I just finished writing a 749-page Microsoft Word document containing some illustrations so that it works out to about 5 MB of data. This went through about 100 versions. There was never a single crash of Word (version 15.0.x, part of Office 365, on Windows 8.1, itself crash-free). All of the automatic cross-references worked.
So here’s a public thank-you to the Microsoft Office team. It is tough to imagine that a monster C program like that can be as reliable as it is!
People under appreciate Microsoft. A good deal of what they have is very solid and work seemingly across their product line and 3rd party applications. Even more important, backward compatible is a huge undervalued aspect of MS product. For example, you can still run Office 2000 on windows 8.1 if you bring over some older missing drivers such as ODBC.
Btw, which version of Word did you use?
George: I tweaked the original posting to cite the version of Office 365/Word.
Though not as long (115 pp) I just finished a commercial game project that worked flawlessly with MS Word. Most important to me was the outstanding collaborative tools available which enabled three of us to work seamlessly in the same document for months. I love office and see it as a unfairly maligned hero in the information age.
Zach: Can you explain what collaboration method that you used? What’s the best way with Office to get a Google Docs-like experience of multiple people typing in the same document at once?
It probably depends on what the MS software is used for. A standard text document staying in the boundaries of a small set of features that everyone uses is probably safe. A complicated embedded software project using arcane development tools & multiple arcane USB devices probably crashes Windows constantly. C++ software has still come a long way in 20 years. The standard practice is almost never to do manual memory allocation or use pointers, anymore. Crashes of any program are quite rare, though programs are much slower.
Jack: Crashes of any program are rare? Have you tried Google Chrome? Adobe Acrobat? Flash? Gmail app on iOS? Chrome on iOS?
OpenOffice works for me; i find the user interface much less annoying/more conventional than the recent versions of MS Word.
I also it did not crash while i was using it.
Office 97 still runs fine on Windows 7. (However it doesn’t support the docx/xlsx files, so I’ve retired it.)
Les Elkins:
I think you can use docx/xlsx with Office97. Did you try to install the Compatibility Pack?
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3
Make sure to have Office 97 SR-2 and all patches. Here the details:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/133124-ms-office-2007-compatibility-pack-with-office-97/#entry900974
“Have you tried Google Chrome? Adobe Acrobat? Flash? Gmail app on iOS? Chrome on iOS?”
I couldn’t help but notice that those five apps are by just two vendors (and one is quite the security risk).
I was told by someone who worked in the MS Office team that a significant portion of the code in the office apps is for diagnostics and internal monitoring, almost an application within the application. So the reliability is a result of good engineering and design, practices that I rarely see while consulting. Sadly, most shops are preaching “agile agile agile”, which in practice translates to “do whatever you want as long as you have daily standup meetings and a task list of post-its on a wall”.
Joanmi: I did not know, that thanks. While I’ve since gotten a home version of Office with a new computer, there are times it might be handy to have the capability on my now-old laptop. Thanks!