win7 Gripes

how do YOU save files?

[chewy]

When I go to save a file in a specific directory, the file name always changes to overwrite the first file in the directory.

this is particularly vexing - especially with project work where each project has its own directory.

this USED TO WORK CORRECTLY.

Is there some fabulous and cool work around that I am not understanding?

- I know - the solution is to STOP whining and switch back to XP or up to ubuntu or similiar.

Sorry, won't happen...

[eelixduppy]

I have never heard of anything like this before. Instead of finding a work-around I would focus on what is actually causing this to happen, because it definitely shouldn't be. I'd start investigating the time around when you started to notice it happen. What changes did you make to the OS then.

[J_RaD]

Yea, this one is new to me and I do that type of stuff all the time.

[chewy]

this is just plain out of the box behavior with Word and Excel (2007)

open a file named "file" as an attachment.

choose to save it in a directory named "directory" in the library (using save as).

click on the directory, it Win7 takes me right into the directory and points at the first file in the directory.

First file is named "WRONG FILENAME".

as a result, were I to hit save original "file" would be renamed to "wrong filename".

fun stuff - happens every time.

my file manager (or whatever it is called today) is set to "details" and sorted with the most recent file at the top.

[rocknbil]

Two cents . . . have you tried this with other applications? First thought is it's an MS Office problem, not a Win 7 problem. Though the blame is on MS for both. :-)

[chewy]

I live in Word, NotePad, Excel and Outlook, and benefit from the integration.

What other applications are there?

[graeme_p]

@chewey,

I assume you use a web browser!

My list of application you needs would start with a decent text editor. As far as I can remember, Notepad does not have syntax highlighting, spell checking, folding, or almost anything beyond bare text editing.

I just woke my computer up for the days work, and only one app is a functional equivalent of those on your list (a text editor - actually I have two open).

[chewy]

my comment, "what others are there" was meant to be tongue in cheek.

my deliverables must all be in MS Excel & Word 2007 - and for that I have to use WIN. I haven't messed with OOffice yet and even if I do, I don't expect to use it unless my clients are also using it.

Of course I use non-MS browsers, text editors, robots, etc. I'm not even going to mention Adobe which I find worse every iteration.

what I want to understand is:

- what are the tricks to working with WIN7
- are others experiencing the same kind of errors
- is these types of 'errors' a result of this user's misunderstanding or of something else.


another question - do people using OOffice find they can work with 100% WIN users without actual problems developing within the documents?

later edit: here is a COOL but tangential( not-directly-answering-my-question) way to "customize" Office applications. Surely there are more. [pschmid.net...]

[graeme_p]

Oops, I missed the joke.

I did not expect deliverables in MS Office formats to be a problem, given the context of a webmaster forum - maybe I am unaware of the sort of work that that can involve.

To answer your question about Open Office: so far I have had only one Excel file I could not open in eight years of using Open Office on Linux. Formatting on word docs can be slightly off, but again, its not common.

That said, I never send people Word files (I send PDFs if something needs to be printed out with formatting preserved), so I only have experience on that one way.

Some people have more complaints than me, some report that Open Office opens old MS Word files better than new versions of MS Word. Its hard to say more than "works for me", and that its usually OK.

I did not want to bring the subject up given how much discussion there has been of it recently, but as you mention switching to Open Office, you could switch to another OS and run Windows in a VM just to check office docs are OK before sending them (and XP would be fine in this role).