hostaqueen,
We have the exact same problem. And as we ventured to say in a thread on
this forum in May/June, we guess once 2007 is released, MS is going to find a
ton of folks (not Beta users ) who use Outlook/Word's 2003 Autotext function
the exact same way you and our company did.
There is hope.
We posted this concern under a subject titled something like ("QuickParts
not a substitute for Autocorrect>Autotext")
What was fantastic, was that one of the Microsoft people who directly
influences the QuickParts/Building Blocks function for Office 2007, actually
e-mailed me and set up a block of time for us to talk on the phone.
I explained how we used the function in e-commerce. I also guessed that
there are a ton of companies like Law Firms who use the function the exact
same way you and us do. For certain potentially volatile cases, Law firms
require the EXACT text communicated in each e-mail message pertaining to the
case or any other case like it.
I had a chance to vent my concerns and offer a couple of, what I thought
would be easier fixes, to use 2007 Outlook like we did for version 2003 in
e-mail/e-commerce functions. Because as 2007 Outlook is right now. IT DOES
NOT WORK functionally for e-commerce companies like Office 2003 and XP did.
Our perception is there probably were not provisions for feedback from
e-commerce “power users†in the early stages of Outlook 2007 Beta.
Additionally, my guess is that companies like law firms were not asked for
early on Outlook 2007 feedback as well. We beat on Outlook every day.
Outlook is a Mission Critical program for us. Leaving out the functionality
of lager text storage for EASY reuse is a really big deal.
But again there is more hope
When people say that Outlook 2007 uses Word, that may be true, but it does
not use all of Word's functions. I told the Microsoft person that there is a
terrific function, in 2007 Word, called "Building Block Manager"
The "Building Block Manager" screen would be absolutely perfect for the
function being addressed as missing in 2007 Outlook.
In fact, "Building Block Manager" would actually work better as a function
(on the screen) for inserting stored text (than Autotext did in Outlook 2003)
to easily fill in your stored text, into your Outlook message..
Take a look at "Building Block Manager" in Word 2007. It is really cool.
We also made a suggestion, since there will be two different “normalâ€
documents for both Word and Outlook. That is, when you sore a text reasons
in either Word or Outlook, there should be a choice, to save it in the other.
That way you do not have to maintain two separate building block functions
for e-commerce responses.
Let’s hope they are listening!
