Why do so many questions go unanswered here?

[old editor]

I found that posts on "error starting ms help" from months ago have never
been answered. Is this list moderated? are there any resident experts or MS
employees who weigh in with helpful responses? MS Office is a complex
program with only online help. If you dont have constant internet access or
you cant get help when the program wont access online help, you have had it.
I have.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You haven't said what version of Word you have, but I would assume 2002 or
2003 if online Help is an issue. You're more likely to get an answer if you
state the version and quote the exact text of any error message you are
receiving, which permits us to search the KB and Google for solutions to the
problem.

Have you disabled online Help? Have you used Detect and Repair to make sure
the Help files are installed correctly?

 

[Jay Freedman]

While Suzanne is trying to gather enough information about your
problem to help you, I'll answer the first part of your question. No,
this newsgroup (which is not a "list") is not moderated, and Microsoft
employees almost never read or answer posts.

The majority of answers come from regular readers, users of Office who
have seen or read about solutions to problems. Some, like Suzanne and
me, have been recognized by Microsoft with an MVP award (explained at
http://word.mvps.org/AboutMVPs/index.htm).

If we don't recognize the cause of a problem, we may probe for more
details, or we may simply not answer and hope that someone else has a
solution for you. Some questions do go unanswered, either because the
problem is very uncommon, because the solution is unknown, or because
the description is so vague that no one knows what the problem is.
Despite the impression given by your subject line, the percentage of
unanswered posts is quite low. According to Netscan
(http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/ReportCard.aspx), in this
newsgroup for 2006 up to November 20, there were 8277 messages,
including 5476 replies and only 684 posts without replies.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[aalaan]

I'm surprised the 'unanswered' figure is so high, Jay. I've only seen a few
and I have personally failed to get a reply now and then but on reposting
with clearer description I usually get a solution. Some people, like you, go
way beyond the normal, as you know. I think there are also numbers of people
lurking on this ng who file away the answers to common problems in case they
ever experience them. I'm one of those.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I appreciate your saying that. It's the main reason I hang around
here!

Also, thanks for mentioning the idea of looking at previous posts. Too
many people don't know you can do that, either in the Microsoft groups
directly or at http://groups.google.com/advanced_search.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

As Jay said, even though we're strongly motivated to help, anyway, the
occasional word of appreciation definitely recharges our batteries!

 

[Stefan Blom]

Indeed. A simple "thank you" message means a lot!

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


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