Why does the blinking I-beam cursor keep disappearing when editing text inside tables in Word 2011?

I see we can always count on Microsoft refusing to do like everybody else and use the word "Bug" and a bug icon in its interface to guide users who might want to submit bug reports. Thanks for pointing out the non-standard smiley icon for bug reports. "Bugs! Yey! I'm So Happy!" Good grief… What are we? Six-year-olds?

I realize that the current version is an incomplete preview and that the focus might not have been on fixing bugs so far. (In fact, there are still too many features missing to enable me to use Word 2016 on a regular basis.)

I am however, far less optimistic than you seem to be about Microsoft ever going on a "bug-crushing binge". They've never officially said that they'd do such a thing, and the bug reporting facility you mentioned, while better than the online form, still doesn't allow you to attach anything other than a screen shot. Given that so many bugs in Word seem to be so hard to reproduce for you guys, you'd think that the ability to attach sample documents and system profiles would be a requirement.

Until I see concrete evidence of a commitment to fixing long-standing bugs, I am not going to waste any time submitting bug reports on this preview, I am afraid, especially if the main focus is to bring it to parity with Word 2011 and to fix new bugs, incompatibilities or regressions that might have been introduced on top of all the existing bugs.

I'll leave that work to other volunteers who feel that donating their time to poor starving Microsoft is the right thing to do. I need to use my own time more productively.

Pierre Igot

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BETALOGUE - Weblog at http://www.betalogue.com | Twitter: @betalogue

From my computer programming classes I know that when you change code base your first round goal is to try to keep everything the same and not lose or change features or functionality along the way. Word, Excel and PowerPoint had legacy code going back 30 years. This year is the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Office - it was Mac only back then.

If all the same old bugs are still the same in the new version, they actually did things right. Along the way, in Office 2016 preview a handful of bugs were fixed, but probably were fixed simply as a result of the new code being Cocoa based. I suspect nothing in particular was done to fix the Word window position bug. It just happened to get fixed by switching code base. That's just a guess, though. I don't have inside info about it.

Now that the code base has been updated and the core features have been ported, the next logical step is to go on a bug-crushing binge. I presume that's why Microsoft made a public beta (the Preview), something they never did with Office for Mac before now.

There is a new feedback feature in the Office 2016 Preview. Click the smile button near the top-right corner of any app and a window opens that lets you include a current screen shot and even your email address with your submission.

You are correct that the resume feature is part of Mac OS X, not Microsoft Office.

I think as part of the public Preview, Microsoft is gathering feedback on feature and bug requests, as well. I would expect that after the core suite is decided to be stable, then they will get to work on addressing some of the finer points.

There are still major elements missing from the Preview edition. File > Properties isn't there. Toolbar support is missing. ODBC for Excel is missing. These will have to be finished first. Then they can move on.

Thanks but no thanks. I am not particularly interested in doing Microsoft's debugging work for them.

If they paid attention to feature requests and reports about long-standing bugs, that would be another matter. But there's no sign that they do. And there's no improved facility for sending bug reports either, so how on earth are you supposed to submit screen shots and sample documents? I thought the whole point of releasing public previews/betas was to gather feedback!

Glad to hear the window size/position issue is finally addressed. But no Resume (automatic reopening of documents after quitting and relaunching)? That's criminal! Even Word 2011 offers that (albeit with the help of OS X itself, as I don't think the software itself handles any of it).

Another version of Office, another massive disappointment, looks like… No surprises here.

Pierre Igot

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BETALOGUE - Weblog at http://www.betalogue.com | Twitter: @betalogue

In the Office 2016 Preview you will notice that you can not select the watermark, so the problem has been "fixed" LOL

In 2016 Word is now Cocoa based and was re-written from scratch. There's lot of room for coding errors, so if you have Yosemite and want to help make Word a lot better, try it and get those bug reports in ASAP.

The window size bug is fixed!

Glad to hear you can reproduce!

The reason I used Step #5 is because it was (until now) the only way I knew how to edit an existing watermark.

I just cannot understand why one would have to go through a menu labelled "Insert" in order to edit an existing item. I don't want to insert another watermark!

I realize now that, in Microsoft's twisted world, it's perfectly normal to go through a menu labelled "Insert" in order to edit some existing, already-inserted thing, even though it's completely counterintuitive.

Next thing we know, Microsoft is going to disable access to application-wide preferences when no document window is open. Oh, wait. (In case this is not clear, that's a joke about an unrelated, but similarly absurd behaviour in Word. By definition, application-wide preferences should be accessible whenever the app is up and running, even if no document is open.)

However, the bottom line here should not be about the watermark feature. The bottom line should be that we now have one way to reproduce the disappearing cursor problem reliably. Even if Step #5 doesn't appear to you to be the "normal"/expected way to edit an existing watermark, it exists as a way to edit watermarks, and it works. 

But it also causes the cursor to disappear.

This certainly is far from being the only context in which the cursor keeps disappearing on my machine, but it's a 100% reproducible one, and that's a start.

Maybe by exploring the reasons why the cursor disappears here, Microsoft's engineers can find something more general about why the cursor disappears in a variety of contexts in Word 2011.

But of course this assumes that someone at Microsoft will take an interest in all this. Which is beyond my control.

Here's hoping.

Pierre Igot

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BETALOGUE - Weblog at http://www.betalogue.com | Twitter: @betalogue