Patricio:
This is not John McGhie's personal site.
Thank god for that. I already maintain two sites, I do not need any more...
This is a public forum, and as such, users are entitled to post material
that is fully germane to the very purpose of it.
And YOU were off-topic. I tried to say it nicely, because I know exactly
what you are trying to do -- I have been guilty of it myself
But no, the topic for this forum, and the newsgroup where the work gets
done, is to provide help to users of Microsoft Word. That's it. That's its
only purpose.
Turgid political campaigns because "one" user does not like the way the
Thesaurus works are not what this is for. Waving red flags around in the
hope of attracting a deluge of "Me Too" posts is very counter-productive --
if you ever succeeded, they simply kill the thread... I know, it happened to
me
Sending "messages to Microsoft" in here is a complete waste of time
-- as Clive said, if a Microsoft staffer does wander in here, they will not
change anything as a result of what they may read in here. That's not their
job.
So when the Product Managers come to design the next version, nothing in
here will be considered (or even, remembered). That's what Help>Send
Feedback is for. Anything sent in that way WILL be entered into the
database, and it WILL be considered for the next version.
The product decisions for the next version will be made only by considering
the market research and the entries in the feedback database, and those
decisions will be made by people who, in some cases, do not yet work for
Microsoft.
This site also acts as a public record, a repository of information,
if you will.
That's a bug. They will fix that eventually. It's only supposed to keep
the most recent "n" number of months of posts. I think they will trim it
back to three months: it may be six. Still under discussion.
What I'm posting here may well help someone else looking
for information on this issue.
Your opinion? No. Telling them how to use the feature would help. Telling
them how to work around the bugs would help. That is very valuable.
But opinion is not useful -- this is a help forum, not a blog. Opinion is
off-topic in here. We're a pretty tolerant bunch: we will enjoy a lot of
wasted bandwidth if it's interesting or funny. But constant wafflings-on
about the way things "should" work just get in the way of the folks who are
in here trying to get help, and the volunteers trying to provide it.
I was hoping that we would start to see you putting "Helpful" posts in here,
to help other users.
Which is what this forum is actually for.
I think you actually know a bit more about Word and word-processing than
your posting to date has so far revealed. I was hoping we would get the
benefit of it.
In addition, as a simple search of
this site will show, MSFT staffers do read and post in this forum.
They do, indeed. But they do not write anything down, or change the product
as a result of what they may see -- that's not their job. Most of the
'Softies you see in here were doing this in their own time, trying to help
users (and us!) out. Now that the level of user requests has dropped off
dramatically, you are unlikely to see them in here again for two or three
years (until the next version).
Kurt and Curt may appear from time to time, because being in here IS part of
their paid work.
To make ANY change to the way the product works, there MUST be a ticket
raised in the project management database. Without a ticket, the issue will
not even be investigated. Curt is the person mainly responsible for raising
defect tickets against Word.
Your Thesaurus issue is not a 'defect', it's a 'suggestion'. It is often
extremely difficult to know the difference, without having read the
functional specification. A 'defect' is where the product is not doing what
the functional specification said it should. A 'suggestion' is where the
product is working exactly as designed but you don't like it. Or, as in this
case, the problem is due to the altered behaviour of another vendor's
product (Apple OS X, in this case). Microsoft could "suggest" that Apple
should fix this one, but I suspect they won't.
There is a staffer (currently, Courtney) who reads the feedback sent every
day. Courtney is responsible for raising suggestion tickets, and chances
are she will raise one for any comment that makes sense. It will get
investigated and added to the list if practical.
I hope you will continue to send feedback. I certainly do that too. But if
you put a notice in here to say that you have reported a problem, you are
working against yourself. It invites other users to think "Oh, that has
already been reported, I won't bother."
But on the other side, Courtney will say "Only one report of this issue, WE
won't bother..." Courtney is a manager, she has the authority to decide not
to raise a ticket on an issue, and if there is only one report, it's likely
that's what her decision would be.
She needs thousands of reports of a critical problem to justify expending
resources to go back and fix Word 2004. The Thesaurus is never going to be
seen as 'critical'! A software vendor will only ever change the "previous
version" of a product to fix a security problem.
In the Thesaurus case, one of the MVPs logged this suggestion during the
Office 2008 beta, so we know the ticket has been raised
So there you are: you were off-topic, and I asked you, nicely, not to do
that.
Cheers
--
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]