Blog posts tagged "Microsoft"

The problem with Microsoft

I often encounter things that reinforce my belief that Microsoft are unbelievably clueless when it comes to writing software.

My latest find: How to prevent the automatic creation of hyperlinks in Excel for Mac.

"Excel for Mac does not provide a built-in method to override this behavior. However, this article contains sample methods that you can use to prevent Excel for Mac from automatically creating hyperlinks."

"To prevent Excel for Mac from automatically creating a hyperlink, use any of the following methods."

1. "Type an apostrophe at the beginning of the cell entry"
2. "Use a program-level event handler to prevent hyperlinks" (11 steps: ~50 lines of code)
3. "Use a program-level event handler to remove existing hyperlinks and to prevent Excel for Mac from automatically creating hyperlinks" (11 steps: ~45 lines of code)

So my options to stop this 'feature' are: corrupt my data, or use 45-50 lines of code to fix the program's poor usability.

I mean, it was only the 2004 version...

Tagged Excel and Microsoft.

Crimes against computing

Crimes against computing which should be punishable by death (by death I mean preventing people from using any device with an Internet connection until they learn the error of their ways):

Using Microsoft Word to generate HTML. "But it generates a file that can be read by anyone with a web browser - and it can be easily edited again in Word". In theory, yes it can. In reality: "Oh dear God look at this horrible mess - must... gouge... eyes... out..."

Tagged HTML, Microsoft and Word.