Excel odd behavior



  • I noticed something interesting a few days ago working with the 2007 Office suite, if you preview an excel file in Outlook, click it and have/open another excel file without going to another window, the whole ribbon and buttons will become unclickable. My guess is this some retarded backward compatibility as is only happens with Excel and is easy to work around (open a window, any window in the foreground, including just pressing f1) but it still made me go wtf.

    Disclaimer: Maybe this is a known issue, I don't use Office products that much but I couldn't find something definitive on a quick search

    I previewed the file in Outlook btw



  • @serguey123 said:

    if you preview an excel file in Outlook, click it and have/open another excel file without going to another window, the whole ribbon and buttons will become unclickable.

    ... what? These are the worst repro instructions in history. Click what? In what application? Excel? The email preview content? The spreadsheet's icon?

    Needless to say, no repro.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @serguey123 said:
    if you preview an excel file in Outlook, click it and have/open another excel file without going to another window, the whole ribbon and buttons will become unclickable.

    ... what? These are the worst repro instructions in history. Click what? In what application? Excel? The email preview content? The spreadsheet's icon?

    Needless to say, no repro.

    You have to click on the big button labeled "it".



    1. Open an excel file on Excel 2007
    2. Open Outlook 2007
    3. Open an email with an excel file attached
    4. Preview the attached file
    5. Click on any cell on the previewed file
    6. Alt+Tab or whatever to the opened excel file without opening another window
    7. Try to click on the ribbon or any of the controls on the upper part of the window (except for minize, restore or close) 

    The testing machine uses XP SP2

    I''ll try to use a different OS and Office install to rule other factors later

    @blakeyrat said:

    These are the worst repro instructions in history

    ??



  • @serguey123 said:

  • Open an excel file on Excel 2007
  • Open Outlook 2007
  • Open an email with an excel file attached
  • Preview the attached file
  • Click on any cell on the previewed file
  • Alt+Tab or whatever to the opened excel file without opening another window
  • Try to click on the ribbon or any of the controls on the upper part of the window (except for minize, restore or close)
  • Still no repro. But at least these instructions I can follow.

    @serguey123 said:

    The testing machine uses XP SP2

    Fuck man. "Yeah I have a bug with your software, when I'm trying to run it on my Ford Model T..."

    @serguey123 said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    These are the worst repro instructions in history

    ??

    Maybe not in history, but close. I suppose in your native tongue, "click it" is an extremely specific phrase that can't possibly be vague or confusing, yes?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Maybe not in history, but close. I suppose in your native tongue, "click it" is an extremely specific phrase that can't possibly be vague or confusing, yes?

    If all else fails, punch an IT person.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Fuck man. "Yeah I have a bug with your software, when I'm trying to run it on my Ford Model T..."

    I never said it was a bug, I said "odd behaviour". Nevertheless it shouldn't happen at all and this only happens in Excel (none of the other components in the Office suite seem to be affected) however perhaps is not even Excel fault, that is why I said that I would test it later on another OS and with a clean install of Office 2007 in a VM to see if the behaviour persist. My main reason to post this was to see if others had encountered this and/if they could reproduce this so that I could chalk it to a retarded configuration or a funky install instead. We'll see. Perhaps it is due to XP, thanks for the imput.
    @blakeyrat said:
    . I suppose in your native tongue, "click it" is an extremely specific phrase that can't possibly be vague or confusing, yes?

    In the given context? yes


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @serguey123 said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    . I suppose in your native tongue, "click it" is an
    extremely specific phrase that can't possibly be vague or confusing,
    yes?
    In the given context? yes
    I thought English wasn't your native tongue...?



  • @PJH said:

    I thought English wasn't your native tongue...?

    It isn't. Fluent ClickIt is his first language.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Cassidy said:

    @PJH said:

    I thought English wasn't your native tongue...?

    It isn't. Fluent ClickIt is his first language.

     

    My apparently elusive and obscure point still remains however - when presented in English the comment - as it was, in context - was unambigious.


  • @serguey123 said:

    if you preview an excel file in Outlook, click it and have/open another excel file without going to another window, the whole ribbon and buttons will become unclickable.

    I was able to reproduce this. What is happening is that the Preview is retaining focus once you've clicked a cell, as if you are going to edit that file. There are no Ribbon controls available in the Preview, so you cannot use them in another file until you clear focus off of the Preview. It's like when you get a modal Windows OK/Cancel button under other windows, and can't get certain things to move on until you've found the OK/Cancel and dealt with it. Stuff like this trained me off of Preview long ago. Why open it up just to look at it if there is even a .00001 chance I will want to edit it? Better open it in Excel, and make changes as needed, than open in Preview, close Preview, re-open in Excel, etc.



  • @PeteyF said:

    Stuff like this trained me off of Preview long ago. Why open it up just to look at it if there is even a .00001 chance I will want to edit it? Better open it in Excel, and make changes as needed, than open in Preview, close Preview, re-open in Excel, etc.
     

    For you, maybe.

    In my case, I receive a lot of Word docs as attachments and I can print them out directly from preview rather than opening the attachment in Word.

    Quite why they need to come as Word docs, I have no idea.

    But anyways, preview suits different cases. In your case... if you're making changes to said document, wouldn't it make more sense to have a single copy in some shared location, rather than using email as a clone and distribute system?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Cassidy said:

    In my case, I receive a lot of Word docs as attachments and I can print them out directly from preview rather than opening the attachment in Word.

    Quite why they need to come as Word docs, I have no idea.

    Or why you need to print so many of them?



  • @PJH said:

    I thought English wasn't your native tongue...?

    It isn't
    @Cassidy said:
    Fluent ClickIt is his first language.

    YES!
    @PJH said:
    My apparently elusive and obscure point still remains however - when presented in English the comment - as it was, in context - was unambigious.

    Perhaps, but it wasn't that ambigious in my native tongue and that what was blakey was asking wheter this was as confusing in my mother tongue as it was in english and my response was that in the given context in my own language, it wasn't (fuck, why do you make me write so much?). Look, in order to make my post less confusing I tend to write short posts as my native tongue works really different from english and english is the second to last language I learned so it is always fuzzy.
    @PeteyF said:
    I was able to reproduce this.

    Awesome
    @PeteyF said:
    What is happening is that the Preview is retaining focus once you've clicked a cell, as if you are going to edit that file. There are no Ribbon controls available in the Preview, so you cannot use them in another file until you clear focus off of the Preview.

    That is a plausible explanation.
    @PeteyF said:
    Stuff like this trained me off of Preview long ago

    Ok, but this is the weird part, it only happens in Excel, doing this in Word works fine, so Excel is doing something terribly wrong there



  • I get SO many screenshots that are pasted into word docs... Drove me crazy for years...

    I have just come to accept it now...



  • @boomzilla said:

    Or why you need to print so many of them?
     

    In some cases, sign and hand over a document.

    In others, sign and fax it back.

    At hotels, helps to hand over printed format rather than fire up my netbook and show them the booking details.

    On occasions, sit in the sun with a pen and scrawl changes over the paper version rather than squint at a screen in bright light.

    The first two are slightly WTFy.  There's been a few clients willing to accept a digital signature added to a PDF, but in many cases the recipient's legal bods like to stack data in dead tree format so they can expend sizeable effort languidly searching for historical information whilst talking about unreliable hardware being a greater risk than fire or flood damage.



  • @serguey123 said:

    @PJH said:
    I thought English wasn't your native tongue...?

    It isn't
    @Cassidy said:
    Fluent ClickIt is his first language.

    YES!
    @PJH said:
    My apparently elusive and obscure point still remains however - when presented in English the comment - as it was, in context - was unambigious.

    Perhaps, but it wasn't that ambigious in my native tongue and that what was blakey was asking wheter this was as confusing in my mother tongue as it was in english and my response was that in the given context in my own language, it wasn't (fuck, why do you make me write so much?). Look, in order to make my post less confusing I tend to write short posts as my native tongue works really different from english and english is the second to last language I learned so it is always fuzzy.
    @PeteyF said:
    I was able to reproduce this.

    Awesome
    @PeteyF said:
    What is happening is that the Preview is retaining focus once you've clicked a cell, as if you are going to edit that file. There are no Ribbon controls available in the Preview, so you cannot use them in another file until you clear focus off of the Preview.

    That is a plausible explanation.
    @PeteyF said:
    Stuff like this trained me off of Preview long ago

    Ok, but this is the weird part, it only happens in Excel, doing this in Word works fine, so Excel is doing something terribly wrong there

    reading this is like watching a child prodigy playing chess against many masters at a time, except in this case there are no prodigy, no master, and no chess



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    reading this is like watching a child prodigy playing chess against many masters at a time, except in this case there are no prodigy, no master, and no chess

    Tell me more



  • @Cassidy said:

    But anyways, preview suits different cases. In your case... if you're making changes to said document, wouldn't it make more sense to have a single copy in some shared location, rather than using email as a clone and distribute system?

    Why, yes, yes it would in my case.

    But try telling that to 200+ people who have gotten used to doing it that way over a decade, in an industry where deltaphobia is rewarded; not punished. Just like you have to print unnecessarily, I have to save files unnecessarily.



  • @serguey123 said:

    Ok, but this is the weird part, it only happens in Excel, doing this in Word works fine, so Excel is doing something terribly wrong there

    Have you tested it with Powerpoint?

    Does it do it in Excel if you change your autocalculate settings?



  • @serguey123 said:

    I''ll try to use a different OS and Office install to rule other factors later
     

    I bet it works perfectly in Lotus No----

    AAAAAH!!!


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