SET VENT ON
Fun with Office2000/Word2000...

Bought developer edition 1.5 2 weeks ago (bought that one for the MSDE extras). Install was the least intuitive that I have ever encountered in any product.

1) During the install I told it to preserve the existing version that it found. It did so alright, but it removed all Office97 stuff from the start-->Programs list! I guess I have a different definition of "preserve" than MS does.

My first use, other than a test document of a few keystroke, was a large document made largely by cut/paste from a PowerPoint2000 presentation. It looked just fine on the screen (of course I had to do a lot of formatting after pastes to get it as needed.

2) When I printed it it was severely off kilter, looking virtually nothing like thescreen image.

Confused by this, I brought up Word97 and viewed the document. Here it looked just like the printout done from Word2000. I edited a couple of pages using Word97 and printed them after they looked OK. They printed as they looked (OK)!

3) So I started Word2000 to see how those pages now looked there. Up came a dialogue explaining that Word2000 was installing itself and a progress bar. About 40-60 seconds later it was up.

Brought up the subject document. It (still) looked fine in Word2000. Printed it. Fixed pages a little different, but still off-kilter.
Went to the Office Update web site (via Win2000 Update web site) but found that the auto-update feature was "temporarily unavailable".

Went back to Word97 to complete fixup. All was roses.

4) Later d-clicked another .DOC document. Word2000 came up with it's "Installing..." dialogue again!@#@!

5) Next day went back to Office Update web site and used the auto update. It recommended that SR-1a be installed. Downloaded and installed. It came back with "already on system!#@$!#@ It was, too!

6) Bck to site to open a support incident. Main complaint was the long-winded and totally unnecessary (Word97 never does it) "Installing..." dialogue, with side-mention of bad printing document.
Answer was: "Installing dialogue is designed function" necessary because diff. versions of Word tamper with Registry and Word2000 finds registry not its own so has to "reinstall". Personally I think it's a conspiracy to get us used to lag time loading "rental" software.
Also offered to diagonse bad print problem further but first suggested using PASTE SPECIAL to see if that helped. Yea, like I'm going to re-do an 80 page document!

SET VENT OFF

It's *MY* computer. I bought Office97, installed it once, and all was fine. I bought Office2000 and I have to wait 40-60 seconds for it to"reinstall" whenver I have used Office97 in the interim?!?!?! That's progress. Why did I di the install in the first place?????

I now use Word97 for all documents.

Cheers to all,

JimN