alitalf: Skiing in the 3 Valleys, France, 2008 (Default)
[personal profile] alitalf

The cause of the very slow "save as" dialogue box is clear at last. It appears that, when you click on the pulldown box on the "save as" box, Microsoft Office insists on making a connection with every network drive that is mapped. That doesn't waste too much time if the only mapped drives are on a server that is never switched off, but in a network where shared directories are mapped on a peer-to-peer basis, and not all computers are switched on all the time, this is not viable.

The solutions proposed by Microsoft are not to map the network drives, or, on the assumption that they are on servers that might have a slow WAN connection, mirror WAN servers locally. Then there are workarounds like running a script on startup to map only those drives that are present at the time - which won't help much here because machines get switched on and off at need.

Open Office does not seem to suffer from this problem, so Hibernia has three obvious choices:

  1. Live with it, now she knows what the problem is.
  2. Unmap all shares, and go through "My Network Places" to get at any share she wants.
  3. Use Open Office.

I would use the last solution if it was my computer this was happening on. It does happen on mine, but I rarely use the "Save As" dialogue, preferring instead to right click and create a new empty document with the correct name in the directory where I want it, then open the new document so that it will always save where I expect it. However, because I am insufficiently rich not to care, the laptop I bought earlier in the year is set up with Open Office - saving an extra cost of over half the price of the computer. Because Open Office can open and save to MS office file formats (though I doubt it translates any macros that may be present) and can also save to pdf, I my decide to change to that on this computer. The only macro that runs on startup is one to add a button to save in PDF form, and that hits me with a series of dialogue boxes when Word opens because it has not been signed by an authority that MS trusts, so switching to OO as the default might be best, assuming there is not too much consumer resistance from Hibernia.

She was very iffy about Firefox for a short time, but now would not wish to go back to Internet Exploder.

Date: 2007-11-29 11:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nakeisha.livejournal.com
If she did unmap the drives (we also have a home network and we don't map any drives) a small thing to avoid going to My Network Places each time, would be to put a short cut to the said drive on the desktop (J does this, I don't - I do go through MNP as I like a clean desk top).

Date: 2007-11-29 02:07 pm (UTC)
ext_27570: Richard in tricorn hat (Default)
From: [identity profile] sigisgrim.livejournal.com
I hate mapped network drives (though not quite as much as I hate IE & OE!).

I've found a better solution is to stick a shortcuts folder in My Documents and put all the shortcuts to remote shared in there. This gives a clean desktop (which I also like) and easy access to desired places.

Date: 2007-11-29 04:47 pm (UTC)
ext_20852: (Default)
From: [identity profile] alitalf.livejournal.com
Hibernia is quite happy to have the network drives unmapped, on consideration. She did say that I might have to deal with anguished wails when she can't remember how to find something, though...

And I put some shortcuts on the desktop just in case she needs to get at something on the network when I am on a site visit. Telling her to look at the icons will be easier, when I can't see the machine or what she is doing with it, and I'm talking on a mobile phone with a poor signal.

No peace for t'wicked!

Date: 2007-11-29 05:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nakeisha.livejournal.com
I did have them at one point, but if I didn't have the relevant computer turned on when turning on another (and I don't always have them all on) it kept 'telling me'. So I gave up

Thanks for that tip, I might give a go see how I get on. I know I could go to them via Windows Explorer (which I use all the time) but one gets into habits and I click on Network Places without thinking.

I too hate IE *Pets Opera*

Date: 2007-11-29 02:17 pm (UTC)
ext_27570: Richard in tricorn hat (Default)
From: [identity profile] sigisgrim.livejournal.com
I would suggest that permanently mapping a drive to a workstation is not good practice, for exactly the reason that the workstation may be turned off: a mapped drive is an analogy for a permanent drive. On the other hand a shortcut to a network share is simply that, something that may or may not be there at any particular point in time.

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