In the last few days the Help in Office 2003 which is, of course, online is malfunctioning intermittently. At first I put the problems down to a post-launch surge of users accessing the Help site.
However, the problems are persisting and if anything getting worse. Not infrequently, InfoPath 2003 is, in effect, hanging when I try to access the Help files. The Microsoft site seems not to be responding. In that circumstance, as I understand it, the Help files should display only what has been downloaded on previous occasions.
However, the Help files cause InfoPath to hang in that they are "stuck" with a message "Downloading from Microsoft Office online" but they are doing nothing.
Online Help is a great idea ... in theory ... in that the Help is always the most up to date available. But when access to Help is excruciatingly slow (at the times it works) and sometimes requires the program to be shut down to carry on working with it then it is a pretty substandard user experience.
Posted by Andrew Watt at October 25, 2003 03:10 PM/* Tried mailing you earlier (nothing important) - AOL is bouncing on both addresses I've got. Probably my ISP got itself on another spam blacklist. Got any other addresses?
Bah, Italian technology infrastructure...
*/
PS. That infrastructure:
http://dannyayers.com/2003/12/wiring.jpg
