"Help" is anything but

[MikeB]

I switched from Office 2002 to Office 2007. Especially Word. The help
is anything but, I can't find a damn thing. If I want to find out how
to do something and I type a keyword inthe help search box, I get a
bunch of irrelevant help.

Latest case in point. I have a text box that I'm working with. In the
Format text box dialog, there is an on the Text Box tab, there is an
option to "Convert to Frame..."

Can I find out using Help waht a Frame is and why I might be want ing
to use it? Hell no.

The hits I get are:

- Select text
- decorate pictures or text with borders
- Create and print envelopes for mass mailing
- add and format images in professional Word 2007 documents
- Add a drawing to a document

and so forth.

And I can't find to highlight the search term, nor is there an Index.

How is this supposed to help me?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This was just quoted (from Word 2002 Help) in another NG:

The difference between a text box and a frame

Text boxes and frames are both containers for text that can be
positioned on a page and sized.

If you are familiar with earlier versions of Microsoft Word, you
used frames when you wanted to wrap text around a graphic. Now,
you wrap text around a graphic of any size or shape without first
inserting it in a text box or frame.

However, you must use a frame instead of a text box when you want
to position text or graphics that contain certain items.

Use a text box when you want to do any of the following:
.. Make text flow from one part of a document to another part by
linking the text boxes.
.. Format the text container by using the options on the Drawing
toolbar. You can apply 3-D effects, shadows, border styles and
colors, fills, and backgrounds.
.. Rotate and flip text boxes.
.. Change the orientation of text in a text box by using the Text
Direction command (Format menu).
.. Group your text containers and change the alignment or
distribution of them as a group.

Use frames when your text or graphics contain the following:
.. Comments, as indicated by comment marks.
.. Footnotes or endnotes, as indicated by note reference marks.
.. Certain fields, including AUTONUM, AUTONUMLGL, AUTONUMOUT -
used for numbering lists and paragraphs in legal documents and
outlines - TC (Table of Contents Entry), TOC (Table of Contents),
RD (Referenced Document), XE (Index Entry), TA (Table of
Authorities Entry), and TOA (Table of Authority) fields.

When you open a document that contains frames from a previous
version of Word, Word keeps the frames. When you select a frame,
the Frame command appears on the Format menu.


--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[MikeB]

That's great, but why the blazes can the Help in Word not tell me
that?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

A good and unanswerable question.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

That's great, but why the blazes can the Help in Word not tell me
that?

 

[MikeB]

In any event, thank you for providing that information. May I ask what
newsgroup carried th ereferred article? Perhaps I should subscribe to
that as well.

Also, if you ever have the opportunity to provide some form of
feedback, may I ask that you indicate to them that the Help in Office
2007 is woefully inadequate? I also this weekend spent a long time
trying to figure out something in Excel 2007 and I noticed that in the
articles I referred to the "How-to" sections have been removed,
epecially where it concerns the older functions where, presumably,
they didn't feel the need to write new help since the features weren't
new in this release.

I noticed that the Office 2007 Help feedback features have been
disabled.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Believe me, they know. Writing Help for Word 2007 was especially challenging
because there was so much that was new with the Ribbon UI. An effort is now
being made to leverage Help from older versions wherever applicable, usually
by making it available online, so you won't see those topics unless you're
allowing Help to search online. It may be that SP 2 will have pushed some of
that back to the installed version (it was a goal for this version to be
able to update the actual compiled offline Help file).

I don't recall what the other NG was, but most likely
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement, which is represented by "General
Questions" in the Web interface.

As for frames, MS has been trying to kill them for years, without success;
the KB article ""WD2000: General Information About Floating Objects" at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=268713 is an example of the type of
"Help" that had to be made available when it became evident that frames were
still necessary for some purposes. Word 97 was the most critical case,
though: Frame was removed from the Insert menu, and anyone who wanted to
restore it had trouble finding it in Customize because it was listed as
"Horizontal."

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

In any event, thank you for providing that information. May I ask what
newsgroup carried th ereferred article? Perhaps I should subscribe to
that as well.

Also, if you ever have the opportunity to provide some form of
feedback, may I ask that you indicate to them that the Help in Office
2007 is woefully inadequate? I also this weekend spent a long time
trying to figure out something in Excel 2007 and I noticed that in the
articles I referred to the "How-to" sections have been removed,
epecially where it concerns the older functions where, presumably,
they didn't feel the need to write new help since the features weren't
new in this release.

I noticed that the Office 2007 Help feedback features have been
disabled.

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

The quoted information was purloined from
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...elayout/browse_thread/thread/9944b04c1d680407
..