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Old 11-24-2022, 01:11 AM
Firefox1701 Firefox1701 is offline How to get actual answers ...? Windows 7 How to get actual answers ...? Office 2007
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Default How to get actual answers ...?

Let me start by saying that I mean no disrespect whatsoever to any of the other users of / contributors to this forum, particularly bearing in mind that many of you are presumably in much the same position as myself.
That being said:
There are posts on here which have had in the order of 500 views and not a single answer. As I type, in fact, out of all the questions that appear on the first page, there is only one answer out of a combined total of literally hundreds of views.
In a way, I suppose this sort of stands to reason: if we all understood how this bloody thing worked, we wouldn't have to be posting so many questions on here in the first place. But surely someone, somewhere, must understand how it works?


Perhaps I'm being naive - although personally I don't think so - but isn't there anywhere that we can go to get actual definitive answers?
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Old 11-24-2022, 10:55 AM
ChrisGreaves ChrisGreaves is offline How to get actual answers ...? Windows 10 How to get actual answers ...? Office 97-2003
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Firefox1701 View Post
There are posts on here which have had in the order of 500 views and not a single answer. As I type, in fact, out of all the questions that appear on the first page, there is only one answer out of a combined total of literally hundreds of views.
Hi Firefox. I cannot in all conscience fail to respond to your question(s) (Grin!)
I have attached an image of three rows from "Unanswered posts" in the first of FORTY pages of unanswered posts on a different board.

The first and third lines show announcements which are not questions, it is true, but tend not to generate much discussion. A vanilla announcement such as "Tomorrow is Friday" carries very little information content, and does not ask a question. These announcements tend to come from administrators or people whose main interest is in that particular third-party application.

The second line is an announcement by Yours Truly, in a programming language forum. At the time I had written some VBA code which I thought might be of interest to a few people, a contribution to the general pool of knowledge, or might cause someone to think "Hey! That might be a good thing to have in MY applications". And for much of the time, I use this particular BBS as a storage device so that I can easily find something if I have deleted or lost the copy from my system.

I think that unanswered posts is not a cause for alarm; but an unanswered question from within the last fortnight may deserve a second look. An unanswered question from a newcomer within the last day might deserve at the least a "Welcome Aboard!" response, just to let them know that their post is visible.

Sometimes I don't have a good answer to a question, but I will respond "I have had the same problem" just to let the poster know that they are not alone.

Cheers, Chris
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Old 11-25-2022, 12:34 AM
Firefox1701 Firefox1701 is offline How to get actual answers ...? Windows 7 How to get actual answers ...? Office 2007
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Whether or not page upon page of unanswered posts is cause for alarm, is in the eyes of the beholder, I guess. However, surely it does beg two questions.
1) If 99% of all questions are likely to go unanswered, what purpose is the forum serving in the first place?
2) ... to return to my original question ... although any forum will undoubtedly contain some posts which are for information rather than interrogative purposes, the people who use those ( these ) forums to ask questions obviously do so because they need an answer - sometimes, urgently - and because they've presumably failed to find one elsewhere. Surely there must be an 'elsewhere' wherein these answers can in fact be found, not by guesswork or trial-and-error or endless and often fruitless hours of trawling Google, or even by employing workarounds, but by asking people who actually know the answers?
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Old 11-25-2022, 05:47 AM
ChrisGreaves ChrisGreaves is offline How to get actual answers ...? Windows 10 How to get actual answers ...? Office 97-2003
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FF> Surely there must be an 'elsewhere' wherein these answers can in fact be found, not by guesswork or trial-and-error or endless and often fruitless hours of trawling Google, or even by employing workarounds, but by asking people who actually know the answers?


Firefox, I do agree with your concerns. For thirty-five years I have been posing questions and receiving answers through BBS networks, DOS-based and now Windows-based. Many of my questions have gone unanswered. That's Life.
I too am frustrated by failures in search engines; I put most failures down to my weird dialectic vocabularies (in the main Lancashire UK, Yilgarn Western Australia, and now Toronto and Newfoundland in Canada. That, too, is life.


The hours spent trawling Google (or whatever) are not, however, fruitless, as I think you will see. Take your favourite unanswered question, just one, and go looking for an answer, not just here, but wherever you think an answer might be found. When, if, you do find an answer elsewhere, add that BBS to your list of goto-places for answers.


Examples from my life abound: I am implementing Word2003/VBA applications that mine data from web pages. "Selenium" was recommended. My usual VBA haunts do not favour Selenium, but I found a site with excellent videos that got me started the first time out. A Miracle!
And herein lies a tale: If right now you search for "Selenium VBA" you will get hits. But if you search "YouTube selenium excel" you will immediately find the video of the UK firm who produce these (to me) excellent videos.

My failure in effecting searches lies mainly in my use of my mother tongue ("dialects" above). My early days in programming used "macro" to mean a compile-time action that expanded into source code to be compiled into an 80-column punched card object deck. Microsoft have popularized the use of Macro to mean "run-time procedure with no parameters", that is "a subroutine with no parameters".


Today? I have located a half-dozen BBS in which I search for answers in specific areas, and am usually satisfied with responses. There is a possibility that some unanswered posts are from people who expect one tool - Microsoft Office Forums - to solve every problem. I do not expect that of my carpentry tools, nor my gardening tools. Why should I expect any different from my online tools?


Perhaps you might identify a specific post in (I think) the Outlook Forum, and one or more of us might see what we can find. After all, if there really is no answer, then there really is no answer; but if several answers can be found elsewhere, then perhaps the original poster just didn't try hard enough?
Cheers, Chris
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Old 11-25-2022, 06:15 PM
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Firefox1701: Please be aware that everyone who contributes answers to posts here is a volunteer: No one is being paid to answer anyone's questions. Some volunteers have more time and ability than others. Family and other commitments - including sleep time - reduce anyone's ability to contribute. And, of course, some lose interest in contributing to forums where they aren't thanked for their efforts and others seem to think they're entitled to demand answers that the software can't provide. For the kind of attitude some bring to forums such as this, see:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/forum...word-here.html
https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/...e-spacing.html
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Old 11-26-2022, 01:14 AM
Firefox1701 Firefox1701 is offline How to get actual answers ...? Windows 7 How to get actual answers ...? Office 2007
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May I respectfully reiterate the first line of my first post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Firefox1701 View Post
Let me start by saying that I mean no disrespect whatsoever to any of the other users of / contributors to this forum, particularly bearing in mind that many of you are presumably in much the same position as myself.
I don't think I could have made it much clearer that my post was not intended in any way to criticise anyone who might be reading it, regardless of their circumstances. If - and I struggle to imagine it - but if I did somehow manage to inadvertently give offence to anyone reading this, please accept my unreserved apology.
... although ...
I'm not sure why an administrator would feel a need to address a perfectly polite, respectful and reasonable question - framed well within the guidelines set out for use of this forum - in this manner. Having made my demeanour toward other contributors clear at the outset, does a reminder about 'the kind of attitude some bring to forums such as this' really seem necessary?
I can't, and wouldn't presume to, speak for any other contributor. I would suggest the possibility that if some of those contributors are perhaps less than diplomatic, it could be due to the frustration of having to trawl Google or employ educated guesswork to find solutions to their problems - just as was the case for me.
My intention was never to criticise the users of this forum. However, the ratio of views to answered questions is what it is: I'm not inventing that to prove a point. My point was simply that someone somewhere must have the knowledge to be able to answer these questions definitively, and I'm sure I do speak for most if not all of the users of this forum when I say that we would very much like that person's phone number or e-mail address.
Chris, I do take your point - up to a point - but as for citing a specific post, well, my last one would do to be getting on with; but for the purposes of example, you could take almost any post on the first page of this forum. Whilst I understand that your post was not intended to be inflammatory - as, indeed, neither was mine - I do take some exception to the phrase 'perhaps the original poster just didn't try hard enough'. Knowing - as we all do - the odds against finding a solution via this forum - again, with no disrespect to all the other forum users who are in the same position - I come here as a last resort, not a first line of enquiry. If I'm posting a question on this forum, you can be sure I've looked copiously elsewhere first.
If other users feel that my question is unreasonable or that any of what I've said is worded in an unreasonable or disrespectful way, by all means let them say so. In the interests of equitability, if anyone else would also like to know where they can get definitive answers to their questions, I'd be interested to hear from them, too.
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