[chasw]

I think Lee is absolutely right to be annoyed. I have just pain nearly £100
(over $200) for the Home and Student version of office 2007 and its
installation resulted in my OE spell checker now being French. You only need
to look at the number of complaints about this on this site to know that
there has been a "cock-up". Microsoft should make sure that their various
products are compatible or at least warn of problems before people such as I
commit serious expenditure (I am a pensioner). Given that Microsoft are not
interested, can anyone recommend another spell checker which will work with
OE and not cause even more problems when installed?
--
Chairlie


"Lee" wrote:

Thanks for your very polite and helpful input, Herb. I have not deployed
Vista yet because of the unavailability of drivers for so many things. The
Upgrade Analyser is another joke. It leads one to believe that his or her
system is all ready for Vista, then in the area of drivers and compatibility
of other software, it makes some vague references to checking with the
vendors. I find that very misleading, to say the least. I understand that
Bill Gates has been pleading with the third party vendors to upgrade their
drivers and non-compatible programs. That is a good start but I have been
waiting until the Vista OS is really supported by most third party vendors
before putting my systems into a tizzy. I also run three systems here at
home and I build new systems for clients. My experiences with XP, when it
was brand new, have made me more than a little reluctant to step out of the
pot into the kettle with Vista, although I would enjoy some of the new
features.. LOL Have a nice day.
--
Lee0078


"Herb Tyson [MVP]" wrote:

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" wrote in message
...
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