Using Microsoft Templates

[Aimee]

To the group:

First of all, thank you for being here. I now have hope knowing that
you are here! I just came across this group searching for answers to
my "Template problem".

I am new to MAC -- been a PC user tride & tru till just recently.
While I love my new setup, I am fining it more and more frustrating on
a daily basis to use day to day products with my computer from a Mac
standpoint. No wonder why so many people stick with PCs....it is WAY
more mainstream, and businesses cater to making Windows users happy..I
am finally getting it! Anyway, I digress.

My problem today is with using Windows templates. With my PC, I used
Windows templates for all sorts of things -- they are GREAT!
Reluctantly, today I found out that there is a separate website for MS
Office for Mac users to download templates. What a joke it is! A mere
fraction of what is offered to PC users!
MAC
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/resour...tes&browser=1&app=&group=&category=&template=
vs.
PC
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx

So, I followed directions from this kind website, to "beat the system"
of Microsoft for Apple users.
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Using-Windows-Templates.html

First of all, who are these guys? Are they legit? Any info or links
to them would be appreciated.

Secondly, I followed the instructions (trusted my gut that they were
"okay"), downloaded "Stuffit" (per the instructions), yet, I am still
unable to open the file I have downloaded from Microsoft. The error
message it gives me, after I choose to open the .cam file with Stuffit,
says: "An error occurred attempting to expand '06089799-1.cab'. Format
error.

Can someone help me with this???

THANKS!

Sincerely,
Disgruntled on my Mac Honeymoon

 

[Elliott Roper]

To the group:

First of all, thank you for being here. I now have hope knowing that
you are here! I just came across this group searching for answers to
my "Template problem".

I am new to MAC -- been a PC user tride & tru till just recently.
While I love my new setup, I am fining it more and more frustrating on
a daily basis to use day to day products with my computer from a Mac
standpoint. No wonder why so many people stick with PCs....it is WAY
more mainstream, and businesses cater to making Windows users happy..I
am finally getting it! Anyway, I digress.

Hang in there Aimee. In a couple of months you will find yourself
washing your hands after each visit to the PC.

My problem today is with using Windows templates. With my PC, I used
Windows templates for all sorts of things -- they are GREAT!
Reluctantly, today I found out that there is a separate website for MS
Office for Mac users to download templates. What a joke it is! A mere
fraction of what is offered to PC users!
MAC

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/resources/templates.aspx?pid=templates&browser=1&
app=&group=&category=&template=
vs.
PC
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx

So, I followed directions from this kind website, to "beat the system"
of Microsoft for Apple users.
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Using-Windows-Templates.html

First of all, who are these guys? Are they legit? Any info or links
to them would be appreciated.

Legit? Hell No! They are a bunch of sly devious reprobates that
Microsoft needs to keep a close eye on.
see:
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

I'd say nice things about 'em, but they just made me one of them so I
gotta go on being a grumpy old smarta***.

Secondly, I followed the instructions (trusted my gut that they were
"okay"), downloaded "Stuffit" (per the instructions), yet, I am still
unable to open the file I have downloaded from Microsoft. The error
message it gives me, after I choose to open the .cam file with Stuffit,
says: "An error occurred attempting to expand '06089799-1.cab'. Format
error.

Can someone help me with this???

Gaack! What's a Table Tent? OK. I get it I think. You put 'em on tables
at big parties so folk know where to eat the rubber chicken from?

(I'm just writing this gibberish while I wait for Stuffit Expander 11
to download. Wow that site is slow!)

OK. The latest Stuffit Expander 11 spits its dummy out in exactly the
same way as you see it failing. I tried another template with the same
result.

For my next trick I tried the same procedure on this older PowerBook
with an older Stuffit Expander. That falls over too.

Come back in the morning. John McGhie, who wrote that article we were
working from might be along. He is untold hours out of phase with the
civilised world because he lives in Sydney.

In the meantime, I'll see if there is not a piece of command line magic
that will unzip those .cab files.

If nothing else, answering your question will give him a chance to fix
up his article. (heh)
Note to John:-
Stuffit should have done it, and neither unzip nor gzip believe those
files can be expanded. BOMArchive expander barfs too.

Has MS sneaked a change into .cab while we were not looking?

Hang in there Aimee

 

[CyberTaz]

Actually, the point I was [so inelegantly] attempting to make was that I
don't know whether the freebie will or not, but simply confirming that the
full verson *does* work as you described in the article - there are some
conversons not included in the freely distributed utility, but I honestly
can't recite which they are

 

[Elliott Roper]

Problem solved! I was using an outdated version of Stuffit Expander. When
I installed the newest version for my system, I was able to open .cab files
with no problem.

So, Aimee, if you're still listening, try downloading a different template;
maybe there's a problem with the one you tried. If you can't open that one,
then there may be something wrong with your installation of Stuffit. Post
back if that's the case.

Don't get Aimee too excited Beth. The latest version of Stuffit
Expander does not decompress the template she is after. Nor does any
other version I can lay my hands on.

Allume has sold Stuffit to Smith Micro, the elephant's graveyard of
unsupported software.

I had a look for other cab expanders for Mac. The only promising one
needed much geekery from Fink to compile and install.

Sadly, I think a tour via PC is needed.

 

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

Hi Elliott and Beth:

I really don't know what's going on here. The template Aimee wanted
decompressed fine for me using Stuffit Expander 8.0.2.

The expanded template is here:
http://public.jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/06089799.pot

And the screen-shot of me doing it on an iBook under 10.3.9 is here:
http://public.jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/grab.jpg

Now: This is not to embarrass anyone, but in a desperate attempt to figure
out what's going on here.

For example, the file name Aimee quotes: '06089799-1.cab' indicates that the
file was downloaded more than once to her computer. It may have been that
Stuffit got hold of it on the way in, and may have failed to decompress it
when she tried because it already had done, and the decompressed file
already existed in the folder.

I don't understand: Using FireFox the file downloaded first time, exactly
as described and decompressed perfectly the first attempt (I simply
double-clicked the .cab).

Cheers

Don't get Aimee too excited Beth. The latest version of Stuffit
Expander does not decompress the template she is after. Nor does any
other version I can lay my hands on.

Allume has sold Stuffit to Smith Micro, the elephant's graveyard of
unsupported software.

I had a look for other cab expanders for Mac. The only promising one
needed much geekery from Fink to compile and install.

Sadly, I think a tour via PC is needed.

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Elliott and Beth:

I really don't know what's going on here. The template Aimee wanted
decompressed fine for me using Stuffit Expander 8.0.2.

It fails here, on Stuffit Expander 9.0.1 on PPC Powerbook
and on 11.0 on Mac Pro

The expanded template is here:
http://public.jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/06089799.pot

Which works perfectly here after clicking past a whinge of missing two
pictograph-ish fonts.

And the screen-shot of me doing it on an iBook under 10.3.9 is here:
http://public.jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/grab.jpg

Now: This is not to embarrass anyone, but in a desperate attempt to figure
out what's going on here.

For example, the file name Aimee quotes: '06089799-1.cab' indicates that the
file was downloaded more than once to her computer. It may have been that
Stuffit got hold of it on the way in, and may have failed to decompress it
when she tried because it already had done, and the decompressed file
already existed in the folder.

I have Safari set to never automatically open anything except pdfs.
Therefore my testing was not attempting a double unstuff.
The Pro's Stuffit barfage here included a 06089799.pot inside a temp
folder. Powerpoint rejected it as corrupt. It was only 32,768 bytes, a
*very* suspicious number of bytes. Yours is 129,823,188 bytes.

I don't understand: Using FireFox the file downloaded first time, exactly
as described and decompressed perfectly the first attempt (I simply
double-clicked the .cab).

The rational conclusion is they broke Stuffit. Hang on, my wife's Mac
is still on OS X sabre-tooth^h^h^h Jagwahr 10.2.8...
...and Stuffit Deluxe 7.0.1 and a matching Expander. Both fail silently
on that 06089799.cab

But wait! Stuffit Expander 11.0 expands .cab files from other sources
quite happily. I now have a copy of Zterm for Windows CE to prove it.

For added thoroughness, I downloaded the same 06089799.cab from firefox
and got the same md5 as the Safari download. You might like to
compare:-
EPro:~ elliott$ md5 /Volumes/elliott/Documents/Downloads/06089799.cab
MD5 (/Volumes/elliott/Documents/Downloads/06089799.cab) =
f98134db8c427483c4554e732bea1d1e

Somewhere between Microsoft and Aladdin/Allume/Smith Micro, there is a
mismatch of what a .cab should be.

I *think* I remember this very subject came up in the Court of First
Instance in Luxembourg.

<Microsoft inspects bullet hole in foot.>

 

[Beth Rosengard]

I don't understand it either; it works fine for me in Expander 10.0.1 and OS
10.3.9.

Can anyone else out there who has Stuffit Expander (at least 9.0.1), not
Stuffit Deluxe, and who is in Tiger, please try to open the template in
question
(<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/results.aspx?Scope=TC&Query=06089799>)
and report back?

Note: When you click the Download button, you will shunt to a page that
says your OS doesn't meet system requirements. Ignore that and click the
Download Now button in the "To download this template manually" section of
that page.

Beth

Hi Elliott and Beth:

I really don't know what's going on here. The template Aimee wanted
decompressed fine for me using Stuffit Expander 8.0.2.

It fails here, on Stuffit Expander 9.0.1 on PPC Powerbook
and on 11.0 on Mac Pro

 

[Phillip Jones]

Elliot,

as of today, and I have cleared my cache to make sure I am not going to
an old location. Version 11 of Stuffit is on Allume site.

When did you get the info Allume had sold Smith Micro.? There is no
mention on the site that smith Micro is associated with Allume

Don't get Aimee too excited Beth. The latest version of Stuffit
Expander does not decompress the template she is after. Nor does any
other version I can lay my hands on.

Allume has sold Stuffit to Smith Micro, the elephant's graveyard of
unsupported software.

I had a look for other cab expanders for Mac. The only promising one
needed much geekery from Fink to compile and install.

Sadly, I think a tour via PC is needed.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliot,

as of today, and I have cleared my cache to make sure I am not going to
an old location. Version 11 of Stuffit is on Allume site.

When did you get the info Allume had sold Smith Micro.? There is no
mention on the site that smith Micro is associated with Allume

http://www.stuffit.com

Have a look at the logo at the top left corner?

 

[CyberTaz]

Curiosity got the better of me after seeing Elliott's post about Smith Micro
so I went to the site to see for myself & poked around a little while there.
According to the info on the site the free version of Stuffit Expander
(11.0) *should* expand .cab files.

Perhaps John is right about the autoexpand setting... Although what Aimee
reported seems to be a rather weird error it it's only a matter of
duplicating the file. It also doesn't explain the reports from others that
Expander isn't getting it done. Never a dull moment

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

I don't understand it either; it works fine for me in Expander 10.0.1 and OS
10.3.9.

Can anyone else out there who has Stuffit Expander (at least 9.0.1), not
Stuffit Deluxe, and who is in Tiger, please try to open the template in
question
(<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/results.aspx?Scope=TC&Query=06089799>)
and report back?

Note: When you click the Download button, you will shunt to a page that
says your OS doesn't meet system requirements. Ignore that and click the
Download Now button in the "To download this template manually" section of
that page.

Beth

Hi Elliott and Beth:

I really don't know what's going on here. The template Aimee wanted
decompressed fine for me using Stuffit Expander 8.0.2.

It fails here, on Stuffit Expander 9.0.1 on PPC Powerbook
and on 11.0 on Mac Pro

 

[Roger Morris]

06089799.pot

I have successfully downloaded (Safari 2.0.4),
placed in 'My Templates' and
opened via Project Gallery the template (in Beth's post below) using

Mac OS 10.4.8 (G4 iMac)
Stuffit Expander 10.0.2 (Build 272)
PowerPoint 11.2.4

Roger

I don't understand it either; it works fine for me in Expander 10.0.1 and OS
10.3.9.

Can anyone else out there who has Stuffit Expander (at least 9.0.1), not
Stuffit Deluxe, and who is in Tiger, please try to open the template in
question
(<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/results.aspx?Scope=TC&Query=06089799>)
and report back?

Note: When you click the Download button, you will shunt to a page that
says your OS doesn't meet system requirements. Ignore that and click the
Download Now button in the "To download this template manually" section of
that page.

Beth

Hi Elliott and Beth:

I really don't know what's going on here. The template Aimee wanted
decompressed fine for me using Stuffit Expander 8.0.2.

It fails here, on Stuffit Expander 9.0.1 on PPC Powerbook
and on 11.0 on Mac Pro

Roger

 

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

Hi Roger:

Curiouser and curiouser!! It works for you, it works for me...

Ah hah!! It's the AntiCurmudgeon Filter. This is a new protocol developed
by Microsoft to filter out blasphemous Englishmen and anyone else likely to
dob them in to the European Parliament

Cheers

06089799.pot

I have successfully downloaded (Safari 2.0.4),
placed in 'My Templates' and
opened via Project Gallery the template (in Beth's post below) using

Mac OS 10.4.8 (G4 iMac)
Stuffit Expander 10.0.2 (Build 272)
PowerPoint 11.2.4

Roger






Roger

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Roger:

Curiouser and curiouser!! It works for you, it works for me...

Ah hah!! It's the AntiCurmudgeon Filter. This is a new protocol developed
by Microsoft to filter out blasphemous Englishmen and anyone else likely to
dob them in to the European Parliament

Fair suck of the sauce bottle! I'm only an temporary pom. They could
chuck me back to Sydney any day. So watch it!!

I wouldn't sweat it on Stuffit. It is well past its sell-by. For that
matter, so is .cab.

Does the dark side still have a problem with long filenames in zip
archives? A rational organisation would offer zip alternatives.

But then a rational organisation wouldn't have a click-through EULA for
a PPT template for a table label either.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

ROFLOL!!

Thanks, Roger. Looks like that A.C.Filter is messing with Elliott . And
since the OP, Aimee, seems to have disappeared, I guess we'll never get to
the bottom of it. Oh well.

Beth

 

[Phillip Jones]

Oh , shxx! Gues I'll have to learn to use MacOSX on zip archiving and
will lose thousands upon thousands of item I have stuffed over the years.

This is the second time I will have been scxxxx. I used Diskdoubler
which actually was a better system for years. The it was bought out by
Alladin.

Now what are we supposed to do about extracting items such as tar and
other off the wall stuff! Zip as Apple, does it only handles zip.

http://www.stuffit.com

Have a look at the logo at the top left corner?

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Elliott Roper]

Oh , shxx! Gues I'll have to learn to use MacOSX on zip archiving and
will lose thousands upon thousands of item I have stuffed over the years.

And why would that happen? Do you currently have a copy of Stuffit
Expander that expands .sits (and .sitx) files you already have? Is it
going to explode because Aladdin became Allume which got sucked into
the elephant's graveyard at Smith Micro?

Nope. But it might be a good idea to choose a different compression and
archiving scheme for new material.

At some point, you might find yourself running a computer that won't
run a Stuffit Expander that will decompress your really really old
stuff. If you plan ahead, you will be OK, but you won't win 'em all.

I have a reel of DECtape with the sources of software I wrote 30mumble
years ago on it. I *think* there is a machine in Sydney still working
that could read it, but it would be too valuable to mount my grubby
tape on it.

This is the second time I will have been scxxxx. I used Diskdoubler
which actually was a better system for years. The it was bought out by
Alladin.

Well, that should have been a learning experience, but it seems not.

Most of us saw the writing on the wall for Stuffit five years ago and
started into zip and dmg.

Now what are we supposed to do about extracting items such as tar and
other off the wall stuff! Zip as Apple, does it only handles zip.

Nope. All the usual unix compression schemes are still in OS X.
Well did ya? Who owns Stuffit this afternoon?

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Elliot:

I wasn't aware that Windows *ever* had a problem with long file names in Zip
archives???

I thought the main reason for using .cab was that it's a structured storage
that enables them to apply different compression algorithms to different
kinds of content, and thus achieve much higher compression that you
typically get with a "one-size-fits-all" algorithm such as .zip or .sit.

It uses a slight variation of LZW at its best. They have the gall to
call it LZX. Mr Welch would not be best pleased, missing out on his
royalties and all. Or it can use a fairly broken version of Huffman,
which is worse than LZW in almost every case (LZW has a much more
cunning way of sliding the dictionary at ya). The third and final
variation is no compression at all.
It was an embrace and extend job.
Not the most shining example of Microsoft commercial operations.

And we have just proved in this discussion, that reverse engineering
the suppurating mess is fraught with difficulty.

A Windows file name can be 254 characters, and has been since 1995. Some
Windows applications may have a problem if the combination of path and
filename exceeds 1,024 characters...

Yes, but at what cost? Each data object is 32 bytes. String a zillion
together and you have a long filename, which remains an alias for a
much sadder object, providing you don't break some hopeless rules for
differentiating between 8.3 and LFNs.

WinZip used to offer an option to force filenames into 8.3 format. Windows
wouldn't care, but I can imagine some highly entertaining results if the
user did this to an archive of graphics

Well it would care actually. It depends how the LFN "alias" is resolved.
Winzip is a pretty sad ripoff of its authentic unix parent.

You wanna give those rose tinted spectacles a bit of a rest?

 

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

Hi Elliott:

Yes, but at what cost? Each data object is 32 bytes. String a zillion
together and you have a long filename, which remains an alias for a
much sadder object, providing you don't break some hopeless rules for
differentiating between 8.3 and LFNs.

Sorry old heart: I use .Zip files (in WinZip, Windows, and Mac OS...)
several times a day. What you say there just doesn't make sense to me...

A long file name is just a string. It's compressible, and compressed in the
..Zip format. I have no idea why you're interested in the 8.3 format:
Windows isn't You can blank it if you wish: I'm not sure that Windows
even regenerates them any longer.

Cheers

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Elliott:

Yes, but at what cost? Each data object is 32 bytes. String a zillion
together and you have a long filename, which remains an alias for a
much sadder object, providing you don't break some hopeless rules for
differentiating between 8.3 and LFNs.

Sorry old heart: I use .Zip files (in WinZip, Windows, and Mac OS...)
several times a day. What you say there just doesn't make sense to me...

The way Windows internally stores long file names is a tangled mess as
I describe. They are unpacked into strings before a human sees it.

Some time in the past (W98?) there were difficulties for those
applications hanging onto 8.3 and LFN co-existing.
The mess was kept for backward compatibility.

A long file name is just a string. It's compressible, and compressed in the
.Zip format. I have no idea why you're interested in the 8.3 format:
Windows isn't You can blank it if you wish: I'm not sure that Windows
even regenerates them any longer.

I think the mess remains internally.

Anyway, I never had much argument with zip. It is a perfectly good open
source unix-derived utility. It may not always preserve resource forks
on Macintosh as you would like, but that is another can of worms.

Where I took issue with you was on .cab and your assertion that there
were multiple compressors, many of which were dramatically more
efficient than Lempel Ziv Welch. There are only two. An embrace and
extend version of LZW, and an ancient Huffman variant, which is worse
than LZW.

 

[tjblackb]

I also had this same problem, and spent the better part of 4 hours
trying to figure it out! The file I was trying to get was
http://office.microsoft.com/templat...0891651033&Application=WD&Result=14&Version=8
I am on a Macbook core duo, and running OSX 10.4.8 and had the exact
same error message come up. I ended up downloading a program called
File Juicer and it worked great. I'll check back later this week to see
if you have any questions I did not answer.

Thanks