Re: Is anybody else disgusted about the piece of junk called Micro

Hi, Lee,

I'm mostly using Vista, so I've no clue about OE's spelling. Vista uses Windows Mail instead of OE, and handles spelling just fine (and I've kept Word 2003 and its proofing tools on my Windows XP machines, so I haven't noticed anything missing).

But, using Word 2007's spelling checker, I'm not seeing what you're seeing. It's not tagging correctly spelled words incorrectly and ignoring misspellings. Spelling, for what it's worth, is working fine here -- and we have Office 2007 installed on four different computers -- two running Vista, and two running Windows XP. On three of these, I use English, Spanish, and French proofing tools, and all are working correctly.

As for the grammar checker being a joke... I agree completely, but it's nothing new. I've never seen any version of Word's (or any other program's) grammar checker that's even worth turning on. I suspect that artificial intelligence is still a decade or more away from being able to be helpful in the grammar department. The new "contextual spelling" checker is about the only useful new spelling/grammar feature, since it does seem to flag *some* words that are used incorrectly. Even the contextual checker, however, misses a lot more than it catches.

I've never been what could be described as a "loyal Microsoft customer." I'm a critical consumer. I get annoyed and frustrated, just like anyone else, but I like to dig until I find a solution to any given problem, or until I hit a brick wall. I suspect that most other MVPs are very much the same.

Office 2007 has its good points, and its bad points. But, at this point for me, it has enough good points that I've chosen to stick with it.

Good points for me include: instant search in Outlook, more robust file formats (harder to break and accidentally corrupt), live preview formatting, better chart/graphics creation tools, the ability to blog (with automatic picture handling) directly from Word, much better equation editor, better ability to set Word-wide formatting defaults, bibliography feature in Word, use of themes and style sets, and the addition of trusted locations (which makes working with macros a LOT less frustrating).

Bad points include: lack of customizability in the UI, less accessible style tools in Word, still-broken numbering and master document features, horribly confusing handling/finding/setting of options, and too many features that are buried too far down in the UI, requiring many more steps to access than in Office 2003. Much of this I can solve with the QAT and custom keyboard assignments, easing the frustration a bit for me personally.

Under Vista, the file dialogs are now all integrated into the OS, making it ridiculously easy to add frequently-accessed folders to the Favorite Links area (Vista's replacement for the Places feature). This, along with other new features in Vista, adds immeasurably to my own productivity and how I work, making a Vista/Office 2007 combination a net productivity booster for me.

But, as in all things computing-wise, YMMV. If I were still using Windows XP (it's what I use on my laptop when traveling), I suspect I wouldn't be quite so sanguine about Office 2007 (except for Outlook 2007, which IMO is vastly improved over 2003).


--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com


"Lee" <bunwillis@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:50FFA4D8-20FE-4F06-A61C-BC5C3BF4C37B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> The Office 2007 software suite is a productivity stopper. First it > only
> provides a French dictionary for OE7. Then while in Word 2007, both > the
> English grammar and spell checkers are very poor. It tags simple > english
> words as incorrect and misspellings of simple three letter words as
correct.
> The grammar checker is simply a joke. The spell checker is an even > worse
> joke on Microsoft's loyal customers. Fire the fools that signed-off on
this
> conglomeration of bad programs.
> Speaking from 30 plus years experience developing government command > and
> control software, I would have been fired for fielding this bundle of
useless
> zeros and ones. Although I have been a loyal Microsoft customer since > its
> beginning, I am very angry about this.
> -- > Lee0078



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