Don't waste your time and money on Office 2003

[Gerry Roston]

I was really quite excite about Office 2003. WHen I first started it up, it
looked great, But then I discovered that some pin-headed moron at MS decided
to make help completely and totally useless. On line help is totally
worthless - I often work disconnected from the net. Also, the ability to
search for topics is signifcantly worse than under Office 2000/XP. This is
by far and away the absolute stupidest thing that anyone at MS has ever
done.

I will be telling ALL of my clients to stick with Office XP. With help being
as totally useless as it is, Office 2003 is garbage, despite any possible
benefits that it might offer.

You've been warned.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Sorry to hear your review of it. I, on the other hand, find it quite an
improvement over Office 2000, a slight improvement over Office XP, and the
Outlook client worth the price of the upgrade.

You can configure help to work offline but I will agree that the Help files
have been the orphan of the Office Development Team for quite some time. It
seems that the Help files are left to the last minute and little time is
spent on them since they are the last to be developed, based on the final
feature set. Unforutnately, in Outlook, there are STILL help topics that do
not apply to the current product that reside in Help.

Hopefully, this year, some of the MVPs will get a chance to really hold
MSFT's feet to the fire when they meet with MSFT in April. Time will tell.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, Gerry Roston asked:

| I was really quite excite about Office 2003. WHen I first started it
| up, it looked great, But then I discovered that some pin-headed moron
| at MS decided to make help completely and totally useless. On line
| help is totally worthless - I often work disconnected from the net.
| Also, the ability to search for topics is signifcantly worse than
| under Office 2000/XP. This is by far and away the absolute stupidest
| thing that anyone at MS has ever done.
|
| I will be telling ALL of my clients to stick with Office XP. With
| help being as totally useless as it is, Office 2003 is garbage,
| despite any possible benefits that it might offer.
|
| You've been warned.

 

[Grumpy Aero Guy]

I agree... I have a high speed persistent inet connection, and help is

USELESS.

I love Off2003, but the lack of extensive help, either on, or off-line, is
pathetic.

Microsoft missed the boat here. I wish you had the option of loading off
line help, or not.

frustrating...............

 

[clintonG]

One the other hand, there's persons like myself who see the new
help system as the emerging state-of-the-art. Granted, I think the user
interface for help needs to be improved to provide support for both
circumstantial and context aware personalization. I don't for example
feel the slow response times as others may because I have broadband

Would reading a similar discussion in this newsgroup be helpful?

SEE: "Help" in Office 2003 2/10/2004

--
<%= Clinton Gallagher
A/E/C Consulting, Web Design, e-Commerce Software Development
Wauwatosa, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin USA
NET (e-mail address removed)
URL http://www.metromilwaukee.com/clintongallagher/

LaGarde StoreFront 5 Affiliate: e-Commerce Solutions
SEE: http://www.storefront.net/default.asp?REFERER=-201499070

 

[Google]

I have to agree that MS Office 2003 isn't worth it, despite I like the
SPAM protection feature. One of the fustrating things is that I
periodically have to have all the e-mails out to a text file. When I
save them out in 2002, I get the following (notice there's no message
text):

From: CareerBuilder.com [[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2004 2:17 AM
To: Non Posting E-mail Removed
Subject: Your Personal Search Agent Results for Friday, Jan 17

From: CareerBuilder.com [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2004 1:31 AM
To: Non Posting E-mail Removed
Subject: Your Personal Search Agent Results for Saturday, Jan 18

From: CareerBuilder.com [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2004 1:31 AM
To: Non Posting E-mail Removed
Subject: Your Personal Search Agent Results for Saturday, Jan 18

However, if I use the EXACT SAME DATA FILE on another computer that's
identical (software wise), except that it has Office XP on it, I get
the text of the above messages.

Keep in mind, that although I only show three messages above, the
approximate number of messages that lose their text is 37%. Luckily,
the way I build my computer, I use Norton Ghost, and I will be
reverting back to XP, and it will only take me about 2 hours TOTAL.
This includes saving current data, restoring the computer to a just
before I installed office, install office, apply updates, and put the
old data back on.

I have found SPAM INSPECTOR (http://www.giantcompany.com/) that
exceeds the SPAM protection capabilities in Outlook 2003.

I also don't like that by default, it groups messages by date. I have
to go into each folder and turn it off. However, if I create a new
folder, bingo, it's turned on, and I haven't been able to locate where
to turn this feature off.

I also don't like the way it sets up the panels initially in Outlook.
Basically it looks like crap.

In one of the posts someone called a person at MS a "pinhead", because
supposedly the help files are on line. There is a setting that under
the help session that you can supposedly turn this feature off. Since
I have broadband, it's not an issue for me, however I did disconnect
my cable, and it didn't try to connect. So I guess that the person
that made that post doesn't know what he (or she) was talking about.

Overall, I'm disappointed in Office 2003.


<other messages removed for brevity>

 

[Martin]

I was really quite excite about Office 2003. WHen I first started it up, it
looked great, But then I discovered that some pin-headed moron at MS decided
to make help completely and totally useless. On line help is totally
worthless - I often work disconnected from the net. Also, the ability to
search for topics is signifcantly worse than under Office 2000/XP. This is
by far and away the absolute stupidest thing that anyone at MS has ever
done.

I will be telling ALL of my clients to stick with Office XP. With help being
as totally useless as it is, Office 2003 is garbage, despite any possible
benefits that it might offer.

You've been warned.

Make that another vote against 2003!
I also find it more than little unstable compared to 2002. I have gone back
to 2002 and won't be upgrading in the future, unless there is some form of
money-back guarantee.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

There is a method whereby you can preview Office releases without having to
buy them - it's called the CPP beta program.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, Martin asked:

| || I was really quite excite about Office 2003. WHen I first started it
|| up, it looked great, But then I discovered that some pin-headed
|| moron at MS decided to make help completely and totally useless. On
|| line help is totally worthless - I often work disconnected from the
|| net. Also, the ability to search for topics is signifcantly worse
|| than under Office 2000/XP. This is by far and away the absolute
|| stupidest thing that anyone at MS has ever done.
||
|| I will be telling ALL of my clients to stick with Office XP. With
|| help being as totally useless as it is, Office 2003 is garbage,
|| despite any possible benefits that it might offer.
||
|| You've been warned.
||
|| --
|| Gerry Roston
|| (e-mail address removed)
|| 734-516-6715
||
||
|
| Make that another vote against 2003!
| I also find it more than little unstable compared to 2002. I have
| gone back to 2002 and won't be upgrading in the future, unless there
| is some form of money-back guarantee.

 

[kiln]

I was really quite excite about Office 2003. WHen I first started it up, it
looked great, But then I discovered that some pin-headed moron at MS decided
to make help completely and totally useless. On line help is totally
worthless - I often work disconnected from the net. Also, the ability to
search for topics is signifcantly worse than under Office 2000/XP. This is
by far and away the absolute stupidest thing that anyone at MS has ever
done.

I will be telling ALL of my clients to stick with Office XP. With help being
as totally useless as it is, Office 2003 is garbage, despite any possible
benefits that it might offer.

You've been warned.

If you want to see a really good help system from MS, look at Help for
Office 97. It was great. At least the Access part was. Starting with
Office 2000 Help was redesigned by a bunch of morons at Microsoft. The
utility dropped about 80%. I'm sorry to hear it's fallen even further.
Office 2003 seems to be more proof that Microsoft has completely lost
it's touch.

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

feature set. Unforutnately, in Outlook, there are STILL help topics that
do

not apply to the current product that reside in Help.

Please send me the list. I'll see that they're removed.

--
Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

Microsoft missed the boat here. I wish you had the option of loading off

line help, or not.

You do. You can easily configure your system to only search for Offline
help; use the Service Options. The quickest way is by clicking Help |
Customer Feedback Options, and clicking the "Online content" item.

You can also just hit the stop button on any online request.

--
Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Google]

All of you probably figured this out, but below where I said "When I
save them out in 2002", it was suppose to be 2003.

 

[Scott McDonald]

"You can configure help to work offline but I will agree that the Help files
have been the orphan of the Office Development Team for quite some time. "

And the fact that you have to pay per call to actually talk to Microsoft
about the issues. We'd be willing to pay higher license fees (software
assurance anyone?) to actually get support for Office but Microsoft doesn't
even offer such a thing.

I must say, the pain in the ass attributes of Office 2003 far out weigh the
increased functionality of Outlook 2003 thus making it not worth the
upgrade. I have never EVER seen Microsoft goof something up so badly since
Windows ME.

 

[Scott McDonald]

"You can configure help to work offline but I will agree that the Help files
have been the orphan of the Office Development Team for quite some time. "

And the fact that you have to pay per call to actually talk to Microsoft
about the issues. We'd be willing to pay higher license fees (software
assurance anyone?) to actually get support for Office but Microsoft doesn't
even offer such a thing.

I must say, the pain in the ass attributes of Office 2003 far out weigh the
increased functionality of Outlook 2003 thus making it not worth the
upgrade. I have never EVER seen Microsoft goof something up so badly since
Windows ME.