Hi Tony:
----- Original Message -----
an apparently "corrupted" document back to me. So, I did not have much
control over it.
Yeah, we're hoping for a resolution to that one in the next version. Try
this:
1) When you get the document back...
2) Turn OFF track Changes
3) "Accept All changes in document"
4) Save and close
The idea here is that immediately you open the document on Mac Word, it will
make some internal changes to the file, some of which are considered
"changes" and some are not. But there is a dependency between them.
You can turn Track Changes back on when you reopen.
No guarantees, but it may help.
Concerning third party applications that crash Word, you are right, but in
this particular case of copy/paste applications, the issue arises only
with Word and has been around for many years now over many Mac versions
and Office versions. Both on Mac PowerPC and Mactel.
So we could assume from that that there is "zero" chance that they will
change it
To my knowledge, it has to do with the somewhat nonstandard way of
managing memory of Word. One evidence of it is that somehow when you copy
something in Word, such clipboard does not ÒbelongÓ to the Mac but to
Word.
I don't think it's memory management. Microsoft Office leaves it to the OS
to manage memory. However, it does have an internal "Microsoft Office
Clipboard" that brings the ability to copy multiple items then paste
multiple items. That structure is in memory and would be cleaned up if the
"owning" Microsoft Office application dies.
I have been in touch with the developers of such applications but they say
that it depends on Microsoft and that they will try to get Microsoft to
fix it. Yet, for years, as said, the issue has not been fixed.
What they are saying is that their application intervenes between the system
and the clipboard. What Microsoft would say is that so does theirs. I
suspect there's right on both sides. I also suspect there's no chance that
MS will change theirs: they would say that they did not create the problem
Last but not least, and a bit off-topic BUT RELATED TO THE ABOVE ISSUE,
there is a single feature that I would love to see in Word 2008: copy and
paste without style with a one-click menu for it, a one-click button on
toolbar for it and --most importantly-- a simple keyboard command for it.
For instance (as Eudora does):
As others have indicated, you can make your own, and you have. In Word
2007, there's a high level of customisation available for the default
actions that Word takes when copying and pasting, including "Plain Text".
You can configure the default for various kinds of Copy source. There's no
reason to suspect that we won't get the same mechanism in Word 2008.
Any place to send such suggestions to Microsoft MBU?
Yes. Have a look on the Help Menu of Microsoft Word. The Send Feedback
option takes you to a web page that feeds into the Mac BU.
And most importantly, any way to become an Office 2008 beta tester for
Mac? I would love to contribute bugs, flaws and many suggestions to
improve it on Mac. I am a ÒheavyÓ user of Office in general and Word in
particular on Mac.
Contact your Microsoft Sales Representative, or hang around here and answer
lots of user's questions. Large customers have a dedicated Microsoft
account representative: they can forward your name for consideration for the
beta program. If you are NOT a Volume Licence customer (or whatever they
call it...) then the only way to join the beta program is to be invited in
after a couple of years of hard work in here
If you were to get into the beta program, you would find that it is far too
late in the development cycle to have the influence you are looking for. By
the time a product leaves "Alpha Test" for "Beta Test" the design is fixed,
the feature list is cast in stone, and the way it works is tightly
specified. There will be no substantial changes from that point.
The only feedback that has much chance of being acted on in a beta program
is feedback that indicates that a particular feature is not working the way
they designed it to. You want to be in the "Requirements Definition" phase,
which occurs about three years before the product goes on sale, and well
before coding starts.
The best way to have influence there is to send feedback off the Help menu
in the current application. When you are sending such feedback:
1) First search the help and ask in here to make sure the feature or
something very similar is not already in the product. Microsoft is a little
frustrated to discover that a very high percentage of the "Feature Requests"
they get are for things that are already in the product, or which can
already be accomplished by a different feature.
2) Accurately and concisely describe what you want the product to do, and
the user scenarious under which you would use that. Don't tell them how to
code it, tell them what you want to be able to do: leave it to the
Application Architect to figure out the most efficient way to implement the
ability. That's a critical point: if we try to tell them how we want them
to code it, we have a high possibility of getting something we can't use or
which doesn't work "right". Tell them what you want to be able to DO.
3) Tell them what percentage of users would use the facility, and in which
scenarios. Tell them how you calculated this figure. I know!! I know!!
It's a lot of work to derive this -- but trust me, without this
substantiation, your suggestion is headed straight for the bit-bucket. Your
average analyst at Microsoft may have "one week" to consider perhaps as many
as 1,500 such suggestions for the product. A little under two minutes
each... They do not have time to get back to you seeking clarification.
Damn, I hate reality
4) Provide a description of who you are and what you do, and an accurate
un-mangled "Reply To" Address.
If you put in three or four of these, and you make sense with each one, it's
not inconceivable that you may find yourself invited onto the beta program.
It has happened to others
Hope this helps
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:
[email protected]> mailto:
[email protected]