Word 2004 request: get rid of the "Do you want to revert the saved..." window

[Arne Ludwig]

Hello Jeffrey,

in case the powers that be decide that a change will be done for
future releases of MacWord, could they make sure that it is done for
WinWord as well?

I have been staring at this %$$!%%$ dialog for half an hour now,
totally unsure about what to do until I decided to research it on
google before continuing.

In my view the dialog can stay but needs a "help" button that explains
the situation when pressed, perhaps along the lines of:

Word has found a temporary file that contains recorded edits of the
document you tried to open from a past or current editing session. You
have the choice to ignore those changes (revert to the last saved
document) or incorporating those changes into your current editing
session.

Pressing "Yes" will do ... "No" will ...

The edits are dated "March 17th, 1894". What do you want to do?


If the temporary file contains a process id of the Word process that
did the changes, perhaps the new Word could check if that process
still existed and tell the user that perhaps he tried to open the same
document again.

Thanks,

Arne

 

[Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]]

Hey Arne,

Thanks for the request. There have been serveral other people on the
Newsgroup who have requested the very same thing. (The removal of this
dialog.) I've passed those and now your request onto the "powers that be",
and personally I'm not a big fan of this thing myself.

So rest assured we're looking into it for a future release.

Thanks for posting

--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Find out everything about Microsoft Mac Newsgroups at:
[http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups]
Check out product updates and news & info at: [http://www.microsoft.com/mac]

 

[John McGhie]

Thanks Arne:

The next version of Word is in design now, so I fired that in to the guys
making up the feature list.

If it's not too expensive, they will probably do it for you

Dunno why I never thought of it, years ago!

What is actually happenign is that Word has detected that it, itself, has an
edit lock on the file, AND the open file contains changes that have not been
saved.

If you click Yes, Word will close the file, without saving the pending
changes, then reopen the unchanged file. We (I, anyway...) tend to use it
as an "Ooops, I didn't mean to do that..." kind of Mega-Undo.

If you say No, Word does nothing.

Cheers

Hello Jeffrey,

in case the powers that be decide that a change will be done for
future releases of MacWord, could they make sure that it is done for
WinWord as well?

I have been staring at this %$$!%%$ dialog for half an hour now,
totally unsure about what to do until I decided to research it on
google before continuing.

In my view the dialog can stay but needs a "help" button that explains
the situation when pressed, perhaps along the lines of:

Word has found a temporary file that contains recorded edits of the
document you tried to open from a past or current editing session. You
have the choice to ignore those changes (revert to the last saved
document) or incorporating those changes into your current editing
session.

Pressing "Yes" will do ... "No" will ...

The edits are dated "March 17th, 1894". What do you want to do?


If the temporary file contains a process id of the Word process that
did the changes, perhaps the new Word could check if that process
still existed and tell the user that perhaps he tried to open the same
document again.

Thanks,

Arne

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[tbatst]

Oh! Oh! [raises hand wildly]

I don't think there is a single more important change needed in the Mac
Word app than this inane, obtuse dialog window. Worse, it's been around
for years and years, and never been removed.

For anyone wanting to see which dialog window Arne is speaking about,
do this: open one of your Word docs (let's say it's called "Letter to
Bob". Now, bury it under a couple other windows (just so you get why
problem occurs). Ok, now double click on the *icon* of the opened Word
"Letter to Bob" doc. Word throws up a window, saying (I'm not kidding)

"Do you want to revert to the saved "Letter to Bob"?"

Show me ONE PERSON who would understand what the heck that means.
People are clicking on the doc's icon because they didn't realize that
the doc was already open!! Not to "revert" anything!

I've used Word since 1992. Written two books on it. I STILL haven't a
clue what "revert" means. Where would it revert to? To the last time I
hit Saved? To the last time Word saved it? To the state it was in when
I first opened it? In any case, these are all the wrong questions
anyway. I didn't click on my doc to REVERT anything. I clicked on it to
see it.

Here's a test: find someone new to computers. Have them use Word as
their basic text program. Now wait. Wait for the time when they've
clicked on a doc that was already open, and they get this dialog box.
You will get a frantic call.

I used to think up wording MS could use in this dialog box that would
make more sense, until it dawned on me: there is no need for any dialog
box, period. Delete it. Remove it completely. Instead, here's the
suggested action: when someone double clicks on a doc's icon, and the
doc is already open? Bring that doc to the front. Don't do anything
else. No reverts; no saves. Don't offer any thing. Just show the
document.


tuqqer

PS: there's another maddening dialog box, called the "Do you want to
save the changes in Normal" (run THAT one by your mom) but let's deal
with one obfuscation at a time.

 

[John McGhie]

Tuqqer:

Errrmmmm... I can think of quite a few places I would rather Mac BU spent
their money than on that particular dialog

But you are right, it has been around for years and years: it's just the
same on windows, and nobody can ever figure it out until they are told what
it means

When you open a document, there is almost "always" a change to it. Even if
it is only the "Last Opened" time in the file properties that has updated.
Just to explain briefly: When you open a Word file, the original file on the
disk is simply flagged as being "In Use: Locked for Edit". It is otherwise
unchanged.

Word then loads a COPY of the file into memory. It is the copy that has
changed. When you save, Word saves the copy to disk, then switches the file
names around so that the copy now has the same name as the original, and the
original has the same name plus "Backup". The old backup is deleted.

So what that dialog really means is "Do you want to discard the file in
memory and revert to the saved copy, which is still on the disk."

You are correct: bringing the window to the front would work just as well.
But I would prefer a dialog that said "This document is already open, do you
want to discard your changes?"

Cheers

Oh! Oh! [raises hand wildly]

I don't think there is a single more important change needed in the Mac
Word app than this inane, obtuse dialog window. Worse, it's been around
for years and years, and never been removed.

For anyone wanting to see which dialog window Arne is speaking about,
do this: open one of your Word docs (let's say it's called "Letter to
Bob". Now, bury it under a couple other windows (just so you get why
problem occurs). Ok, now double click on the *icon* of the opened Word
"Letter to Bob" doc. Word throws up a window, saying (I'm not kidding)

"Do you want to revert to the saved "Letter to Bob"?"

Show me ONE PERSON who would understand what the heck that means.
People are clicking on the doc's icon because they didn't realize that
the doc was already open!! Not to "revert" anything!

I've used Word since 1992. Written two books on it. I STILL haven't a
clue what "revert" means. Where would it revert to? To the last time I
hit Saved? To the last time Word saved it? To the state it was in when
I first opened it? In any case, these are all the wrong questions
anyway. I didn't click on my doc to REVERT anything. I clicked on it to
see it.

Here's a test: find someone new to computers. Have them use Word as
their basic text program. Now wait. Wait for the time when they've
clicked on a doc that was already open, and they get this dialog box.
You will get a frantic call.

I used to think up wording MS could use in this dialog box that would
make more sense, until it dawned on me: there is no need for any dialog
box, period. Delete it. Remove it completely. Instead, here's the
suggested action: when someone double clicks on a doc's icon, and the
doc is already open? Bring that doc to the front. Don't do anything
else. No reverts; no saves. Don't offer any thing. Just show the
document.


tuqqer

PS: there's another maddening dialog box, called the "Do you want to
save the changes in Normal" (run THAT one by your mom) but let's deal
with one obfuscation at a time.

Hello Jeffrey,

in case the powers that be decide that a change will be done for
future releases of MacWord, could they make sure that it is done for
WinWord as well?

I have been staring at this %$$!%%$ dialog for half an hour now,
totally unsure about what to do until I decided to research it on
google before continuing.

In my view the dialog can stay but needs a "help" button that explains
the situation when pressed, perhaps along the lines of:

Pressing "Yes" will do ... "No" will ... SNIP

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[tbatst]

I'm half way there with you, John! If a dialog box is in some way
critical to the way Word is coded, so be it. Toss up a window. And your
suggestion is an improvement. Again:

"This document is already open, do you want to discard your changes?"

Still, I'd ask a hundred users first: do they *ever* want to discard
changes by finding the doc's icon and clicking on it? Furthermore, what
would be meant by "discard changes?" From what point? The last time
they hit Commnad-S? Since they opened it? Since when.

I say, do away with any possible option. Sure, toss a window that says,
"This document is already open." and then bring it to the front. But if
someone doesn't want to save something, great. They already know how:
close the document, and click no on the Save changes? window.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

I'm half way there with you, John! If a dialog box is in some way
critical to the way Word is coded, so be it. Toss up a window. And your
suggestion is an improvement. Again:

"This document is already open, do you want to discard your changes?"

Still, I'd ask a hundred users first: do they *ever* want to discard
changes by finding the doc's icon and clicking on it? Furthermore, what
would be meant by "discard changes?" From what point? The last time
they hit Commnad-S? Since they opened it? Since when.

I say, do away with any possible option. Sure, toss a window that says,
"This document is already open." and then bring it to the front. But if
someone doesn't want to save something, great. They already know how:
close the document, and click no on the Save changes? window.

I've used Macs for a long time but only recently started using
Word. Nearly all of the applications that I remember treat this
in an identical fashion--the open operation will simply move the
document to the front if it is already open. This is totally
justified as an exception IMHO because no-one really wants to
re-open a document that is already open. In the rare event that
they do, they will first close the document (with the appropriate
save or not save) and then reopen it. Doing it in this fashion
forces the issue of "what do you want saved" as the normal part
of the closure operation.

Double-clicking on an icon for a document that is already open is
almost always an operator mistake (except for those who now know
all of the peculiarities of this behavior and find it a
convenient way to force fix an "oops" Word exacerbates the
mistake by a cryptic message that now provides a significant
potential for more lost time and lost work.

If you ever put up an alert message of any sort, it should never
be cryptic.

Heck, even Excel does it better than this. There is really no
excuse for this type of poor design and even less reason for it
to have existed so long. Changing the content of an alert box
like this is usually a cinch that all programmers are familiar with.

My preference would be to do it the way all the other Mac
programs have always handled this exception--bring the window to
the front. If you must allow for the bizzare operation of opening
the same document twice, then don't let the programmer writing
the code for the application decide what goes in the alert box.
They usually assume that everyone fully understands all the
issues the same way that they do and all that is needed is some
terse pointer saying "oh, by the way..."

- Jeff