Part of my work is helping a number of computer users with their “IT Issues”. Most times the request will include the user’s interpretation of what is wrong (“I can’t see the files on the server, I know they are not gone because other people can see them”; for example). In one such recent incident involving a mid to high level user (skill wise), a review revealed that the files (on a Windows server) were actually visible in the Finder window in the user’s MAC, but failed to appear in the user’s “Open File” dialog box in Excel 2011. Bizarre! A check of the file permissions showed that the file that was the intended target had been changed and that user had been “disincluded” somehow. After that was fixed, the files now showed up in the Excel dialog, but attempting to open them caused an error message to appear (something like “the file is no longer at the location specified”). What! Tinker a bit more with Excel 2011 then. Closed it (all the way). Restart Excel and try again. Same error message. But then a new one. Excel crashed. Now all it does is crash when trying to open an existing .xls (older version) file. OK then, check for updates. Doh! “This update is recommended to improve stability blah blah blah”. Things are not always what they seem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part of my work is helping a number of computer users with their “IT Issues”. Most times the request will include the user’s interpretation of what is wrong (“I can’t see the files on the server, I know they are … Continue reading