Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
Hi :) Look i'm sure we are all quite sophisticated MS Office users, as Carl probably is too. I, for one, have often taught people how to use MSO and marked exams for ECDL and other training courses. I know for certain at least 1 other here has too and i'm reasonably certain that almost everyone else either already had a high level of skill with MSO or has learned shed-loads since using OOo, LO,or AOO (or both). So i'm sure we can all find work-arounds for the frustrations he shared with the rest of us. I thought Marianne-x's was the best for item 1 but Anne-ology's a close 2nd. Mine would have been painful = to cutpaste the formula into a text file. I think it is good for us to know more than the average MSO user and to stay ahead by sharing some of these ideas but often we learn just because we have experienced radically different approaches to things whereas MSO users have stayed blinkered. What we normally hear on this mailing-list is noobs frustrations with LO. It's kinda what we are here for. It's our job (most of us volunteers but unpaid work is still work) to point them towards decent document and even directly help them both with their specific problem and maybe help them realign their thinking so that they can go with the flow more easily rather than fighting against the tide by trying to apply bad-habits picked up through years of MS (ab)use and then grumbling that they can't do idiotic things. So, it makes a nice change to hear some of the grumbles about MSO, especially because they were different from the usual grumbles (as neatly stated by null). I agree with Carl that it's probably not a good idea to have another rant-fest this week but they can be fun. The thing is that we have to work alongside MSO users especially those of us at some stage of a migration and we don't want to make the list appear too hateful and unwelcoming. So, if anyone feels the need to rant please can they make it humorous? Regards from Tom :) On 8 February 2014 04:56, Carl Paulsen carlpaul...@comcast.net wrote: I suppose you're right. With some work I could have found a workaround, and I appreciate your idea. My issue is much more about the way MSO is set up by default, and changes to that are not especially apparent. But your point is well taken. Carl On 2/7/14 11:26 PM, marianne-x wrote: On 2/7/2014 9:10 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! I have no experience with M$O specifically, and have no interest in making excuses for its failings, but with those s.sheets that I do use, all you have to do in this situation is put a quote at the start of the formula, thereby making it text. The formula should then be preserved as text, and can be saved as such, until you want to work on it again; removing the quote makes it back into formula. Isn't that a reasonable work-around for their unreasonable default action? -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
sounds like an easy work-around; which would also work as a bookmark to show where you left off ;-) From: marianne-x mxkeat...@comcast.net Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:26 PM Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes To: users@global.libreoffice.org On 2/7/2014 9:10 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! I have no experience with M$O specifically, and have no interest in making excuses for its failings, but with those s.sheets that I do use, all you have to do in this situation is put a quote at the start of the formula, thereby making it text. The formula should then be preserved as text, and can be saved as such, until you want to work on it again; removing the quote makes it back into formula. Isn't that a reasonable work-around for their unreasonable default action? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
Just a rant here from someone who is reasonably sophisticated at both LO/OO and MS Office. I've had to use MS Office for work lately, and I've run into a TON of frustrations. Biggest recent frustrations: 1. The auto-fill and other aides in MSO make it much HARDER to construct formula fields in Excel. And if I get a formula wrong, it won't let me leave it in the cell for later troubleshooting (with a #NA value as LO/OO does). I have to either fix it or erase it. But what if I can't fix it before I have to move on to other things? 2. The smart text select system, which tries to anticipate what you want to select, forces me to select the period of the previous sentence when trying to move a sentence to a new location. I used to be able to de-select the period by selecting the text from the end to the beginning, then moving the cursor back off of the period toward the sentence I want to move. Not working right now. 3. Biggest frustration (and I've heard talk of this but not experienced it until last few days) - I've been saving a ton of small spreadsheets as CSV to move into a database that requires CSV file types. But if I have to open them to re-edit, about half of them say they are the wrong file type (extension is .csv, but Excel thinks they are SYLK). They open fine, but Excel, which moments before had saved the file as CSV, now thinks it's SYLK. HTF does excel NOT know its own file type? Rant done. Just thought I'd share specific frustrations with LO users. To be fair, there are a few minor things I've appreciated in MSO, but the frustrations are legion. -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
Can you go into the properties to turn off the auto-fills? - that's always been my solution. [see further comments interspersed below] From: Carl Paulsen carlpaul...@comcast.net Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 1:04 PM Subject: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes To: users@global.libreoffice.org users@global.libreoffice.org Just a rant here from someone who is reasonably sophisticated at both LO/OO and MS Office. I've had to use MS Office for work lately, and I've run into a TON of frustrations. Biggest recent frustrations: 1. The auto-fill and other aides in MSO make it much HARDER to construct formula fields in Excel. And if I get a formula wrong, it won't let me leave it in the cell for later troubleshooting (with a #NA value as LO/OO does). I have to either fix it or erase it. But what if I can't fix it before I have to move on to other things? [if you're able to turn off those 'auto's then you should be able to work as you desire] 2. The smart text select system, which tries to anticipate what you want to select, forces me to select the period of the previous sentence when trying to move a sentence to a new location. I used to be able to de-select the period by selecting the text from the end to the beginning, then moving the cursor back off of the period toward the sentence I want to move. Not working right now. [I'm not sure I understand but if you're attempting to copy, or move, then paste elsewhere, then there must be a 'bug' in the system ;-) ] 3. Biggest frustration (and I've heard talk of this but not experienced it until last few days) - I've been saving a ton of small spreadsheets as CSV to move into a database that requires CSV file types. But if I have to open them to re-edit, about half of them say they are the wrong file type (extension is .csv, but Excel thinks they are SYLK). They open fine, but Excel, which moments before had saved the file as CSV, now thinks it's SYLK. HTF does excel NOT know its own file type? [haven't a clue here] Rant done. Just thought I'd share specific frustrations with LO users. To be fair, there are a few minor things I've appreciated in MSO, but the frustrations are legion. [I agree] -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 [very pretty area - especially in the colourful fall] -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
On 2/7/14 4:24 PM, anne-ology wrote: Can you go into the properties to turn off the auto-fills? - that's always been my solution. True enough. But my point is it's set up to work oddly. 1. The auto-fill and other aides in MSO make it much HARDER to construct formula fields in Excel. [if you're able to turn off those 'auto's then you should be able to work as you desire] Actually, it's more than the auto-fill. The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! 2. The smart text select system, [I'm not sure I understand but if you're attempting to copy, or move, then paste elsewhere, then there must be a 'bug' in the system ;-) ] It's a bit specific, and not a bug (it has behaved this way for many releases and is, I think, intended as a function, though it acts more like a bug to me). Yes, it's copy and move. Take this paragraph text and copy to MSO. Then highlight one sentence from before the first letter to the last. It will highlight not just the sentence intended, but also the proceeding period. At least that's how it works with my two-spaces between sentence style (which is the original standard for all typing, which MSO has chosen to dictate is no longer necessary, but which really does help to define sentence and paragraph structure IMHO). 3. Biggest frustration (and I've heard talk of this but not experienced it until last few days) - I've been saving a ton of small spreadsheets as CSV to move into a database that requires CSV file types. But if I have to open them to re-edit, about half of them say they are the wrong file type (extension is .csv, but Excel thinks they are SYLK). They open fine, but Excel, which moments before had saved the file as CSV, now thinks it's SYLK. HTF does excel NOT know its own file type? [haven't a clue here] Yes, and that's the point. Excel apparently hasn't a clue either. Take a spreadsheet file, save as CSV (the Excel version, not the plain text or Mac version), then open again with Excel. Roughly 50% of the times Excel fails to open these. I don't have a clue what's going on, but it seems like Excel should understand the format that it just saved the file to, so that it can re-open it. Especially for something as simple as a CSV file. Note too that I tried to open another CSV file today, slightly different situation, and Excel chose to ignore the CSV format and open it as if it were one column/field of data, ignoring the commas and quotes delineating the different fields. Rant done. Just thought I'd share specific frustrations with LO users. To be fair, there are a few minor things I've appreciated in MSO, but the frustrations are legion. Dover, NH 03820 [very pretty area - especially in the colourful fall] Indeed! SNOWY and cold now though (which is good if you're willing to get out in it as I am). -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
On 02/07/2014 02:04 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: Just a rant here from someone who is reasonably sophisticated at both LO/OO and MS Office. I've had to use MS Office for work lately, and I've run into a TON of frustrations. Biggest recent frustrations: 1. The auto-fill and other aides in MSO make it much HARDER to construct formula fields in Excel. And if I get a formula wrong, it won't let me leave it in the cell for later troubleshooting (with a #NA value as LO/OO does). I have to either fix it or erase it. But what if I can't fix it before I have to move on to other things? 2. The smart text select system, which tries to anticipate what you want to select, forces me to select the period of the previous sentence when trying to move a sentence to a new location. I used to be able to de-select the period by selecting the text from the end to the beginning, then moving the cursor back off of the period toward the sentence I want to move. Not working right now. 3. Biggest frustration (and I've heard talk of this but not experienced it until last few days) - I've been saving a ton of small spreadsheets as CSV to move into a database that requires CSV file types. But if I have to open them to re-edit, about half of them say they are the wrong file type (extension is .csv, but Excel thinks they are SYLK). They open fine, but Excel, which moments before had saved the file as CSV, now thinks it's SYLK. HTF does excel NOT know its own file type? Rant done. Just thought I'd share specific frustrations with LO users. To be fair, there are a few minor things I've appreciated in MSO, but the frustrations are legion. Have you seen MS Office 2013 yet? They have removed all the color from the ribbon and menu bars. Everything is white background with quite light gray icons. Even the scroll bar is difficult to find. MS is lost in the concept of making all interfaces look the same on Windows Phone, Surface, and desktop. MS Office 2013 totally ignores the setting and scheme that you have on your desktop. I'm talking serious eye strain. People have been complaining about it for more than a year but MS says they have no plans to change it. LibreOffice is so much better in many respects. -- _ °v° /(_)\ ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registered Linux user No #267004 https://linuxcounter.net/ -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
Hello, I thought I should add to the rant: If you think Microsoft Excel not being able to import formats it exports is bad, consider Microsoft's disastrous OpenXML standards. Notice I said standards, not standard. .docx, .pptx, and other files with x at the end are stored in the Microsoft OpenXML format. There are three different standards--for the same file type! Depending on the operating system and Microsoft Office version, a different XML standard is used. This can cause a .docx file, for example, not to render correctly in Microsoft Word 2013 if it were saved using 2010; even the operating system is a factor in which XML standard is used. So, sometimes, Microsoft Office can't open Microsoft Office files. Not to mention the extra features that don't work, no one uses, and takes up valuable disk space, such as PDF Reflow. When will Microsoft realize that you can't reflow a PDF? The implementation for each OpenXML standard is nearly 6,000 pages long! So, it really doesn't do what Microsoft said it would do; they made the system so complex to try to force more people to using Microsoft Office, and now their products can't read files. Regards, xmlhttprequest.o...@gmail.com On 2/7/2014 9:10 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: On 2/7/14 4:24 PM, anne-ology wrote: Can you go into the properties to turn off the auto-fills? - that's always been my solution. True enough. But my point is it's set up to work oddly. 1. The auto-fill and other aides in MSO make it much HARDER to construct formula fields in Excel. [if you're able to turn off those 'auto's then you should be able to work as you desire] Actually, it's more than the auto-fill. The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! 2. The smart text select system, [I'm not sure I understand but if you're attempting to copy, or move, then paste elsewhere, then there must be a 'bug' in the system ;-) ] It's a bit specific, and not a bug (it has behaved this way for many releases and is, I think, intended as a function, though it acts more like a bug to me). Yes, it's copy and move. Take this paragraph text and copy to MSO. Then highlight one sentence from before the first letter to the last. It will highlight not just the sentence intended, but also the proceeding period. At least that's how it works with my two-spaces between sentence style (which is the original standard for all typing, which MSO has chosen to dictate is no longer necessary, but which really does help to define sentence and paragraph structure IMHO). 3. Biggest frustration (and I've heard talk of this but not experienced it until last few days) - I've been saving a ton of small spreadsheets as CSV to move into a database that requires CSV file types. But if I have to open them to re-edit, about half of them say they are the wrong file type (extension is .csv, but Excel thinks they are SYLK). They open fine, but Excel, which moments before had saved the file as CSV, now thinks it's SYLK. HTF does excel NOT know its own file type? [haven't a clue here] Yes, and that's the point. Excel apparently hasn't a clue either. Take a spreadsheet file, save as CSV (the Excel version, not the plain text or Mac version), then open again with Excel. Roughly 50% of the times Excel fails to open these. I don't have a clue what's going on, but it seems like Excel should understand the format that it just saved the file to, so that it can re-open it. Especially for something as simple as a CSV file. Note too that I tried to open another CSV file today, slightly different situation, and Excel chose to ignore the CSV format and open it as if it were one column/field of data, ignoring the commas and quotes delineating the different fields. Rant done. Just thought I'd share specific frustrations with LO users. To be fair, there are a few minor things I've appreciated in MSO, but the frustrations are legion. Dover, NH 03820 [very pretty area - especially in the colourful fall] Indeed! SNOWY and cold now though (which is good if you're willing to get out in it as I am). -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
Mark LaPierre wrote: MS is lost in the concept of making all interfaces look the same on Windows Phone, Surface, and desktop. MS Office 2013 totally ignores the setting and scheme that you have on your desktop. I'm talking serious eye strain. People have been complaining about it for more than a year but MS says they have no plans to change it. I guess they forgot that some people, with poor vision, need high contrast to see things. My vision is fine, but I find some people have no concept of making things readable. For example I have seen grey text on light blue background that was a real struggle to read. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
On 2/7/2014 9:10 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! I have no experience with M$O specifically, and have no interest in making excuses for its failings, but with those s.sheets that I do use, all you have to do in this situation is put a quote at the start of the formula, thereby making it text. The formula should then be preserved as text, and can be saved as such, until you want to work on it again; removing the quote makes it back into formula. Isn't that a reasonable work-around for their unreasonable default action? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
OK, to this and other recent posts, please note that my intent wasn't to open a rant-fest. I have found myself wondering about the claims about file structure being a problem even for MSO itself. My original post was intended to provide one example of a case where Excel saved a specific file but then couldn't re-open it without throwing a warning (unusual enough that some users might well panic about it). That plus a few other specific issues I've encountered that make me like LO/OO even more than I did before. While I've read about the issue of the OpenXML standard issues, I hadn't experienced it yet, nor have I read of specific cases where someone had that experience (and I don't mean second hand or less). If anyone wants to add to this, may I humbly suggest you provide specific examples of issues _you've_ had (not that you've read or heard about). E.g., I saved a file as CSV, and within 5 minutes tried to reopen it but Excel failed to do so. It gave me the following error: That provides a specific situation that others can test. The more specific the better. But to say the open XML standard changes so that Excel can't open it just doesn't translate to the general user, even if it IS true. Again, specific examples help. Carl On 2/7/14 10:47 PM, null wrote: Hello, I thought I should add to the rant: If you think Microsoft Excel not being able to import formats it exports is bad, consider Microsoft's disastrous OpenXML standards. Notice I said standards, not standard. .docx, .pptx, and other files with x at the end are stored in the Microsoft OpenXML format. There are three different standards--for the same file type! Depending on the operating system and Microsoft Office version, a different XML standard is used. This can cause a .docx file, for example, not to render correctly in Microsoft Word 2013 if it were saved using 2010; even the operating system is a factor in which XML standard is used. So, sometimes, Microsoft Office can't open Microsoft Office files. Not to mention the extra features that don't work, no one uses, and takes up valuable disk space, such as PDF Reflow. When will Microsoft realize that you can't reflow a PDF? The implementation for each OpenXML standard is nearly 6,000 pages long! So, it really doesn't do what Microsoft said it would do; they made the system so complex to try to force more people to using Microsoft Office, and now their products can't read files. Regards, xmlhttprequest.o...@gmail.com -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] MS Office woes
I suppose you're right. With some work I could have found a workaround, and I appreciate your idea. My issue is much more about the way MSO is set up by default, and changes to that are not especially apparent. But your point is well taken. Carl On 2/7/14 11:26 PM, marianne-x wrote: On 2/7/2014 9:10 PM, Carl Paulsen wrote: The biggest problem is that if the formula doesn't meet MSO's standards, you can't leave it in place to work on later. I've had formulas which took me days to work out, and if I can't leave them in place even when faulty, then I have to re-create them each time. When they are so terribly long, with many layers of nested functions, losing them is a disaster. Yet Excel prevents you from saving them unless they work. BAH! I have no experience with M$O specifically, and have no interest in making excuses for its failings, but with those s.sheets that I do use, all you have to do in this situation is put a quote at the start of the formula, thereby making it text. The formula should then be preserved as text, and can be saved as such, until you want to work on it again; removing the quote makes it back into formula. Isn't that a reasonable work-around for their unreasonable default action? -- Carl Paulsen Dover, NH 03820 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
