MS Office 2003 Help System

[Eric Snyder]

I just purchased Office 2003 today, and am dismayed that, for me at
least, the help system has continued to slide into yet another less usable
form.
1. I was surprised to see no Index. Indexes are great for seeing a
concise view of the subject you are looking for, rather than the hoard of
information that searches can turn up.
2. Personally, I like having the whole help system in a separete window,
that behaves like a separet window. I do a lot more clicking and resizing now
than with the old Alt-Tab.
3. It would be nice to go back to the very handy feature of saving help
articles in a 'favorites' list, viewable from the help form navigation panel.

Maybe MS should hire a bunch of librarians or professional term-paper
writers to design thier help system. It seems that the current design team is
more concerned about the way that it looks, rather than it's functionality.

 

[Beth Melton]

I couldn't agree more - you should see the list of UI issues the MVPs
compiled. ;-)

You may accomplish the feel you are after if you use the Auto Tile
command found in the Help window (not the task pane).

And you can create a list of favorites but, of course, not as easy as
using a Bookmark or Favorites command. Right-click the Help topic and
select Properties. There you'll find an Address (URL) you can
copy/paste for future reference.

The concept of keeping Help content updated is great - we've been
asking for something like this for years. I can only hope they have
heard our feedback and plan on redesigning the Help interface.

--
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

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