Powerpoint. Probably again

[Pingu]

If you do Ctrl-c, right-click paste then you should get options in the context menu on the format of the pasted stuff in Outlook.

[Jurek]

If you do Ctrl-c, right-click paste then you should get options in the context menu on the format of the pasted stuff in Outlook.

That's handy to know 

[FifeingEejit]

IF you think Powerpoint presentations are bad

I'm currently sitting through a presentation where my colleague is using notepad as his presentation tool.

[Mr Larrington]

[citoyen]

Another thing I won’t miss about my job:

I send pages to a third party supplier for approval. I send them as pdfs. For some reason, they insist in sending their feedback as PowerPoint presentations, despite me having asked them several times not to.

Even if it were any good at what it’s supposed to be for, it’s *really* bad at jobs it’s *not* designed for.

[Lightning Phil]

Another thing I won’t miss about my job:

I send pages to a third party supplier for approval. I send them as pdfs. For some reason, they insist in sending their feedback as PowerPoint presentations, despite me having asked them several times not to.

You need to setup a filter on your email.  It returns any email as rejected if it contains a file with a PowerPoint file extension.

[ian]

Sadly, the mothership uses Powerpoint for fleet-wide presentations (that includes the added edge-of-your-seat thrills of a dozen people working on the same presentation on Sharepoint) so I wouldn't get far if I rejected them all. It would be quieter though until the boss thunders.

I'm now two hours into trying to get in-line figures in Word. You'd think checking the box 'move with text' would, erm, move with text. It doesn't. This would have been a five-minute job in any sensible layout application or Pages.

[citoyen]

Another thing I won’t miss about my job:

I send pages to a third party supplier for approval. I send them as pdfs. For some reason, they insist in sending their feedback as PowerPoint presentations, despite me having asked them several times not to.

You need to setup a filter on your email.  It returns any email as rejected if it contains a file with a PowerPoint file extension.

I like your thinking! Wish I'd thought of that.

During lockdown, when I was working on my home computer, I didn't have PowerPoint - and I refused to install it - so it was easy to simply say I can't open the file, but after we returned to the office, it was easier to just deal with the sodding PP files.

Anyway, I've now left that job so it's no longer an issue. 

[FifeingEejit]

One of the various PMs being pinged around during it said "not even Notepad++, disappointed ---"

[ian]

Of the six hours spent on a report in Word today, I'd say five of them were spent fighting Word. The solution to the figures was to delete them and re-insert each.

Then I found the commenting doesn't work on a Mac, so I moved to Windows where I found that all the figures didn't display properly because the PC version of Word can't handle embedded PDFs, so I had to recreate everything as PNG.

Sigh. It's not like any of this is advanced stuff, it's basic document creation.

ETA: oh and automatically detected the document language as French and made that the default, even though every word in it is English.

[chrisbainbridge]

I can see and add comments in word on Mac. You cannot comment on text in a text box for some reason.

[ian]

It sort of works, but won't let me highlight a graphic (which I guess is probably being treated as a text box). Also, quite often it applies a comment not to the text I've selected but to a random subset of that text. It all works fine with a PC. It might be some quirk of the document, like I say, I had to delete all the figures and start again. But really, elementary stuff that just ought to work without faff.

[pcolbeck]

ETA: oh and automatically detected the document language as French and made that the default, even though every word in it is English.

We have a company Word template doc that I have to use (on Windows) that does that. It suddenly decides that French is the default language and you have to change it back to English for every paragraph after that. Drives me potty. I have spent ages trying to work out why. It starts off fine then at some point just switched to French and no matter where I poke around in styles and section settings I cant find where its been set to French. You can set everything to English and it completely ignores it for each new paragraph.

[PaulF]

Only 2 languages in a template? They spoil you.

Part of the problem is very few people understand templates; our “templates” are documents that we are expected to download from the portal, delete the example text and then start working on. Needless to say nobody does this instead taking another document that someone has produced and starting from there.

[chrisbainbridge]

if we are moving to Word and templates, can I complain about people who make "forms" on word but do not protect the document properl, put a row of ....... where wording is supposed to go, cannot use buttons, etc. They still seem to think the form will be printed and handwritten rather than completed online.  each press of tab should take me to the next entry point, not into the text of the question!!!!!!!!
and breathe

[Jaded]

space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.

SET UP TABS YOU BUCKETHEAD!!!

(and don't write all in Capitals either  )

[chrisbainbridge]

space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.space.

SET UP TABS YOU BUCKETHEAD!!!

(and don't write all in Capitals either  )

and nested bullet points that aren't!! 

[Ham]

ETA: oh and automatically detected the document language as French and made that the default, even though every word in it is English.

We have a company Word template doc that I have to use (on Windows) that does that. It suddenly decides that French is the default language and you have to change it back to English for every paragraph after that. Drives me potty. I have spent ages trying to work out why. It starts off fine then at some point just switched to French and no matter where I poke around in styles and section settings I cant find where its been set to French. You can set everything to English and it completely ignores it for each new paragraph.

The answer is almost certainly in "styles". First off, identify if it is "Normal", if it is, you're en riant. Change it there and maybe - just maybe - all the styles that inherit from it are changed. Mostly this happens because there's been some random pasting from other docs which - thank you Messrs Microshit - then gets inseparably intermingled.

[ian]

ETA: oh and automatically detected the document language as French and made that the default, even though every word in it is English.

We have a company Word template doc that I have to use (on Windows) that does that. It suddenly decides that French is the default language and you have to change it back to English for every paragraph after that. Drives me potty. I have spent ages trying to work out why. It starts off fine then at some point just switched to French and no matter where I poke around in styles and section settings I cant find where its been set to French. You can set everything to English and it completely ignores it for each new paragraph.

It doesn't matter how often I change the default to English (UK) it eventually decides the document is French (OK, we're a Swiss company, but still it's an English document and all the words are English and the default is English). All I can periodically do is ctrl-a and set the language to English (UK) and wait for the next outbreak of Français.

It might be hidden in the styles, a feature that in itself should be a major time-saver, and indeed, anyone who's used proper layout tools will be familiar with, but the implementation in Word makes them unusable even to someone totally familiar with the concept elsewhere. As for the mess of themes and templates, also mostly rendered unusable, don't get me going.

For an additional boon, Word crashed yesterday evening and remember that auto-save option that definitely says yes? You can guess how well that works.

[Jaded]

Only 2 languages in a template? They spoil you.

Part of the problem is very few people understand templates; our “templates” are documents that we are expected to download from the portal, delete the example text and then start working on. Needless to say nobody does this instead taking another document that someone has produced and starting from there.

And, of course, unless the new writer of the document changes it, it is shown in Properties as being created by that Temp that left 3 years ago.