Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy" 380
walterbyrd writes with a warning: "Microsoft is pushing Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy.' Please don't let your friends and relatives install Microsoft 'trial' software. When Microsoft tells you 'try-before-you-buy,' the 'buy' part is not meant to be an option. Once you 'try' a Microsoft 'upgrade' you can not easily go back, because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read." The ChannelRegister article also notes how Microsoft's push goes against the grain of the consumer revolt against "crapware." Read on for an account of walterbyrd's experience with a previous Microsoft trial upgrade.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
prompt? (Score:4, Insightful)
M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Funny)
Function: noun
Etymology: Anglo-French, from trier to try
3: a test of faith, patience, or stamina through subjection to suffering or temptation; broadly : a source of vexation or annoyance
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that something as important as a "standard" document format wouldn't change enough to become incompatible every 1-4 years.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
i bet the first open office release isn't capable of opening the latest? oh the HORROR! evil open office lets bash them!
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Funny)
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you open an XHTML 1.0 web page designed now in an HTML 3.2 browser from 1997 (10 years ago)? Yes, you usually can.
Any "standard" document format should never become unreadable by old software.
I'm not a user of OpenOffice, so I won't comment on that. But I've never had a problem opening TXT or RTF or HTML or PDF. I look forward to the day when the most common rich word processing format is also the most compatible.
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you open an XHTML 1.0 web page designed now in an HTML 3.2 browser from 1997 (10 years ago)?
XHTML 1.0? If you're careful to follow the backward compatibility guidelines.
XHTML 1.1? Not if served properly.
XHTML 2 (whenever it comes out)? no.
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow would you look at that... you don't actually have to upgrade in order to open new Office files! Just another case of Microsoft forcing people to not necessarily upgrade!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't find it complicated to replace the breaks, oil, filters, and serpentine belt on my car, but I know
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's so many mistakes there it's hard to know where to begin (and I'm not talking about the grammar).
Basically, you're begging this question: "Why isn't
PS: 'Encoded formats' can also be backwards/forwards compatible(!)
Re: (Score:2)
I should think that a properly designed document format would not change a bit but for the most complicated documents, which make use of the new features. Therefore, I don't see why any version of MS Office shouldn't be able to extract at least the text, if not most of the formatting, from any version of an MS Office document - unless the format is either intentionally obfuscated or poorly desig
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Never design software.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As somebody who has done consumer level tech support, I NEVER make these assumptions, and neither should Microsoft. I would (like) to think that Microsoft would set the default save file method to be that of the previous Office Suite installed. It would make sense for trial software. Or at the least have a warning for the naive user that there newly saved files are not backward comp
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems with Windows threads, folks like you seem to demand every bit of user responsibility must be stripped before it has a chance at being good, but then the restraint placed by the lack of responsibility would just be a new reason to complain.
As noted in the above posts, most users do not have a problem like these two boobs, since it's common sense that Microsoft will have updated their document formants. It's a given.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps I am biased by my experiences with professional tech support and with helping friends a
Re: (Score:2)
there is only one issue with that, that you might have inserted features in the file not supported under the old format. I'm sure word could warn you about that though, but that still requires idiots to read whats in front of them which is the whole core of this problem to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
there is only one issue with that, that you might have inserted features in the file not supported under the old format. I'm sure word could warn you about that though, but that still requires idiots to read whats in front of them which is the whole core of this problem to begin with.
Well, it's much easier to just code one simple warning - "Well, you might have used some new features, so why not save in the new format?" - than setting up flags to trigger the warning only if new features are actually used.
In all fairness, MS is hardly the only company guilty of such practice.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The bashing is deserved, and is for the questionable practices of commercial software vendors, of which MS is only one. What looks senseless to us is your blind support of MS.
You do know of the many many things MS and others have done? For just MS, I'm talking about things like Windows Genuine Advantage, threatening to sue Linux users over 235 alleged patent violations, threatening flash memory and digital camera markets with patents on the ancient FAT file system, the "defective by design" DRM stuff in
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're adding a twist to the subject at hand:
There's the software install/deinstall.
The other is user files.
Let's put the user files aside for now.
If you install software, shouldn't it deinstall itself (completely)?
There are two exceptions: dependencies and things which affect the OS or OS-related processes; i.e.,things which are "bad thing" for the machine's health and function.
Something like Office, regardless of the version, should be able to remove all software and related changes (e.g., t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:prompt? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:prompt? (Score:4, Informative)
There's also the Windows Installer Cleanup tool for cleaning up failed MSI uninstallations, which is what appears to have been a large part of the problem getting Office 2000 back on to the system. For obvious reasons, Office 2000 doesn't go out of the way to detect Office 2003 installations, so the problem was probably registry cruft (as it is for so many installer issues).
Re: (Score:2)
I did not know about the Windows Installer Cleanup tool.
That is good to know.
And yes, it would be hard for a previous product version to
detect a subsequence product installation.
Re:prompt? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
guarantee your ability to reverse the change without
relying on the uninstaller. It would also be wise for someone
writing trial software for a general product like Office to
have either the ability to reverse things completely, or
to at least warn the user that the changes are nor reversible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Spastic"? How about trigger-happy?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:prompt? (Score:4, Informative)
If you're just talking about the new .*x formats (.docx, .xlsx), you actively have to work at converting your old files to the new format. If you open an old .doc or .xls in Word 2007 or Excel 2007 and then try to save it, the document will continue to use the old format. New documents will save in the new format, and you can convert your old documents to the new format, but it's not done automatically.
That said, the linked article is not even talking about any of that at all. It's simply pointing out that some new PCs are now shipping with trial versions of Office 2007, and says nothing about any difficulties of downgrading to an older version. The submitter's summary and story have absolutely nothing to do with the linked article, and are based on issues with a version of Office 4 years and 2 versions older than what's currently available.
Outlook pst conversion is a different story, but I think the submitter went about it in a strange way. Outlook allows you to export and import your data in many different formats, so I don't understand why he had to install his own copy of the trial just to export some data. More importantly, why would you risk important data without a backup when trialling software that you're not 100% sure you want to keep? That's just bad practice with anything, not just Microsoft products.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Because my brother-in-law waited until his trial period was over. At which time he could not access Outlook at all.
But, you are right: if my brother-in-law had saved to a different format before his trial period ended, he would have saved me a lot of work. What could I say? My mother's even worse.
Compatibility pack for 2007 (Score:5, Informative)
Ask Science about so-called "compatibility pack" (Score:5, Interesting)
1] http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/docx
"Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new
"Users of Word 2007 should also be aware that equations created with the default equation editor included in Microsoft Word 2007 will be unacceptable in revision, even if the file is converted to a format compatible with earlier versions of Word; this is because conversion will render equations as graphics and prevent electronic printing of equations, and because the default equation editor packaged with Word 2007 -- for reasons that, quite frankly, utterly baffle us -- was not designed to be compatible with MathML."
[3]http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/math-marku
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12608/1023/ [itwire.com.au]
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2
Nature's analysis of OOXML:
"We currently cannot accept files saved in Microsoft Office 2007 formats. Equations and special characters (for example, Greek letters) cannot be edited and are incompatible with Nature's own editing and typesetting programs"
[4] http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=519 [zdnet.com] "July 1: No more Office 2003 for OEMs" by Mary Jo Foley"
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_a
"Two important Microsoft topics--interoperability and Office file formats--intersect on the Mac desktop, and they brutally cross like swords.
Two weeks ago, Microsoft broke a promise made in December: The spring beta release of OOXML (Office Open XML) converters for Mac Office. "
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't even try Office 07! (Score:5, Insightful)
How, then, is this even a story? The submitter warns of the impending danger of the 07 trial, goes over his experiences with the 03 trial, and then admits he hasn't even tried the 07 trial.
A friend of mine bought a Toshiba Satellite with vista from Best Buy, and it came preinstalled with the Office 2007 trial. He used it for a week. He then uninstalled the 2007 trial via the control panel, installed his retail license of 2003 (he was not a fan of the ribbon...), and imported his files without any compatibility issues, including his entire Outlook file, contacts, email, everything.
It's also not hard to tell (Score:2)
Not easy. Re:It's also not hard to tell (Score:3, Insightful)
So you can choose if you want the backward compatible version or the new version, and it is easy to know what you chose. Currently we have a some Office 2007 at work but mostly Office 2003. No problems thus far, as the 2007 people know to keep using the old formats and everyone is happy.
The menu for types is confusing and makes interchange a PITA. There are three options, "default", "Office97-2003" [ask-leo.com] and "other". If this version is like all of the rest, conversion is one way - in but not out - and 97-200
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This whole story is FUD. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You have the 'commercial' version of Office. One of the nasty surprises for many people I know who picked up the cheaper student/teacher version is it only saves in the Office 2007 format. The older format save is disabled.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This whole story is FUD. (Score:5, Informative)
I have the home/student version and I can click on the funny round office button -> Save as -> Word 97-2003 document. Plus it's trivial to go into options and set the default save format to the old style.
Re: (Score:2)
It is FUD... and it isn't (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Office 2007 will save any document you open in it's original format, thus if you open an
What's even more, when you install any version of Office since Office 2000, unless you tell it to delete the old version (it asks you specifically), it will install side-by-side v
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong, Novell's free version of OpenOffice for Windows includes OpenXML plugins (though I honestly couldn't tell you how well they work). I would assume that the version of OOo they have in SuSE supports OpenXML as well, though I could be wrong. The latest versions of NeoOffice for OS X also support OpenXML.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, this scare-tactic post amounts to someone asserting that something bad happened in the past, and might, possibly, maybe, could happen in the future.
Wow, thanks for the information, I never would have thought of that on my own.
(Furthermore, does any company that uses trial-ware want you to do anything besides buy the software? Game companies use demos all of the time, AND THEY DON"T WANT YOU TO CONSIDER BUYING THE GAME TO BE OPTIONAL EITHER. But, because this is and MS story on Slashdot, we just have to bash them for every perfectly normal thing that they do.)
Pathetic.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never seen a game demo tell me that I had to buy the full game, or my your existing documents and save them in new, incompatible formats without asking, or overwrite older versions of games I had full licenses for. NOT EVEN IN CAPS.
Given the original poster's experience with Office 2003 free trial, I wouldn't be experimenting with the Office 2007 free trial either.
Ever hear of backups? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also have both Outlook 2000 and 2003 clients in an Exchange environment and there is no problem with individual users using either version. The only real source of grief are occasional MINOR formatting hiccups when files are opened with different versions and documents that reference a database for merging purposes, but these are merely annoyances, not critical failures.
Re:Ever hear of backups? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, this is not a helpful comment. Yes, all users should backup. That is a bit like saying that everyone should stop smoking, drink driving or visiting prostitutes. That doesn't mean that this will actually happen.
Indeed, the biggest killer feature of OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is automated backups for t
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, Apple invented a cool feature this time! Sorry, I meant to type VMS, not Apple.
Anyway, that's
Re: (Score:2)
If you can configure an e-mail account, you can figure out how to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Most people do not setup their email accounts. They have their ISP installation software do it for them. There are a lot of people in my experience who have no idea about importing and exporting files. You take it for granted that people know this. I'm assuming you are in Management. The average person just uses the software without looking into the details and assumes it will w
"I would touch it with a ten foot pole." (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Don't "upgrade" without a motivation (Score:4, Interesting)
The same goes for rolling out Office 2007. I don't see a business case for it. I have known one business to start migrating over to Office 2007 because there is some collaboration tool they've just *got* to have. I think it's a mistake. But then again, this is a decision made by the same IT "MCSE" leadership that couldn't manage to get Exchange 2003 successfully installed and "lost" their Blackberry server CDs... (As if they couldn't download the software from RIM's site.)
If there is a business case for Office 2007 or for Vista, I'd be really happy to hear it. But for the moment, I see no functions or features that we need to get our work done or that could help us get it done any better.
Re: (Score:2)
Because Bill and Steve would like you to. What more reason do you need?
We just got Office 2007 at my company.. (Score:2)
Scare Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
FUD. (Score:3, Informative)
This entire "article" is FUD. Say what you will about Microsoft formats, but so long as you're using Word, Excel, or Powerpoint (i.e. not Outlook), there's nothing to worry about. And for the record, I've tried importing the mail from an Outlook 2007 PST file in Outlook 2003, and it works perfectly fine. There's also apparently workarounds for importing 2007 PST files into earlier versions of Outlook - including 2003 into XP, 2000, and so forth - as described here [microsoft.com].
Re: (Score:2)
bunch of crap (Score:2)
Forced Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)
One week after a new version of MS Office is release, someone in the company gets a new computer. Unless the company has a strict policy that controls all incoming computer hardware and makes sures that said hardware is reinstalled with a standard baseline image, the company is about to go through a forced upgrage. The new computer is going to have the latest version of MS Office installed. Since it's a new computer, someone important (management) is getting said computer. The first thing the user does is open some important Excel spreadsheet or Access database that is has been deemed critical to day-to-day operations. Because it's a new version of MS Office, the user is asked if they'd like to upgrade the format that the file is formated/saved in. Of course the user will click "OK". Now, this user is the only person that can open and edit this critical file. The next thing the user does after getting a new version of MS Office is create some Word document. As soon as the user saves this document, they email it to everyone in the company. Complaints about not being able to open this document flood the HelpDesk as soon as the user hit the Send button. Instead of complaining about how the latest version of MS Office was allowed into the company without authorization, everyone complains that "so and so has the latest version of MS Office. Why don't I have the latest version of MS Office?" And the company has to shell out $LARGE_SUM to bring everyone up-to-date with the latest version of MS Office one week after it's released.
Sinse, repeat.... has it really only been 4 years since that last forced upgrage of MS Office?
It would seem fair to expect MS to be true to form (Score:2)
More to the point, why upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Please-Use-Brains" (Score:2)
For those of you who don't have a spare machine and can't be bothered to get the FREE Virtual PC or VMWare player, Microsoft offers live "remote desktop" style trials on their site.
Msoft actively patrols blogs to counter warnings (Score:4, Interesting)
mainly because it's not widely appreciated that it can be difficult to go back to the older file format.
To my astonishment, within a couple of hours Brian Jones, who is a program manager working on the Office XML functionality had posted a comment to the blog to point out the 27 Meg compatibility pack. http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/03/ 12/how-to-create-and-consume-openxml-formats.aspx [msdn.com]
Wow, this is a little law student website on the other side of the planet from Microsoft, and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments ?
Re:Msoft actively patrols blogs to counter warning (Score:2)
Seems just a little more reasonable than "actively patrolling blogs".
Why not use ... (Score:2)
Microsoft has to learn to support open file formats as people now a days are becoming more and more aware of the hazards of vendor lock in.
Bullshit (Score:2)
a) Save As the 2003 format from within 2007, or
b) Install the free Compatibility Pack onto Office 2003
Further, if you open a 2003 file in Office 2007, it opens in "Compatibility Mode" and will ONLY save as a 2003 file unless you specifically tell it otherwise. It even disables features that are strictly 2007-only.
And uninstalling
consumer revolt? Hah! (Score:2)
Fundamentally, most people don't actually realise that computers don't have to suck. They don't know that it's possible to have a good, reliable, easy-to-use computer that does what t
Yeah its pretty lame (Score:3, Interesting)
Enough FUD - the documentation is available - (Score:2, Insightful)
You can install them both - but backup first! (Score:3, Insightful)
Should not be trialing s/w on your production system anyway IMHO.
If you must, backup everything first, and just keep a copy of your email messages on the server. If you have to downgrade afterwards, restore your old outlook *.pst files and re-download the new mails. You'll not get the 'sent' mails, tho..
Slashdot resorts to making crap up? (Score:5, Insightful)
What in the hell is happening to this site. Once a good source of fairly trusted information or stories from around the net and now we are finding duplicates of stories everyday, biased submitter comments that don't even understand the articles they are posting and NOW we get opinion on subjects that are complete incompetence or flat out lies.
How can someone talk about using 2007 Office when they admit they never used it?
How can we trust an article where the user is SO STUPID that they reinstalled Office to import data when the software installed ALREADY does this automatically if they would just have freaking looked at the options instead of assuming MS is evil and forcing users to into their software.
This isn't even about MS or Office or Office 2007. This is about an really incompetent computer user proporting themselves as an 'expert' and yet having less knowledge than an average user in the same circumstances.
Do you think MS would bait people with a new version of Office and then want to pay for 'free' support calls to get the users back to their original versions? Just from a $$ standpoint, this would be STUPID for MS to do, and why this DOES NOT happen as the submitted story suggests.
Slashdot, this is now to the point where your main articles are making up crap just to try to push the anti-MS FUD.
So what insane
"Don't install evil Vista because my 3yr old ate keys off the keyboard"
"Don't use evil Windows Server, when I installed NT 3.51 Server my audio in doom stopped working"
"Stay away from MS, I drove by their headquarters and bigfoot attacked my car and raped me"
"I am too stupid to breathe most of the time, but after installing Vista, I forgot how to breathe altogether"
"MS forces evil DRM on me in Vista because it has something called protect processes that secures parts of the OS from other processes, and even though it wasn't designed for DRM, idiots like me see it as DRM because we are too f**king stupid to know what we are talking about"
Geesh
Re: (Score:2)
Let me set some issues straight (Score:2)
When my brother-in-law's trial period was over, his
> Not true at all. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall your trial software, then reinstall your old sof
Play Nice - Office is not an easy program (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience w
open office (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You've made a good argument for the defaults being what they are. You haven't made any argument for making them hard to change for the 10% of users who want to.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect they would have dropped PowerPoint entirely, and had Word rather akin to Notepad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried OO? (Score:2)
However, where it does get heavy is documentation, and for that I would not ever go back to MS Office. In OpenOffice, styles WORK. It doesn't end up this complete screaming mess that you get with cut