Re: What do you want from help? (was: Do online helps have chapter numbers)

Subject: Re: What do you want from help? (was: Do online helps have chapter numbers)
From: "Sidney Oliver" <jsoliver -at- cox -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:55:57 -0700


Greetings, everyone. I'm a lurker here and a very, very, very experienced (often frustrated) Help user.

I want comprehensive content, an intuitive, versatile search feature, and a commonsensical index that, by the way, uses the vocabulary the application uses and accurately references the options the application offers.

To find a good example of what I mean, I just tried to use Help in Word 2000. The office assistant sweetly popped up to inquire how I'd help to do a table. Only, I wasn't doing a table. I had just opened a blank document and hadn't typed a thing. Why the office assistant got the notion that I'd like to do a table mystifies me.

Then, after three or four more passes just to get TO the Help menu--which I never managed to do--I typed Help in the search function and found a menu that includes help to turn off the office assistant. Unfortunately, the steps shown in Help don't appear where they're supposed to appear in my application. I was told to choose an option that doesn't exist--and yes, I had fully extended the drop-down menu.

Maybe Microsoft should hire ME--not to write the Help feature <shudder> but to demonstrate what "intuitive" and "commonsensical" means to the moderately experienced Word user. And maybe Microsoft should also do some basic quality control!
Sidney


----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven Brown" <stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: What do you want from help? (was: Do online helps have chapter numbers)



You forgot something...a powerful search capability.


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References:
Re: What do you want from help? (was: Do online helps have chapter numbers): From: Steven Brown

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