Office 2010beta beware!

I liked Office 2010 and the free beta version seemed to last for ages. But all good things must end, someone said, and one day I realised I was back in Office 2007. That was OK as I hadn't got a spare £100 and wouldn't be able to get a free copy from College for a while.

A little while ago I was trying to print the final version of my huge great MA paper and the air had already turned blue just drafting it all. It became a purple haze Jimi Hendrix would've been proud of, though, when I tried printing it. Pages of nothing flew out of the printer. Now I know some people might say I write a load of poppycock but at least you can see poppycock. And anyway, that's for Middlesex University to decide.

Now, I admit that I did run the cartridges down to their last droplets and the level indicator showed just a thin line along the bottom and that was my first thought as to what was wrong. Replaced them. Same problem. Next I wondered whether the printer's drivers had got either corrupted in a strange way or one of my children had plugged and uplugged the thing and it had had some sort of coronary or brain damage. Installed new drivers. The old ones were 2004 vintage and the new were dated at around the time Office 2007 with its nice new Cambria, Calibri et al arrived. That must be it, I thought to myself and hit print once more. Still nothing.

Strangely, I could print PDFs fine so I did that to get the work off in time. I look for some answers on Google and the excellent Woody's Lounge. No-one else seemed to have had the problem. I even used one of those Just Answer type sites and some nice guy from the States had a go but gave up.

I did notice on my travels through the US Microsoft site that there was a trial version of Office 2010 available. No money to pay, no credit card, just download and away I go. That seemed a good idea anyway and maybe that would solve the problem. It did! For a while anyway.

On the way through installation it instructed me to uninstall 2010beta manually. I did that and now all the fonts print just fine.

What I don't know is whether all I need to have done was uninstall 2010beta. It would be pretty strange if I had to uninstall 2010 to get 2007 fonts back but it was, in fact, a suggestion from one of the leading Office guys on the planet who did reply on Woody's Lounge. Even he wasn't sure, though.

So, for the odd few people who had 2010beta but couldn't afford the upgrade and who now have the same problem, do give the uninstall thing a go and let me know.

Incidentally, I didn't see an equivalent free trial on the UK site.

There's more to life than Arial and Times New Roman

An excellent range of fonts available free (check the licence terms as not all are limited to personal use) from Fonts2u.com. The standard Windows | Office set is pretty short on handwriting fonts in particular. Careful use of some good fonts can totally transform a document and yet I still see so many very tired looking notices and assignment covers in either Times New Roman or Arial where all the author managed to do was hit the italic, bold and underline buttons on the toolbar, usually all together too! Ugh! So go get some new ones and experiment a little!

There are more than 2 fonts on your computer

Sometimes even the several hundred fonts that you'll have on your computer don't provide quite the one you want. There are lots that are almost the same too which can be quite annoying but I have never managed to pluck up the courage to delete them or, at least, stop them taking up space in the font list in programmes.

In fact, that reminds me of another question. In Excel, if you want to change the font for a header or footer you have this tiny box to scroll through. Typing an initial letter, which usually focuses in well in other places, doesn't seem to do much so you're left struggling from Arial to Verdana. I'm afraid that I dislike Arial. Helvetica's fine and I can see the point of that but Arial just never, ever looks right to me. A particular hate of mine is getting mail in Arial bold, size 12+. I could even cope with Times New Roman bold and italic for a while longer before running for cover as long as the sender didn't add underscore which, unfortunately, many do for good measure.

On the underscore front, there are precious few occasions now when that U button is needed. There isn't one in my menu as I type this blog. On the web it tends to mean this is a link (especially in that colour) so if a designer does go for the U button he's risking a lot of users' frustration in meaningless clicking. In documents, headers look good in a bold font of an appropriate size. I'd go further and say that you really shouldn't underline very big headings, and certainly not title page stuff. In Word or Word-like applications it is simple enough these days to add a whole line background too which is often far more appealing than the line. And don't even mention individual word underlining, please. The very thought makes me worry that I may even recall the shortcut for it if I linger any longer!

If you must have a line then use the whole line line thing which can look quite reasonable. It's in the Borders menu somewhere.

This post started with fonts and that's where I need to return if my sanity is to remain. Handwriting fonts can be great but there are few in that long list. Whilst Windows provides you with umpteen whacky fonts and a myriad Times clones it doesn't do much on the writing side, other than some very old fashioned scripty things that you'd only use to invite Grandma to a wedding. What you may well look for in vain are some fun but not over-the-top or excessively childish fonts. There are lots around and many are free.

Take a look at http://www.getfreefonts.info/ where you have pages and pages of the things.

To install a font in Windows, download it, unzip it if necessary then move the font file to the Windows | Fonts folder where it should install itself happily and be available next time you open applications.