directly to Apple regarding OS X: