Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 April 2

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April 2

Microsoft Word vs XL: sibling rivalry?

Time for my annual visit to the Computing Desk.

1. In XL, a spreadsheet opens at the place it was last used. In Word, a document always opens at the start.
2. In XL, merely copying a cell or group of cells into the clipboard for use elsewhere, without changing the source sheet, prompts the system to ask whether you want to save. No such thing applies in Word.

Since these softwares are siblings, why were these features organised so differently? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:12, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I take it you mean Microsoft Excel? I've not ever observed your second feature in more than 25 years of use of the product. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:21, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Microsoft Excel. Well, that's odd. I've been using Excel in various versions in various workplaces and at home, on different computers, also for about 25 years, and it's something I've always noticed and wondered about. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:31, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

So what exactly do you do to precipitate this? iirc, my mo is to mark a group of cells with mouse or shift & cursor keys, then ctrl-c or ctrl-x to copy to the clipboard, and ctrl-v to paste. Nada save. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:40, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly it. I just opened an existing document, marked a cell with the mouse, used Ctrl-C to copy, then pressed Close - and I was asked, as I always am, whether I wanted to save or not. I made precisely zero changes to the document, so there's nothing to save. I then tried an experiment, by opening a document and closing it again without copying anything, and it closed without further ado. So, it's definitely the act of copying something that sparks something in the software's brain. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:14, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't happen on my ancient version of Excel 2003.--Phil Holmes (talk) 10:54, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't happen in my version of Excel either, but one possibility is that there is some macro running that has actually made a change to the spreadsheet. This can happen in Word too. There is a possibility that this macro might be malware. If you don't use macros, it might be wise to disable them. Dbfirs 11:21, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I'd never noticed #1, but #2 drives me crazy.

I wouldn't assume there's any rhyme or reason to it. For one thing, Word and Excel aren't siblings; they're pretty much different species. (Heck, even Excel-on-Windows and Excel-on-Mac aren't siblings; they're merely cousins.)

I can tell you based on software I maintain that perfectly maintaining the "dirty bit" (i.e., the one that's set whenever you make a significant change to the document/spreadsheet, and cleared when you save it) can be really hard. There's lots of ways for the code to get just slightly confused, to accidentally set the bit when the user starts doing something that merely could change the document, and then not account for the fact that the user might hit 'Cancel' or otherwise not make a significant change after all.

My conclusion is that it hasn't been a priority for Microsoft to stamp out all bugs of the form program-claims-document-is-dirty-when-it-isn't-really, and consequently, there's a certain level of them. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:11, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Aha, so I'm not the only one this happens to. We should form a club or something, Steve. Thanks for the background.

Anyone have any clues about query #1? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Nope, but I have a good apropos article - [1]. Going back to the save issue, I had understood you to mean it prompted a save when you hit ctrl-c, rather than determining a need for a save when exiting the spreadsheet. I can't recall what my excel experience was in that respect, and am too lazy to crank up a windows box to see :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:21, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

But not too lazy to come here and expend keystrokes to tell me you're too lazy.  :)

Thanks for the link. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:46, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

If any of your cells contain dynamic data (possibly macros, possibly links to external spreadsheets/data sources, definitely the use of temporal functions such as the TODAY() function), then you will be prompted to save every time you close the file, even if you haven't edited it. I'm not sure what could cause it specifically to occur only when you copy a cell (and not occur when you don't copy a cell), but the act of copying must trigger some function/macro that Excel interprets as being a change from the base file that was opened. Good luck, and let us know if you figure it out! Zunaid 11:47, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I've never used macros. I do use some formulas. I will persevere. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:35, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

The Excel file format has a field for selected sheet and selected cell. When you open a workbook, it automatically opens the selected sheet and selected cell. I often delete those attributes for reports I make because I want it to open to the first cell of the first sheet. I could make A1 on the first sheet selected, but then it gets a big black box around it. In the Word format, it doesn't have a selected position in the file format. So, it can't jump to the selected position. They could add that, but they haven't. (I just realized that I should explain that my knowledge of Word/Excel comes from making writing programs to make reports. I don't actually use Word or Excel because I've never owned a Windows machine. However, I do have to write programs that produce Word and Excel documents.) 199.15.144.250 (talk) 12:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Security Reviver

I attempted to load the malwarebytes anti-virus and got "Security Reviver" instead. It says it has found two highly serious malwares. . . and his is on a new machine! What is happening? Is this legitimate? --Halcatalyst (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

If you thought you were installing one product and got another instead, it's surely a scam. There are lots of fake malware scanners that find fake malware on your machine to entice you to buy the professional version that will claim to remove it while actually doing nothing.

To avoid making this mistake in the future, find the wikipedia article for the software (Malwarebytes in this case), and click the link in the sidebar to get to the official web site. Also, install an ad blocker (uBlock Origin may be the best) so that you won't see ads that look like download buttons. -- BenRG (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

HTML on Win7 / MSIE11

I'm running both MSIE 11 and Firefox on my Win7pro PC. I use a local page as my startup page to form a kindof sorted favourites page. I list obfuscated bits of it here:

 <!DOCTYPE html>
 <!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
 <html>
 <head>
 <title> Index. </title>
 <script>
   function gotopage()
   {
     var url = document.getElementById('page').value;
     if( url != "" )
     {
       url = "http://xxxxxx.invalid/" + url;
       window.open(url, '_top');
     }
   }
   document.onkeypress = function(evt)
   {
     if (evt.keyCode == 13)
        gotopage();
   }
 </script>
 </head>
 <body bgcolor="#c0c0ff">
 <h1 align=center> <a name="start"> Index.</a> </h1>
 <h2> Local </h2>
 <p>
 [ <a href="file:///D:\Data\xxxxxx.html"> xxxxxx</a>
 ] </p>
 <h2> Online </h2>
 <p>
 [ <a href="http://www.google.co.uk"> Google</a>
 ] </p>
 <p> <input type=button name=goto value="Go to page" onclick="gotopage();"> 
 <input type=text id=page size=15> </p>
 </body>
 </html>

It all works fine in firefox.

In MSIE, the local links to files on my hard drive no longer work since I added the goto textbox.

If I enclose the input para in <form> </form> then the local links work, but the Return press doesn't get detected.

If I remove the input para, the local links work.

Any idea how to make it all work simultaneously in both MSIE and in Firefox?

Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 22:28, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I haven't tested it, but try putting <form> </form> around the input elements and changing type="button" to type="submit". -- BenRG (talk) 04:04, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

In MSIE (untried in Firefox), that stops the Goto button working, it stops RETURN/ENTER working and the local URLs still don't work. Omitting the <form></form> but changing to "submit" works the same way as "button". If I can't fix it, I'll put the button and text box on a page all by themselves with a local link from my index page - but that is admitting defeat.

There must be a way to have: Internet links, local links, internet links derived by javascript from text input on a button and on Return/Enter. It seems such an obvious thing to want to do. (Note I need line 2, otherwise MSIE hiccups when page is loaded.) -- SGBailey (talk) 05:44, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

After changing the number in the second line from (0022) to (0021), it works for me in IE and Firefox. (It's supposed to be the number of characters in the immediately following URL.) I also changed xxxxxx.xxx to xxxxxx.invalid. -- BenRG (talk) 09:38, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I made some additional changes/improvements, but it worked for me in both browsers before these changes. The about:internet line is taken from here. -- BenRG (talk) 09:46, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh well, thanks anyway - the mysteries of MSIE! -- SGBailey (talk) 10:29, 3 April 2016 (UTC)