Selecting newsgroup

[JoeB]

I'm new so please excuse dumb questions. How do I know which news group to
select? The list I see gives me no indication of what might be discussed.
Thanks.

 

[Guest]

hi,
don't worry too much about that. most of us here are just
trying to be helpful to people who have a problem in hopes
that we'll get help when we got a problem. users helping
users. many time you may be directed to another web site
which may have a ton of info on your problem. or you may
be direct to another section of the microsoft newsgroup.
if it's a question relating to excel, the post in general
questions would be safe.
if it's a question relating to acce , post in general
question under access.
if it's a question relating to both, flip a coin.
just look the catagories over and make a best guess.

regard
somebody

 

[John Vinson]

I'm new so please excuse dumb questions. How do I know which news group to
select? The list I see gives me no indication of what might be discussed.
Thanks.

I'm not sure what "list" you're seeing - there are many different
newsreader programs, Microsoft's website being only one of them.

But the newsgroup names (if the software lets you see them!) are
pretty indicative. There is a whole section of newsgroups whose names
begin with microsoft.public. - these are public support newsgroups for
Microsoft software, hosted by Microsoft but with questions answered by
volunteers like me (or like you, if you see a question and have a
helpful answer).

The next term in the newsgroup name indicates the product: i.e.
microsoft.public.access is for general questions about Access,
microsoft.public.excel for Excel, .word for Word and so on.

There are finer distinctions which are generally product-specific;
i.e. microsoft.public.access.forms is for discussion of the Forms in
Access.

If the Microsoft website isn't showing this information in an
intelligible way... well, shame on them; you may need to select the
"Office" link to get to submenus for Access, Excel, Word and so on,
since these are all parts of Microsoft Office.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps