Previously used page #s should appear in the CTRL-G box.

[Patrick Schmid]

I should just drop this thread, because you apparently don't take any
suggestion from an experienced Office beta tester on how to best
communicate your suggestions to Microsoft.

The following are the most obvious shortcomings of your suggestions:

1. I should be able to edit a Bookmark's name. Why?

2. Add a warning to Insert Bookmark that spaces are not allowed. Why?

3. The Insert Bookmark box shouldn't disappear after adding a bookmark. I
sometimes want to add lots of bookmarks at once.

Why is bringing the bookmark dialog back up not a sufficient workaround
for you?

4. I'd like to exit the Insert Bookmark box [clarification: after I've
started to create a bookmark name] and then return.

Meaning? How would you like it to return? What is the disadvantage of
the current way it works?

6. I'd like bookmarks in Go To in order of Location. I.e., there should be
an option to select the preferred arrangement, similar to the two options in
Insert Bookmark. Why?

7. In Go To, clicking Page [in the left-hand box] should move the cursor to
page-number [in the right-hand box]. Why?

8. The Go To box shouldn't open with only one bookmark item showing. Why?

9. Go To's drop-down menu of bookmark items should be larger. Why?

10. I'd like a button to jump to the end of Go To's bookmark menu. Why?

You (Patrick Schmid) wrote, "A good suggestion contains the full suggestion
and context as well as a statement why this would be better than the current
behavior. . Microsoft will probably discard them because they are not
detailed enough, nor give any motivation/rationale for the change."

I disagree. An elaborate justification is needed only when heading into
unknown territory, or when proposing an expensive or disruptive change. What
I've suggested here are just ideas for smoothing over a few rough patches.
One or two additional sentences of justification (which I've provided in all
cases) should be enough to explain why these changes would be beneficial. I'd
feel presumptuous in trying to "sell" such minor features. It would imply
that my audience was rather dense. MS's teams are the experts and are much
more able than I to decide what would be useful to the majority of users, and
how tough each would be to implement. A word to the wise should be
sufficient. (And also, it's arguable whether certain features I've suggested
actually would be welcomed by a majority of users. I'd feel presumptuous
tearing a passion to tatters in favor of a change, just because I personally
would benefit from it.)

I honestly don't care whether you agree or not. I was trying to be
helpful and explain to you what you need to do if you want your
suggestions to have any chance of success. Believe it or not, but a user
needs to sell the tiniest change to the MS Office team. Even things that
are totally obvious to a user and should be a no-brainer to fix. For
example, Outlook 2007 has a dialog where you can enter the address of an
RSS feed. If you accidentally put a blank before the address, the RSS
feed addition will fail. The fix for this is rather simple and to me
this seems to be an obvious one. Yet despite me trying to sell it as
best as I could, MS decided not to fix it.
Any change you propose costs money and MS has limited resources that
they apply selectively. Any suggestion you propose, no matter how small,
is in competition for those limited resources with a lot of other
suggestions and bug fixes. That's why you get messages here from MVPs
who have been complaining about a certain lacking feature (often times a
small one) for several Office versions, but still haven't gotten it
fixed.

So, take my advice or keep assuming that you are the know-it-all about
how to best communicate your wishes. I personally don't care whether
your suggestions ever make it into Word or not. So please keep
submitting suggestions that look like somebody was just too lazy to do a
good job. You make it easy for Microsoft, as all they have to do is hit
delete.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Guest]

Shift+F5 is not nearly equivalent in usefulness to what I’ve proposed, because:

1. It stores only three past locations, which is not enough to be helpful in
many situations.
2. It doesn’t keep track of page numbers, but only insertion points. IOW, if
I Go To page 32 from page 89, delete three words (or select and shift text,
etc.), pressing Shift+F5 would not take me back to page 89, but merely
jitterbug me around in page 32.
3. It lacks the ability to go directly to the page that is wanted, jumping
over intermediate pages. Instead, it back-tracks through every intermediate
location, which is time-consuming and distracting.

What I’ve proposed is akin to the Alt-Tab navigation method, but within a
document. The Alt-Tab navigation method would be severely crippled if had
only the capabilities of the Shift+F5 feature.

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