Word 2016 64bit Issues. Microsoft wants $ for support.

[markfrautschi]

I have the following issues with Word 2016.

1.) Importing Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files into a .docx document results in a mirror-image reversal of the document. Performing the same task with Word 2011 or Word 2007 is successful. I use this as a workaround.

2.) Cross references, captions, page numbers, tables of figures, contents, etc. do not update except for printing or saving as a PDF. Sometimes the reference changes its font, font size, becomes bold, etc. Hundreds of cross references must then be manually updated and reformatted after they are reset.

3.) Word:mac 2016 64bit launches more slowly than Word:mac 2011 32bit. Opening a large (390 page) file takes the same amount of time in either app.

I called Microsoft Support US (866-425-1856) yesterday and was informed that I had reached the Windows Word team. After some minutes I was passed to the Word:mac team, through a noisy connection. I had to start from the beginning and repeat everything. The person who answered was very friendly but could not, or would not, help me.

She considered my issues file specific and she said that Microsoft did not support issues with files. They only helped with installation and licensing issues. Only after a great deal of effort did I manage to convince her that issue (1.) was provably an application issue. I asked her to pass all three issues to Microsoft's Mac Business unit so that these could be added to the list of bugs with Word:mac 2016.

She said that I could get support from Microsoft by paying more money. I could
• Subscribe to Office 365.
• Purchase one month's worth of support.
• Purchase one year's worth of support.

What kind of company ships a provably buggy product and then charges customers money and time to repair it?

It was a waste of money and time to purchase Microsoft Office:mac 2016 for $229.99. I waited until they finally went 64-bit, figuring that they would have shaken out most of the bugs I was likely to encounter. There was no improvement in performance and there are more bugs.

Since Microsoft Support supports profits and not customers and not Microsoft Mac Business Unit (MBU) coders who fix bugs, does anyone know how to submit a bug report to the MBU? It seemed that back when Roz Ho ran the MBU it was easier to report bugs. Eric Wilfred runs the MBU now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Business_Unit) I wonder how one can report bugs. If any reader knows, please post here.

Thanks,

Mark

My Microsoft Incident Number is 1365829563.
Mac OS X Sierra 10.12.1 Microsoft Word:mac 2016 15.28 (161115), rMBP 15" mid 2015 2.8GHz i7, 16GB 1600MHz DDR3, 1TB SSD.

 

[CreatorCode]

What kind of company ships a provably buggy product and then charges customers money and time to repair it?

I have two sarcastic answers to that question

1. Microsoft
2. All of them

Since Microsoft Support supports profits and not customers and not Microsoft Mac Business Unit (MBU) coders who fix bugs, does anyone know how to submit a bug report to the MBU?

You can use the ☹ button in the Word toolbar; send a screenshot and hope.
You can also search and post to https://word.uservoice.com/ , but your post will likely not get attention if it doesn't gather too many up-votes.

Word has always struggled with long, complex, structured documents. FrameMaker and LaTex are better suited to these tasks, but FrameMaker is no longer available on the Macintosh, and LaTex is more complicated to use. It might be worth learning LaTex if you do this a lot, though.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Microsoft is moving away from one time purchase of Microsoft Office. I recommend trying an open source free Office clone if you are price sensitive with subscription services. Stay away from Office unless you want Office 365 subscription.

I have owned Office 2001, 2004, 2008, 2011. I have Office 365 and have Office 2016 on both my Mac and PC. I hate the free Office clones mostly due to the interface mostly. I am starting to like iWork apps better than Office but use Office when I need to share documents that look the same when I author them as when someone receives them on a PC.

I wouldn't use Microsoft Word for very large documents. Maybe Scrivener or Mellel would be better. They offer much better features for large documents compared to Pages and Word.

 

[markfrautschi]

Dear CreatorCode and BornAgainMac,

Thank you for your commiserations. I wrote a master's thesis, a dissertation and a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals using LaTeX and LaTeX 2e. Sure, it was hard to learn the first morning, but you keep at it, and LaTeX lacks some of the fine control of TeX upon which it is based, but basically it was lightweight and just worked, and eventually I learned to make beautiful, professional looking documents. Unfortunately, all of the publishers and editors I am dealing with now insist on Microsoft Word. Therein lies the trap. We are brought to some sort of least common denominator.

I have tried Open Office and Neo Office and one more (whose name escapes me). I applaud the efforts and the communities and open document formats behind them. Unfortunately, one conflicting agenda seems (and perhaps I have this wrong) is that they like to read in any of the so called open XML formats now supported by Microsoft (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx ...) but they do not like to write to them. This is a rather string nudge to drive users toward the open document format (.odf?), I think. Unfortunately, at least in my case, it drives me away from these fine open source projects instead.

Mark

 

[smirking]

Word has always struggled with long, complex, structured documents. FrameMaker and LaTex are better suited to these tasks, but FrameMaker is no longer available on the Macintosh, and LaTex is more complicated to use. It might be worth learning LaTex if you do this a lot, though.

I've often found that Open Office works better with large and complex documents. Things that would take forever to load in MS Word or Excel would open right up in Open Office. Of course it would crash a lot more, but perhaps the leader in the Office clone alternatives, Libre Office, will be more dependable.