Sunday, July 19, 2009

wasted time

I have just wasted 7 hours of my life. Was trying to find a way to
setup a simple invoicing system with auto-sequence for invoice
number. I could have done that easily in the "PC" version of
Microsoft Office in 45 minutes. But we are using Mac. This Visual
Basic for Office is no longer available on the 2008 version of
Microsoft Office for Mac. I tried looking up from Microsoft website,
but not much to help but said to the effect: " AppleScript". That
requires me to learn yet another language.

OpenOffice, the Sun version that is free. Well, I had some head ways
until I tried to do the auto-sequencing for the invoice number. Not
so easy! Someone had a complete instruction how to setup an invoice
system but no auto-sequence number. I dug deep. O... I have to use
the database from OpenOffice for that! What?

I found an up-to-date instruction that I could, repeat could, get.
But when I click on "subscribe online" from this major LINUX magazine
website, it said " sorry we cannot process, please call .....". A
bloody long distance call.

The reason I want to use OpenOffice is that it is free and cross-
platform, more stable than MS-Office. I can distribute this to other
people. But.....

No wonder we are not getting ahead as quickly for Open Source to the
general public; only the "geeky" types.

Next I am going to try iWorks, the Apple version of MS-Office.

No comments: