T
turtlethom
Dear Mr. Bob Greenblatt and Mr. Phillip Jones,
I did not mean to make the print preview function in Excel 2004 for Mac seem simplistic. I did say you could "make corrections" and "generally troubleshoot" a workbook as a way of avoiding detailing the many things that could be tweaked from the Print Preview menu in the old version. But you are right, Mr. Jones, there is almost no formatting issue that you could not address in Print Preview 2004. And so it became an extremely valuable timesaver (and paper saver). As Mr. Jones suggested, now you have to go through many, many more steps to achieve the same result.
I would suggest, Mr. Greenblatt, that perhaps you never had occasion to use the old Print Preview function. I am sure that if you were familiar with its many capabilities you would not as quickly have decided it was removed because "printing is a function of the OS". To someone knowledgeable, that statement is misleading at best and I am reasonably sure that you would not mislead Mactopia users with forethought or foreknowledge.
The Print Preview function 2004 had less to do with printing and more to do with the ability to quickly and efficiently correct any and all formatting mistakes. Those mistakes, of course, become more visible in a print preview mode and the ability to make those adjustments right from Print Preview constituted a very valuable timesaver.
Quick and efficient functionality would certainly be at the top of most programmers list of Important Things To Maintain When Upgrading Software, so for Microsoft to glibly and rigidly proclaim that PRINTING IS A FUNCTION OF THE OS AND ERGO... NO MORE PRINT PREVIEW is all very nice but does not address the reality which is that the removal of this particular function surely qualifies as a Downgrade in a piece of software to which I thought I was Upgrading.
I hope that MS will put Print Preview back in the next upgrade of Office 2008 for Mac, otherwise I will return mine to my vender and go back Office 2004 for Mac and be on the lookout for appropriate substitutes in the marketplace.
Mr. Greenblatt, can you comment on any of this or on whether some of these deletions might be addressed in the next upgrade.
Thanks,
Thomas
I did not mean to make the print preview function in Excel 2004 for Mac seem simplistic. I did say you could "make corrections" and "generally troubleshoot" a workbook as a way of avoiding detailing the many things that could be tweaked from the Print Preview menu in the old version. But you are right, Mr. Jones, there is almost no formatting issue that you could not address in Print Preview 2004. And so it became an extremely valuable timesaver (and paper saver). As Mr. Jones suggested, now you have to go through many, many more steps to achieve the same result.
I would suggest, Mr. Greenblatt, that perhaps you never had occasion to use the old Print Preview function. I am sure that if you were familiar with its many capabilities you would not as quickly have decided it was removed because "printing is a function of the OS". To someone knowledgeable, that statement is misleading at best and I am reasonably sure that you would not mislead Mactopia users with forethought or foreknowledge.
The Print Preview function 2004 had less to do with printing and more to do with the ability to quickly and efficiently correct any and all formatting mistakes. Those mistakes, of course, become more visible in a print preview mode and the ability to make those adjustments right from Print Preview constituted a very valuable timesaver.
Quick and efficient functionality would certainly be at the top of most programmers list of Important Things To Maintain When Upgrading Software, so for Microsoft to glibly and rigidly proclaim that PRINTING IS A FUNCTION OF THE OS AND ERGO... NO MORE PRINT PREVIEW is all very nice but does not address the reality which is that the removal of this particular function surely qualifies as a Downgrade in a piece of software to which I thought I was Upgrading.
I hope that MS will put Print Preview back in the next upgrade of Office 2008 for Mac, otherwise I will return mine to my vender and go back Office 2004 for Mac and be on the lookout for appropriate substitutes in the marketplace.
Mr. Greenblatt, can you comment on any of this or on whether some of these deletions might be addressed in the next upgrade.
Thanks,
Thomas