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Parallels/Word 2007 difficulties
Dec. 5th, 2013 11:49 amWhy do computer disasters always strike right before a deadline? This time, I was preparing for a workshop that I'll be presenting for the local chapter of the Editors Association of Canada: a potpourri of basic Word topics you need to know to work effectively with Word. In my case, things are complicated by the fact that I'm use the Parallels software to run Windows on my Mac.
Apparently I blinked, and before I knew it, my Parallels installation, which had been working just fine for a couple years now, vanished like the morning dew. To make matters worse, it switched to using an older version of the Windows Virtual Machine without warning me. A bit vexing until I figured out what was going on, but such is life with computers. (I say that now; a few hours ago, I was ready to strangle someone.) Much fussing around to bring it up to where it was a day ago, with no success, so I finally had to reinstall it from a backup.
Of course, that backup didn't include any access to my Mac folders, never mind that the version of the backup of the Windows Virtual Machine that I was running under Parallels had seen everything in glorious and carefree detail yesterday morning. Many hours wasted crawling the Web for solutions. I finally solved the problem using the instructions at Performance and compatibility issues with Shared Folders in Parallels Desktop build 9344. Never mind that I was using a later build that should have fixed this problem; the hotfix they suggest towards the end of the article worked just fine.
On the plus/minus side, while I was waiting for all the Parallels reinstallation and reconfiguration woes to complete, I was able to/forced to work with Word 2011 on the Mac. The plus is that I was able to complete the work I needed to get done while Parallels returned to normal. The minus is that MacWord is such a botch job that Microsoft's programming staff should be frankly ashamed to be associated with it. I've used beta software that had fewer bugs. Word 2001 makes Word 2007 positively shine by comparison.
Which is not to say that Word 2007 is a paragon of interface design. Indeed, the software has so many interface oddities, inconsistencies, and outright design idiocies that it's a wonder to me that I've been using it as my main editing software for the past several years. (Over the holidays, I think I will reluctantly upgrade to 2010 to see if it's any better. More realistically, to see whether the new infelicities it introduced are less annoying than those in the previous version.) Such things never become obvious until you try to explain them to someone else -- which is clearly necessary when you're creating a workshop whose whole purpose is to explain such things to the innocent and the doomed.
I hate having to start a workshop by apologizing for the mess that I'm about to explain. I think I'll succeed, but it's still ridiculous that something as evolved as Word still doesn't have a sane development process that would eliminate the worst of these problems. Hasn't Microsoft noticed how hard it is to teach their employees how to use Word? Apparently not. Sigh.
Apparently I blinked, and before I knew it, my Parallels installation, which had been working just fine for a couple years now, vanished like the morning dew. To make matters worse, it switched to using an older version of the Windows Virtual Machine without warning me. A bit vexing until I figured out what was going on, but such is life with computers. (I say that now; a few hours ago, I was ready to strangle someone.) Much fussing around to bring it up to where it was a day ago, with no success, so I finally had to reinstall it from a backup.
Of course, that backup didn't include any access to my Mac folders, never mind that the version of the backup of the Windows Virtual Machine that I was running under Parallels had seen everything in glorious and carefree detail yesterday morning. Many hours wasted crawling the Web for solutions. I finally solved the problem using the instructions at Performance and compatibility issues with Shared Folders in Parallels Desktop build 9344. Never mind that I was using a later build that should have fixed this problem; the hotfix they suggest towards the end of the article worked just fine.
On the plus/minus side, while I was waiting for all the Parallels reinstallation and reconfiguration woes to complete, I was able to/forced to work with Word 2011 on the Mac. The plus is that I was able to complete the work I needed to get done while Parallels returned to normal. The minus is that MacWord is such a botch job that Microsoft's programming staff should be frankly ashamed to be associated with it. I've used beta software that had fewer bugs. Word 2001 makes Word 2007 positively shine by comparison.
Which is not to say that Word 2007 is a paragon of interface design. Indeed, the software has so many interface oddities, inconsistencies, and outright design idiocies that it's a wonder to me that I've been using it as my main editing software for the past several years. (Over the holidays, I think I will reluctantly upgrade to 2010 to see if it's any better. More realistically, to see whether the new infelicities it introduced are less annoying than those in the previous version.) Such things never become obvious until you try to explain them to someone else -- which is clearly necessary when you're creating a workshop whose whole purpose is to explain such things to the innocent and the doomed.
I hate having to start a workshop by apologizing for the mess that I'm about to explain. I think I'll succeed, but it's still ridiculous that something as evolved as Word still doesn't have a sane development process that would eliminate the worst of these problems. Hasn't Microsoft noticed how hard it is to teach their employees how to use Word? Apparently not. Sigh.