GetDateFormatEx could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll

[T]

Hi All,

I have a bunch of my XP customer with M$ Office starting to call me
who can not get Word or Excel to open. They get the following pop
up following:

The procedure entry point GetDateFormatEx could not be
located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.'

Researching this with Google gives me hits that tell me to remove
two KB's. Problem: these KB are not installed on any of
my customer's machines.

You guys know a work around for this?


Many thanks,
-T

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Paul]

T wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have a bunch of my XP customer with M$ Office starting to call me
> who can not get Word or Excel to open. They get the following pop
> up following:
>
> The procedure entry point GetDateFormatEx could not be
> located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.'
>
> Researching this with Google gives me hits that tell me to remove
> two KB's. Problem: these KB are not installed on any of
> my customer's machines.
>
> You guys know a work around for this?
>
>
> Many thanks,
> -T
>

So that means a *new* office patch did that to it,
and you're looking for a *different* office patch number.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/177915-beware-office-2010-updates/

Posted November 8

KB4461522 is the culprit.

And that KB was already pulled, for another reason.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/4461522/november-6-2018-update-for-office-2010-kb4461522

One down, and four point four million more KBs to go...

Paul

[T]

KB4461522 is one of the two recommended that does not appear
on the customer's machines.

:'(

Looks like they will be getting Libre Office 5

[Paul in Houston TX]

Restore back to a time before updates?

[Bill in Co]

Or, if that's not doable, alternatively try reinstalling Office, BUT don't
take in any updates. And I would expect this problem is just going to get
worse for the XP users as time goes on. After all, MS has no incentive to
support XP anymore, so those DLL procedure calls are likely to get more and
more problematic as time goes on, with the newer patches as they keep coming
out.

[VanguardLH]

T wrote:

> I have a bunch of my XP customer with M$ Office starting to call me
> who can not get Word or Excel to open. They get the following pop
> up following:
>
> The procedure entry point GetDateFormatEx could not be
> located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.'
>
> Researching this with Google gives me hits that tell me to remove
> two KB's. Problem: these KB are not installed on any of
> my customer's machines.

Was KB4461522 one of the updates you found in your seach? Or were
others mentioned?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/datetimeapi/nf-datetimeapi-getdateformata

That makes it look like Microsoft deprecated and then discontinued the
GetDateFormatEX method in some version of their office suite's
components.

I found someone that listed a compatibility chart between MSO and
Windows versions; see:

https://www.keynotesupport.com/windows/microsoft-windows-office-compatibility-chart.shtml

Could it be your customer moved to a later version of MSO that isn't
compatible with Windows XP (the topic of this newsgroup)? If so,
they'll need to move back to the older version of MSO that was
compatible with Windows XP. Newer software often demands newer methods
available only in newer versions of an OS.

[Paul]

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=security+update+2010

Sort by date column.

Compare KB numbers in the list (for November 8 patch set), to customer
KB numbers.

Paul

[T]

Ya, and disable the update service

[T]

None of these customer can learn anything new, so ...

[VanguardLH]

Did the customer move to a later version of MSO thinking it would be
compatible on the old OS while retaining their existing skill set for
the old MSO? For example, maybe they were using MSO2007 and moved to
MSO2016 (although that would incur migrating to the ribbon bar)? You
never mentioned which version of MSO the customer(s) was(were) using or
what is on their computer(s) now. "Cannot learn something new" doesn't
preclude upgrading a program thinking there would be little or no
learning. The security of these computers are suspect, and physical
access to their computer(s) could have something installing software the
owner doesn't know about nor authorized.

What changed between "was working" to "now not working"? Did they
upgrade MSO? Do they actually leave the Windows Update client
configured to automatically download and install Windows updates? If
the latter and their explanation is "suddenly <somethingHappened> but
they did nothing", did you check the log of system restore points to see
if there was a recent one that occured at the "suddenly" noted timeframe
to let you back out any changes from Windows Updates? Did they install
some other software they're not telling you about? Users often assume
that installing some software won't affect other already installed
software, or they're leery of revealing a possible misstep by them.
Users often feign innocence, just like little kids. If the secreted
install uses MSI then you can check the Add/Remove Programs applet to
sort by install date.

If there are no appropriate system restore points or they don't help,
use an image backup to revert the computer's state back to before the
problem arose. Since these customers are paying you for tech support,
backup schemes should already have been deployed for both hardware,
data, or configuration recovery. You may have to inspect their
computer(s) to determine what data files have changed since each backup,
store them elsewhere, restore the image backup, and then restore the
data files that were changed after that backup. The frequency of the
backups will determine how much data changes between each backup.

[T]

Hi Paul,

I have a vague memory that I did sort, but I am doubting
myself now. I will double check. Thank you!

I do remember being pissed that there was no search function, as in
later versions of Windows.


--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you say, "I wrote a program that
crashed Windows," people just stare at
you blankly and say, "Hey, I got those
with the system, for free."
-- Linus Torvalds
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[T]

No idea. I am usually not included in such decisions.

> What changed between "was working" to "now not working"?

They did not do anything on purpose. Their automatic updates are on.

> If there are no appropriate system restore points or they don't help,
> use an image backup to revert the computer's state back to before the
> problem arose. Since these customers are paying you for tech support,
> backup schemes should already have been deployed for both hardware,
> data, or configuration recovery.

Oh ya, good luck with that. I only get called in when there is
trouble. I am not included in many of their decisions.

If I was listened to, they'd have 1/10 the troubles they do.

[Paul]

You can either be running Windows Update or Microsoft Update.

It's the latter one which updates Office as well as OS.

If you're running just the Windows Update, it should only
be touching non-Office stuff.

The user can run MBSA 2.3 and do a manual scan, to detect
that Office related stuff is out of date. For example,
on a really ancient set of Office materials, MBSA told
me there were 15 outstanding patches I hadn't done.

These are two ways to run the ship of state.

Windows Update + MBSA 2.3 manual patch
Microsoft Update

https://web.archive.org/web/20180518102719/http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7558

That page was removed from the Microsoft web site on Oct2018,
but clicking the buttons in that page still works. You'd be
well advised to pick up the x86 and x64 english versions
for future usage. The tool itself is pretty small.

The tool works, by fetching the 200MB file that has the patch
info. The tool is smart enough to cache the file for usage
during that day. If you use the tool 24 hours from now, it
fetches a new one.

Since WinXP isn't receiving new updates, this particular
OS may no longer be getting uniquely different info, each
time it is downloaded. But other, supported OSes, their
patch information makes the download file get bigger
and bigger and bigger. At one time, that file was only
5MB in size. Now it's 200MB plus in size.

HTH,
Paul

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <pstmdj$lpv$1...@dont-email.me>, Paul <nos...@needed.invalid>
writes:
[]

>These are two ways to run the ship of state.
>
> Windows Update + MBSA 2.3 manual patch
> Microsoft Update
>
>https://web.archive.org/web/20180518102719/http://www.microsoft.com/en-u
>s/download/details.aspx?id=7558
>
>That page was removed from the Microsoft web site on Oct2018,
>but clicking the buttons in that page still works. You'd be
>well advised to pick up the x86 and x64 english versions
>for future usage. The tool itself is pretty small.

[]
Not being sure what this is about, but (almost) whenever I see a Paul
recommendation to get something while it's still there I did. (I had to
go back to the page to get both - just ticking both only downloaded one
of them.) I installed it, and am running it, scanning this PC. A
progress bar appeared, with underneath it "Failed to download security
update databases."; nevertheless, the progress bar moved across - it's
about 70% done now, I would say, and the last few minutes _something_
has been downloading (I have an audible download indicator [BitMeter2]),
although the "Failed to download" message is still there. Ah, it has now
finished! Thanks, Paul.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I'm a paranoid agnostic. I doubt the existence of God, but I'm sure there is
some force, somewhere, working against me." - Marc Maron

[VanguardLH]

T wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Did the customer move to a later version of MSO thinking it would be
>> compatible on the old OS while retaining their existing skill set for
>> the old MSO?
>
> No idea. I am usually not included in such decisions.
>
>> What changed between "was working" to "now not working"?
>
> They did not do anything on purpose. Their automatic updates are on.
>
>> If there are no appropriate system restore points or they don't help,
>> use an image backup to revert the computer's state back to before the
>> problem arose. Since these customers are paying you for tech support,
>> backup schemes should already have been deployed for both hardware,
>> data, or configuration recovery.
>
> Oh ya, good luck with that. I only get called in when there is
> trouble. I am not included in many of their decisions.
>
> If I was listened to, they'd have 1/10 the troubles they do.

Seems you should suggest to your customer(s) that they disable Windows
Updates: set the WU client to never download along with disabling the WU
service. Then have them get you to perform the updates which obviously
you would do after saving a full image backup. Hint to them that the
number of chargeable hours they pay are likely increased with you having
to fix problems when Microsoft decides to change the state of their
computer than if you come in to check what updates are available and
decide which, if any, to apply (and you'll be doing backups to ensure
you have an escape route in an update fucks up the computer setup).
Periodically checking the oil and replacing it is a lot cheaper than
having to put in a new engine after the old one siezed.

Even without backups, updates installed by the WU process will create a
system restore point before installing an update. That may be your only
way to recover from what fuck up the customer(s) made. I before
mentioned checking the dates for the system restore point to see which
would be candidates for troubleshooting. Guess you haven't been to your
customers' computers to check System Restore, or haven't yet logged in
remotely.

Despite asking them what changes they made, like what new or updated
software they installed, users will often lie. Like little kids, they
don't want to take blame. Even my dad would pull the "Oh, I didn't tell
you about that because I figured it was okay" after I dug into his
computer to find he did make changes that I asked about that first he
denied. Ever considered using a software inventory or auditing tool to
record the state of their computer, so when they call with a problem you
can check its later state to compare with the prior state to see what
they changed? For example, are you /really sure/ the customer(s) did
NOT migrate from an old version of MSO to a new version? From my
reading, that's why newer versions of MSO won't work on older versions
of Windows: methods (functions) called in the new version of the
software may not be supported in the old OS.

[T]

On 11/18/18 10:49 PM, Paul wrote:
> These are two ways to run the ship of state.
>
>    Windows Update + MBSA 2.3 manual patch
>    Microsoft Update
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180518102719/http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7558
>

This only runs on w8 and up. Not sure how it will help.
Also, if I can't find it in add/remove programs, not
sure if it will help either.

Looks like a slick tool for other things though. Thank you!

[T]

On 11/18/18 1:21 AM, Paul wrote:

Hi Paul,

Found it and removed it. Fix the issue. Did not even have to reboot

It was under Office 2010 updates and NOT in alphabetical order (search
by name, hahahaha). I just had to go through them REALLY SLOWLY
and squint a lot.

Thank you!

-T

[T]

On 11/19/18 2:53 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
> Despite asking them what changes they made, like what new or updated
> software they installed, users will often lie. Like little kids, they
> don't want to take blame. Even my dad would pull the "Oh, I didn't tell
> you about that because I figured it was okay" after I dug into his
> computer to find he did make changes that I asked about that first he
> denied.

I can see you have lived my life.

95% of the time, the problem they describe over the phone
is not the problem I find. It is just what sounds good
to them (and they are not to blame). I have learned
not to speculate/research on how to fix something until
I see it with my own eyes.

But as long as they are gracious about paying their bills,
it is part of the job ...

I love it when they send me screen shots.

[T]

On 11/17/18 7:28 PM, T wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have a bunch of my XP customer with M$ Office starting to call me
> who can not get Word or Excel to open.  They get the following pop
> up following:
>
>      The procedure entry point GetDateFormatEx could not be
>      located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.'
>
> Researching this with Google gives me hits that tell me to remove
> two KB's.  Problem: these KB are not installed on any of
> my customer's machines.
>
> You guys know a work around for this?
>
>
> Many thanks,
> -T
>

Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug
free. The M$O users probably upgraded to get .docx and .xlsx
functionality.

Thank you all for the help. I just need to squint a bit and
not trust that they be alphabetical.

[VanguardLH]

T wrote:

> Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
> They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
> M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug
> free. The M$O users probably upgraded to get .docx and .xlsx
> functionality.
>
> Thank you all for the help. I just need to squint a bit and
> not trust that they be alphabetical.

How were they fixed? You got us involved, so we would obviously be
curious as to the cause of the problem. Looks like the customer
upgraded to a later version of MS Office, perhaps 2007 or later which
expects calls to system APIs that don't have the expected methods
(functions) in the old OS for the newer software. That's why I gave a
link to someone showing which versions of Office are compatible with
which versions of Windows.

As for docx and xlsx support, Microsoft provided an Office Compatibility
Pack (OCP) that would add support for those file formats.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=33298
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27836
(I think you just need the SP3 to get the entire Compatibility Pack)

Those customers didn't have to move away from MSO2003 just to get docx
support. As I recall, OCP was actually a converter processor. For
example, opening a docx file would convert it to a doc file, so I'm not
sure you could save as a docx file in the old Office version.

If a "there was an error opening the [docx] file" still occurs after
installing the Compatibility Pack, you might have to re-register the
ole32.dll; see:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2001377/you-receive-an-error-when-trying-to-open-a-docx-file-in-word-2003-or-w

Support for OCP ended in April 2018 probably because the Office versions
to which it applied are also EOL'ed (End Of Lifed). Office 2007 added
docx (and other compressed archive file formats), so it and later
versions didn't need a converter. OCP was for Office 2003, and earlier.
It is still available for download.

They've doled out compatibility packs (converters) before. They
provided one that let Word users read Works documents; see:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=12

In the past, Microsoft provided a free Word Viewer program (read-only).
It handled docx files. I suppose when they dropped extended support for
ancient versions of Office that they decided it was incongruent to
continue supporting a read-only viewer, too.

I'm not sure what your "alphetical" reference was supposed to mean. The
product "year" versions have been [mostly] numerical. The product
version has been numerically incremental under C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office<xx> and %appdata%\Microsoft\Office\<xx>,
where <xx> is a number representing version). The only one that isn't
numerically sequential is Office 365 (which is really a subscription
that gives you whatever is the latest version of the standalone programs
along with any feature enhancements that won't show up until the next
standalone release).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word#Release_history

[T]

On 11/22/18 8:46 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
> T wrote:
>
>> Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
>> They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
>> M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug
>> free. The M$O users probably upgraded to get .docx and .xlsx
>> functionality.
>>
>> Thank you all for the help. I just need to squint a bit and
>> not trust that they be alphabetical.
>
> How were they fixed?

You missed my prior feedback.

And they had some plug ins for M$O 2003 too. I still carry
them with me.

>
> I'm not sure what your "alphetical" reference was supposed to mean.

How programs are displayed in "add remove programs"

> The
> product "year" versions have been [mostly] numerical. The product
> version has been numerically incremental under C:\Program
> Files\Microsoft Office\Office<xx> and %appdata%\Microsoft\Office\<xx>,
> where <xx> is a number representing version). The only one that isn't
> numerically sequential is Office 365 (which is really a subscription
> that gives you whatever is the latest version of the standalone programs
> along with any feature enhancements that won't show up until the next
> standalone release).
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word#Release_history
>

Uhhhh. You haven't been follow the thread real close.

To reprise. Paul told me to remove KB4461522, which I already
knew but could not find. He told me to sort by name. That did
not help as the KB was not in alphabetical order, but was
under Office 2010 patches, which he pointed out. I just had
to go through each Office patches one at a time and squint a
lot to find it. I did post all of this back. You just missed it.

By the way, a new one for M$, you don't have to reboot
after removing KB4461522.

-T

Just for you:

[VanguardLH]

T wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> T wrote:
>>
>>> Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
>>> They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
>>> M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug
>>> free. The M$O users probably upgraded to get .docx and .xlsx
>>> functionality.
>>>
>>> Thank you all for the help. I just need to squint a bit and
>>> not trust that they be alphabetical.
>>
>> How were they fixed?
>
> You missed my prior feedback.

True, your reply to Paul. I don't know why Paul moved from
Eternal-September to AIOE. I filter out Google Groupers. After years
of seeing the degrading populace use AIOE, I started color tagging posts
from there, and also from other unregistered free Usenet providers (no
account is created that they must use to post through). Eventually I
decided the degradation was severe enough that I also filtered out posts
that originate from AIOE.

Under that other subthread, you said you found an update to Office 2010
that once removed eliminated the problem. Your customers are using
Office 2010 on Windows XP? I had thought Office 2010 was incompatible
with Windows XP until I looked at the chart again. Windows XP without
qualification means the 32-bit version (versus the 64-bit version of
Windows XP which is really Windows 2003 Server crippled to a workstation
version and with the Windows XP desktop).

Odd that KB4461522 that was supposed to be for the Japanese calendar
would cause Office components to crash with a date call to the system
API. Guess a programmer figured Office 2010 would only be running on
his version of Windows and decided to use a system call that doesn't
exist back in Windows XP. This was a new non-security update for an old
version of Office but probably tested under a newer version of Windows.
Programmers should NEVER be allowed to QA their own code.

I've had customers report a problem, analyzed it to report in detail and
be easily reproduced in my bug report, so the Dev team knew where to
look only to have the responsible programmer say it works on his
workstation. Fine, then package up your workstation and send it to the
customer. Programmers keep testing on polluted hosts and test for how
they expect a product to work, not how to break it to get fixed BEFORE
the customer gets it. Turns out the programmer had an SDK installed
that is not required as part of the program and that customers would not
have installed nor was stipulated in the documentation as a requirement.

I always have Windows Update turned off and disabled. I wait 2 weeks,
or more, after Patch Tuesday to see what is still offered and review
each update to see if I want it or if it even applies. Microsoft has
kept pushing Skype updates to my Win7 host despite Skype is not
installed there. I also reject any of the preview updates. I've not
upped my procrastination my a month and may lengthen it due to patches
to Windows 10 that have been catastrophic (I'm not on Win10 at home but
if they screw something that bad for Win10 then they can do it for Win7,
too). By procrastinating on the updates, I can check AskWoody and
Google on the KB numbers to see if they're okay or not.

Something has gone very wrong at Microsoft in the last few months. Way
too many of their updates have proven disasterous. There has been major
restructuring starting back in April with the announcement of Meyerson
leaving. Could be, as with Windows 10, Microsoft is pushing beta and
even alpha testing onto their customers with the updates. Windows 10 is
an in-situ experiment where Microsoft has altered their testing phases
to include customers. Maybe that mentality has become contagious there.
Microsoft has had disasterous updates in the past but it seems they're
coming out too often now. I would never allow Microsoft or anyone else
alter the state of *my* computer. Yeah, it's their software but the
hardware remains my property, not theirs. Automatic updates MUST be
disabled but then users who decide to be their own sysadmins MUST be
smart enough to decide which updates are applicable to them. A long
time ago when dinosaurs still roamed the world, updates got a testing
cycle before they were employed. I'm talking about at the customer end,
not in QA at the software developer.

Microsoft has been deliberately becoming more vague in the description
of their updates. It can take some deep digging to determine what the
update changes or is even applicable in my scenario. I'll let some
other sucker get screwed with the pre-release (preview) updates. Before
deciding which, if any, Windows or Office updates to allow, I do a full
image backup. System restore will sometimes work but not always.

I am the admin of my own PCs, so it behooves me to become educated as an
admin. Most users figure because they can do something makes them
admins. Doesn't look like your customers are proactive in how they
manage Office and Windows updates.

> Uhhhh. You haven't been follow the thread real close.

Yep, Paul's subthread submitted through AIOE was invisible until you
just mentioned that somewhere you had discussed this. I don't delete
unwanted posts, just ignore-flag them and use a default view of "Hide
Ignored Messages". If I need to see content that got flagged, like
Paul's AIOE-sourced subthread, I use the "Show All Messages" view.

I won't see Paul's post or anyone else submitting through AIOE. I gave
up on that noise source. Too many trolls, spammers, malcontents,
forgers, pueriles, and other undesirables that don't have even an
account to lose because Usenet providers that don't require registration
don't have accounts. If I don't want to see a poster or topic, I also
don't want to see replies to it, so my client flags all subthreads under
a flagged post.

Aside: Sorry, Paul, but I gave up seeing AIOE posts. I filtered out
Google Groupers long ago (http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/).
Years later, the populace using AIOE and other unregistered Usenet
providers degraded, so I eventually filtered them out, too.

> To reprise. Paul told me to remove KB4461522, which I already
> knew but could not find. He told me to sort by name. That did
> not help as the KB was not in alphabetical order, but was
> under Office 2010 patches, which he pointed out. I just had
> to go through each Office patches one at a time and squint a
> lot to find it. I did post all of this back. You just missed it.

A system restore might've also worked since a restore point gets saved
before applying Windows updates. I'd have to check next time to see if
restore points are also created before Office updates.

The searchbox in Add/Remove Programs sucks. You want to find an update
by its number but a search on, say, 44457035 turns up a blank page (no
hits in the search). You have to use KB44457035 but sometimes that
doesn't work. Sometimes it is easier to use Belarc Advisor or another
inventorying tool to list the updates and then search that tool's list.
In Belarc Advisor, you have to scroll all the way down their results
page to find the "Click here to see all installed hotfixes."

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

(This thread was in the XP 'group only.)

In message <6mp9vd5n4mce$.dlg@v.nguard.lh>, VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH>
writes:

>T wrote:
>
>> Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
>> They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
>> M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug

I tend to agree (although its improvements over Burgundy edition [Office
97, version released in '98] are IMO very minor, and for most people
most of the time not relevant - apart from OS compatibility).

>> free. The M$O users probably upgraded to get .docx and .xlsx
>> functionality.

I fear so: they were susceptible to pressure to either be able to
_create_ the .*x formats, or just to have the latest version. (More fool
they, but that's easy for us to say - they have businesses to run and
can't spend as much time on knowing such things, and have to take advice
from _some_one.)
[]

>As for docx and xlsx support, Microsoft provided an Office Compatibility
>Pack (OCP) that would add support for those file formats.
>
>https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=33298
>https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27836
>(I think you just need the SP3 to get the entire Compatibility Pack)

You beat me to saying that. (Though although those enable older versions
to _open_ the .*x formats, I don't think they can _save_ in them.)

>
>Those customers didn't have to move away from MSO2003 just to get docx
>support. As I recall, OCP was actually a converter processor. For
>example, opening a docx file would convert it to a doc file, so I'm not
>sure you could save as a docx file in the old Office version.

(Oops, sorry, I should read ahead more.)
[]

>They've doled out compatibility packs (converters) before. They
>provided one that let Word users read Works documents; see:
>
>https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=12

Wow, Works, that's a blast from the past! I used to think Works was a
good Office suite: not only significantly cheaper (although in those
days you could buy the components of Office separately), but also much
less demanding in what resources it needed to run. The rot set in when
later versions of Works started to include Word as the word processor
rather than the original Works one, but I think the whole Works package
was killed off because it was affecting sales of Office, many people
finding it was entirely sufficient for their needs. (The team behind it
- who, unusually within Microsoft, did seem genuinely to believe in code
and requirements economy - must have dispersed [maybe some of them went
to {formed?} the SysInternals group].)

I didn't know (early versions only of?) Word _couldn't_ read Works files

>
>In the past, Microsoft provided a free Word Viewer program (read-only).
>It handled docx files. I suppose when they dropped extended support for
>ancient versions of Office that they decided it was incongruent to
>continue supporting a read-only viewer, too.

Oh, the lorgnette/pince-nez spectacles icon thing - they've stopped
doing it, have they? I wonder why: surely it was an advertisement for
the full suite? I suppose the rise of compatibles (Open, Libre, etc.)
made the demand from _users_ less, but surely most users who got one of
those initially just as a viewer would have stayed with it when they
wanted to create, so cutting their own viewer seems an odd choice.

Maybe they put the programming effort instead into the crippled version
of Office/Word that is (or was? I'm out of touch) with (some, or all?)
new Windows machines these days.
[]
A curious observation: due to some misconfiguration on my part that I've
not bothered to fix, if I open a .docx attachment that's in an email, it
opens in _Wordpad_. And I had actually not noticed for some time! (In
fact I think until I edited and saved one and got the "you may lose
aspects" warning.) [I do have the extensions to Office 2003 so I can
open .docx files.]

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Have you ever heard about a petition, disagreed with it, but been frustrated
that there's no way you can *show* that you disagree? If so, have a look at
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/232770 - and please pass it on if you
agree, especially to twitter, facebook, gransnet/mumsnet, or any such forum.

The early worm gets the bird.

[😉 Good Guy 😉]

On 23/11/2018 14:53, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

(This thread was in the XP 'group only.)

Why the fuck did you cross post?  are you jobless idiot trolling here?.

--

With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

[Bill in Co]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

I'm still using Office 2000 AND MS Works 4.5. The file converter pack
seems to work pretty well, and you're right, I can't save documents in the
newer formats like docx. As for MS Works, I think it was (and still is) a
nice, lighterweight program until MS ruined it in the later versions (5 and
later) by trying to use Word, just as you said. I'm still using MS Works
4.5 on occasion - the last good version. No bloat at all, and boy it is
simple and fast. (It saves documents as .wps). BTW, there are some pretty
good free Office clones out there like Kingston Office that can come in
handy too, but I don't know if they'd cut it very well in corporate use.
But it's possible, and perhaps even probable, that they might open the newer
office formats better than my version of Office with the file converter
packs, but I haven't run any tests. The only time I might need it is in
opening some student lab reports, which are often saved as docx (I'm
teaching electronics PT over here).

[T]

Hi Vanguard,

I am not sure I will have the time to read your response. When
writing me, you really have to keep it short. This is regrettable
as you are a font of very valuable information at times.

-T

[T]

On 11/23/18 6:53 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> A curious observation: due to some misconfiguration on my part that I've
> not bothered to fix, if I open a .docx attachment that's in an email, it
> opens in _Wordpad_. And I had actually not noticed for some time! (In
> fact I think until I edited and saved one and got the "you may lose
> aspects" warning.) [I do have the extensions to Office 2003 so I can
> open .docx files.]

I fix that kind of stuff a lot for my customers.

But I do have a hard time getting them to keep the attachments
around so I can fix them. When I ask for the problem eMail,
they say they deleted it. When I go looking in the trash,
they say they dumped the trash because they knew I was coming.
Since when do they follow what I tell them to do. I can't win
at times.

[T]

On 11/23/18 12:31 AM, VanguardLH wrote:

> True, your reply to Paul. I don't know why Paul moved from
> Eternal-September to AIOE. I filter out Google Groupers. After years
> of seeing the degrading populace use AIOE,

Hi Vanguard,

Well now, I managed to get four sentences into yhor letter!

:-)

Paul has a genius level knowledge of all things IT and
is a total mensch to boot. It would be a good idea
to figure out a way to get his postings.

-T

[JT]

T,

It runs on WinXP.

Look at the System Requirements...Win2000 and up.

JT

--

[T]

This is what I saw:
The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer provides a streamlined
method to identify missing security updates and common security
misconfigurations. MBSA 2.3 release adds support for Windows 8.1,
Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2012.
Windows 2000 will no longer be supported with this release.

I did not look at the system requirements. I better download it
before they go through with their threat.

Thank you!

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

The MBSA tool ran for me OK on 7-32. Although I think two of the 8 or 10
links in the report it produced of missing security patches (nearly all
aspects of Office, IIRR) let to "not availables", but as they did
include the KB number, I was able to find those using the Update
Catalogue I keep a link to. (It also said I needed SP3 to my Office 2003
and 2007, which I eventually managed to download - the one for 2003
crashed out, and the 2007 one said I didn't have the product. But I
suppose those aren't the MBSA tool's fault.)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Have you ever heard about a petition, disagreed with it, but been frustrated
that there's no way you can *show* that you disagree? If so, have a look at
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/232770 - and please pass it on if you
agree, especially to twitter, facebook, gransnet/mumsnet, or any such forum.

They are public servants, so we will threat them rather as Flashman treats
servants. - Stephen Fry on some people's attitudo to the BBC, in Radio Times,
3-9 July 2010

[Stan Brown]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 14:53:32 +0000, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> In message <6mp9vd5n4mce$.dlg@v.nguard.lh>, VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH>
> writes:

> > [quoted text muted]

> >
> >> Well three fixed so far. I am surprised more haven't called.
> >> They are probably on M$O 2003, which in my opinion is the best
> >> M$O suites. Snappy and not too bloated and pretty much bug
>
> I tend to agree (although its improvements over Burgundy edition [Office
> 97, version released in '98] are IMO very minor, and for most people
> most of the time not relevant - apart from OS compatibility).

And with good help files.

When they went to online help, the offline help search engine changed
and was severely skewed toward quantity of results over quality.
Previously, you could search for e.g. a function name and it would be
the first of a few hits. Afterward, searching for the function name
gave pages and pages of hits, none of them being the main help about
the function.

(The VBA editor help was still the good way as late as Excel 2010,
but I believe they've effed that up for Excel 2016 as well.)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

[dsjar...@gmail.com]

System restore worked for my system, thank you