I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the lovely helpdesk people in my office, two of whom spent their morning doing stuff for me (one of which I didn’t have the equipment to do, and the other is something that this helpdesk person is much better at than me). Thanks guys ! I really appreciate it.
I have not yet approached the problem which was plaguing me yesterday. Too scary.
Dangerosa, I understand that it’s not their job to figure out software. I only call them when I am absolutely up shit creek, when I have read the manual and checked the 'net and still have no idea what to do. (If you have used tables in Word, you may have an idea of what I’m talking about.) These are things that make no sense whatsoever, that the help files do not seem to be aware of, that Clippy knows even less about (how I hate that stupid paper clip!).
For instance, the most recent one was a table that was doing something funny (on our website, so I wasn’t sure if it was a software thing or a web thing). I know that if Box X is ticked, this should not happen. So I looked for Box X, found that it was ticked, and had no idea how to proceed. I called the nice IT lady (acknowledged as the resident expert on Word tables) and she puzzled it over, and discovered that what you have to do is untick the box, save it, and tick it again!
My software problems are things like this that are solved only by asking as many people as possible and hoping that someone has seen the problem before. Since I am more knowledgeable about IT than most of the non-IT people I work with, all I can do is call IT.