How to best monitor threads on this site

J

John James

I'm looking for a way to reduce the time spent on this site scanning
threads of interest for new postings.

Currently I'm accessing this site through Excelforum.com, selecting My
Profile (through quick links), finding all posts by me and clicking on
my entry in each one individually and scanning to see if new posts have
been made. This is time intensive. Usually nothing new is posted and
I've just wasted that search time. Is there a better way?

And what is the best way of highlighting threads I've not posted to but
which I want to monitor for new postings? I want to cull out anything
without new postings.
 
J

John James

Thanks, JE McGimpsey

I've downloaded & installed Agent Free as a newsreader.

Agent is not picking up all postings from the excel newsgroups (e.g.
microsoft.public.excel.misc). It may miss some parts of a thread, or
the thread altogether. Don't understand why. Haven't found a pattern
for the parts of threads not picked up.

Any ideas of how to fix or where to look for solution?

TIA
 
J

John James

Does anyone have a newsreader that they recommend?

Agent was useless because it randomly downloaded half of the postings
and ignored the rest. And there's no help on this issue. Luckily I
tried before buying, so it was only my time that was lost!
 
G

Gord Dibben

John

I am sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Forte Agent.

I have used it for years through many version upgrades.

Currently using 2.0.................tried 3.0 but did not care for the
interface.

Have never had a problem with downloading postings.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP
 
P

Peo Sjoblom

John,

I use OE but it really sucks, I am just so used to it. I have also talked to
a lot of people quite skilled when it comes to newsreaders and they say
Agent is far superior to OE in all regards. It sounds to me as either a
setting that you have missed or server problems. Others I have heard
recommended are Xnews, NewsXpress and Mozilla

I have never heard anyone recommending OE


--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

http://nwexcelsolutions.com
 
J

John James

Thanks Gord and Peo,

Forte Agent appears to be off the hook.

I configured Outlook Express to point to microsoft.public.excel.misc
and it successfully connected as well. But it had the same problem of
not seeing many of the postings - only slightly worse. It is not a
timing issue.

I rang my ISP provider and they said that it is not a problem with
their service because there is a connection. They suggested it was a
Microsoft problem.

I rang Microsoft and they said they wouldn't investigate it unless I
paid them a fee. I explained the only reason I was looking to use a
newsreader was to manage access this group - and the only reason for
accessing this group was to provide FREE, VOLUNTEER support on a
Microsoft product - Excel.

Even though I explained I was only asking for their help to help them
by providing this free support, they decided that I would have to pay
them to do this!!!!!!! They kept me on the line for about an hour
(largely listening to their music whilst waiting to speak to the next
person who would not help). They wouldn't even point me in a direction
to investigate.

Not impressed, Microsoft!
 
D

Dave Peterson

If you're going to use OE as your newsreader, you may want to ask in one of the
newsgroups dedicated to OE. Maybe it's just a setting that needs to be
changed--no, I don't use OE as my newsreader.
 
J

John James

Dave said:
If you're going to use OE as your newsreader, you may want to ask in on
of the newsgroups dedicated to OE.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dave, Great advice. If only Microsoft took lessons fro
you....

This response (following your advice) seems to explain the problem:

When you post a news message, it is initially only available on th
news
server that you used. Depending on how busy the news server is, it
might take a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours before the
message is available for reading. And only people who use the sam
news
server can read your post, at that point.

Periodically, the news server contacts one or more other news servers.
It passes on any new posts that it has in public news groups and i
turn
receives any new posts that the other servers have. If the received
posts are for a news group that the server carries, the server keeps a
copy. In this fashion, a news post is propagated to other new
servers
around the world. This is not entirely reliable. It can take day
for
a message to make it to another news server. And many messages
disappear into the Internet bit bucket. If you post 5 messages o
news
server "A", posts 1, 2, 4 and 5 might make it to news server "B" an
1,
3 and 4 might make it to news server "C".

If the owner of a news server is interested in getting most of th
news
posts, they will make sure that have news feeds from multiple othe
news
servers which also have multiple other feeds. Some news servers
routinely get only about 50% of the news posts. A better news server
would get more than 90%. There is no way to guarantee 100% coverage.

The owner (system administrator) of each news server decides which
newsgroups to carry. It is impractical for a news server to carr
every
newsgroup (there are tens of thousands of news groups with millions of
new messages every day totally gigabytes). The newsgroups carried is
based on the news server's target audience. Also, the administrator
determines how long the messages should be kept. This often varies by
newsgroup. Discussion groups tend to be several weeks, whereas binary
groups tend towards several days due to their larger disk space
requirements. Also a news server may filter out messages based o
size
and/or content.

For best results, use the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server fo
reading
and posting messages regarding help with Microsoft products. This is
the news server that most of the regulars use. You'll get more timely
messages, and miss fewer of them.
[color]

So it seems the prime problem probably relates to inadequacies in th
feeds received by my ISP.

Simple to test you would think? I'll just replace them wit
"msnews.microsoft.com" as my news server - after all this grou
(microsoft.public.excel.misc) provides high volume quality support o
microsoft excel problems.

Guess what? Microsoft doesn't support this Excel support group o
their news server!!!! Even though this forum is supported by MVPs.
Unbelievable. They apparently want us to pay them $50 a pop for the
to tell us that whatever the issue was is not their fault.

Purchasing a better service might solve the problem, but who knows? A
this stage the newsreader option isn't an option.

The excelforum.com site, unlike other forums, unfortunately doesn'
have a "new posts on my threads" option. I'll test using th
subscribed threads option here but it looks pretty unworkable. I'l
also test Google groups - with a mouse click I can easily tag message
there and see all tagged threads with a mouse click, and they receiv
postings quicker
Click to expand...
 
D

Dave Peterson

I connect directly to the msnews servers. I see the .misc newsgroup without a
problem.

If OE is your default newsreader (set in MS Internet Explorer under
tools|internet options|programs|Newsgroups), you should be able to paste this
into MSIE's address bar and see it in OE.

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.excel.misc

(or just click on that link if you're really lucky <vbg>.)


=======
As much as OE is put down as a newsreader, lots of people use it. (I like
Netscape 4.79 (from 1962, IIRC!).)

From Tushar Mehta's site:
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/ngstats/overview-newsreaders.html

It looks like the MS web based interface is the biggest authoring tool, but OE
comes in second (although the stats are a year old.)
 
D

David J. Braden

So now, consider another reader <bg> Forte Agent is nice; I have settled
on Mozilla's Thunderbird, which is *way* ahead of OE straight out of the
box, so to speak, especially when you add a couple of extensions (e.g.,
QuoteCollapse, Quote Colors, NestedQuote Remover, Mouse Gestures).

Regards, and Hi Dave!
Dave Braden
 
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