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From: norman@sdics.ucsd.EDU (Donald A. Norman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Recovering Word 3.0 files
Message-ID: <367@sdics.ucsd.EDU>
Date: Tue, 26-May-87 12:33:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdics.367
Posted: Tue May 26 12:33:37 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 28-May-87 02:30:38 EDT
References: <365@sdics.ucsd.EDU> <1825@sphinx.uchicago.edu> <19647@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: norman@sdics.UUCP (Donald A. Norman)
Organization: UC San Diego Institute for Cognitive Science
Lines: 47
Keywords: Microsoft Word 3.0 crashes temp files
Summary: Microsoft help line friendly, but not helpful

Here is what Microsoft said about my problems

1. The hangup in save.  A known bug.  Will be fixed in the June
release. Yup, he said June.

Use save-as: much safer.  I asked him to repeat this.  Save-as is
safer.  
	(hah.  Only an hour after being told this, as I was dutifully
	saving-as, the system froze again.  Fortunately, I had just  a
	second earlier done a save-as to a floppy.)
		The APPLE file handler makes this awfully
		inconvenient APPLE, are you listening?
		If you want to save the same file on two different
		drives, you lose the directory path.  When you
		return to the original drive, the file menu starts
		youoff at the root.  Can't it retrieve the path last
		used for the device?

2.  The problem with table of contents.   Probably a defective
finder.  The finder can't access the disk properly.  Throw away the
finder and plug in a virgin one.   

	I did as the man said.  No luck whatsoever.

3.  Recovering from Temp files.   Sheer luck.  Don't count on it.
Temp files are written only at the time Word starts up.

4.  Trashing the setup file.  No hints.

-----
A respondent suggested my problems were due to a perverse prefernce file and
that I should rebuild it.  The thought had already occured to me, but
that didn't do the trick.

--------

final score: Microsoft was very helpful and polite, but not a single
one of their suggestions worked.

don norman

Donald A. Norman
Institute for Cognitive Science C-015
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, California 92093
norman@nprdc.arpa    	{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!ics!norman
norman@sdics.ucsd.edu	norman%sdics.ucsd.edu@RELAY.CS.NET