Yesterday, I was looking for the file normal.dotm on a user's system because they had somehow replaced it with an ordinary document, so that document would always open when they opened Word.
Apart from the sloppiness of the template design which allows a user to accidentally replace the normal template (this problem has been around a long time), there is the question of actually finding the file.
Of course some readers will know exactly where that file is because they have had to find and rename it many times before to sort out various problems. Excuse me for not knowing where it is in the file system, and besides the Microsoft support page at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005 under the heading "Rename the normal.dotm template or the normal.dot template" tells you to do a search for it.
You would imagine this to be a very straightforward task. Not so!
Using Windows Vista, I search for normal.dotm on the drive (C:), searching the default indexed locations. The search produces no results.
Ok so I click to show the search pane and then click again to show "Advanced search".
In here I specify the name of the file, "normal.dotm", the local hard drive (C:), and then I tick "Include non-indexed, hidden and system files (might be slow)".
The search seems to speed off with a progress bar that is actually making progress (but no results). Then the progress bar reaches the cancel button and partly obscures it and then stops.
There are no search results yet so I presume it is still going, and I make a mental adjustment to note that the progress bar being half way across the cancel button means that the search has not finished yet.
I mean if you look at the screenshot of it, it is not a particularly intuitive indication that the search is still going.
Anyway user interface design aside, there is still the issue that the file has not been found yet and it is now 15 minutes and counting.
While I'm waiting I decide to look again on the net for where I can find normal.dotm and I find this Microsoft support document http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541
Under the heading "Rename the Normal.dot or Normal.dotm global template file" it describes where to find the file. I go there and rename the file and then restart Word and the problem is fixed.
I am still curious as to why search didn't find the file though and I run the search again and this time it finds it, probably because it is a recently used file.
I ran this same search on a different Vista machine and it did find the file, but only after 15 minutes of searching. This was supposedly done in indexed locations as well and so the "(might be slow)" should not have applied, although I would say 15 minutes to find a common file is very slow.
This to me is a completely daggy and hopeless search function and people have learnt not to use it.
When these people switch to OS X, they do not realise that search actually works, and quickly, and that "Help" is not ridiculously useless (although MS is improving on Help files for Office 2007 at least).
I had a user yesterday, who has recently switched OS X in a panic because they could not find a file they had been working on for hours (An Office 2008 for Mac file btw). I showed her how to use spotlight search and the file came up straight away. She had put it in the directory above.
Unfortunately, she had not thought to use search because she has learnt not to use search, I would posit, from prolonged years of Microsoft Windows use.
