Accessing the Forums

Article contributed by Beth Rosengard, updated by John McGhie

The Mac Word forums can be a great resource for just about any subject you care to name. Interested in cats, Cadillacs, cheese, computers or Microsoft Word? You’re not alone, and there’s a newsgroup out there where like-minded people are discussing those very topics!

The ability to have your thoughts instantly and completely understood by people just like you, who spend all day doing exactly what you are trying to do, brings a sense of unbelievable "Oh, YES!!! At LAST! Someone who UNDERSTANDS how I feel!"  Try it: it's worth it...

You know how they say "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a cat"?  That's true: but you also don't know if they might be a university professor teaching the subject at a world-renowned university, or an industry professional with 40 years of practical experience doing what you are trying to do right now.  In the Microsoft Word Mac forums, we have several of each among the MVPs.

A "Forum" is a website that offers a discussion group.  The Microsoft forums are built on top of "Newsgroups", which are a separate mechanism and operate on a different server.  Most of the people providing help are looking at the forum via the newsgroups, because they are much faster and more reliable (see below if you would like to do that too).

Newsgroups offer the best of both worlds: You can access them any time you like (they don’t come to you – you go to them); you can get to them via the web; or you can access them using your email client and/or a dedicated newsreader, very much like email.

Access Via the Web

Reading newsgroups via the web is probably the most common, but not the most efficient method. (We’ll get to that in the next section.) Regardless, many people prefer web interfaces or – when traveling or working behind firewalls, for instance – have no alternative.

In order to post a question via Google or reply to another user, you will have to register – but the service is free. There are a couple of disadvantages to using Google, however: 1) it may take hours before your post shows up (and then you’ll have to wait for any replies); 2) you may not like the user interface (how the posts are displayed on the screen, the method of organizing, or “threading,” the posts, etc.); and 3) fast as it is, it’s still slower than using a newsreader.

Access Via Newsreaders

The optimal method for accessing newsgroups is directly via the Usenet using a newsreader. If you’re interested in learning more about Usenet and NNTP, check out these articles: What is Usenet, Anyway? and Usenet History.

So ... how do you access the Usenet directly? You need a newsreader (NNTP client). There's one supplied with Microsoft Office: Entourage.   There are many others: Thunderbird is a great choice for people starting out, it's simple and reliable.  Serious Usenet users may eventually gravitate to one of the programs listed here:  http://www.macorchard.com/usenet/

Note: The more advanced newsreaders are quite complex and offer a large number of features you may never need if you are simply looking for help with Word.  Best avoided, until you want to get seriously into Usenet!

Setting up Entourage for Newsreading

The Microsoft News Server

The Microsoft News Server should already be installed (near the bottom of your folder list) by default. Otherwise, add it as follows:

  1. Go to Tools menu> Accounts and click on the News tab.
  2. At the top of the window, click New to create a new News account.
  3. Fill in the blanks as follows:

Account Name: Microsoft News Server

Email Account: Whatever account you wish to send from. (See the next section to avoid attracting spam!)

News Server: msnews.microsoft.com

This server requires me to log on: It doesn’t, so leave this unchecked.

  1. Now click on the Options tab and take a look at what’s offered. You may wish to limit the amount of message headers that are downloaded at a time. Broadband users should set this "high" so they know they will get all the items in a single "look".  Dialup users should set to something low to save bandwidth.  In either case, you will see the most recent messages.  Try "900" for broadband, and "100" for dialup.
  2. Okay your way out of the Account dialogs and you will now see a server icon for the Microsoft News Server on your folder list.
  3. The first time you click on this news server icon, you will be asked if you want to download the list of newsgroups. Say Yes and the list will appear in your Preview Pane.
  4. The group you are looking for for Word help is microsoft.public.mac.office.word. You could add the other members of the "microsoft.public.mac.office" group while you are there, if you would like expert guidance on more than one application.
  5. Use the Quick Search box at the top (“Display newsgroups containing:”) to isolate the newsgroups you’re interested in. When you find one, select it and click Subscribe. The newsgroup will now appear bolded in the Preview Pane and will also show up when you click the “expand arrow” next to the server icon in the folder list.

You can then choose to open a subscribed newsgroup in one of two ways. Both methods get you to the same place. Use whichever is easiest for you.

Note that you’ll find Microsoft’s Macintosh newsgroups by searching on mac. (that’s mac and then a period). The current newsgroups for the Mac Office applications use this format: microsoft.public.mac.office.***.

From then on, it's exactly like reading email, except that you cannot delete messages and you reply to the newsgroup by hitting the “newspaper” icon, not the regular Reply button. (And a few other things, but that’s what you’ll notice right off.) For additional tips on using Entourage as a newsreader – including how to read news offline, how to empty the news cache and more, see here.

Other News Servers

Most ISPs have their own news server. Using your local server may give you much faster download (particularly on dialup) but it will be hours or days before your posts or replies are passed out to the other servers to make them visible outside your own ISP.

Check with your ISP to find out if they provide a news server, how it is designated (what setting to use in the “News Server” pane of the Accounts setup dialog), and whether or not their server requires you to log on. After that, setting up the account is identical to the procedure outlined above.

If your ISP does not provide a news server, you still have options for accessing the newsgroups via NNTP, though on a fee basis. Check out Giganews.

Be aware that the Microsoft newsgroups are heavily de-spammed and disinfected of all the yucky stuff such as advertisements to enhance body parts you may not have! The broader Usenet outside the Microsoft sandpit is like the Wild West: completely without regulation or any requirement for maturity or human decency.  You will see the best of the human condition and the worst, frequently on the same day in the same group.  We recommend that you don't go there unless you are comfortable ignoring adolescents behaving badly.

Fighting Newsgroup Spam

Newsgroups are a boon for spammers (and virus writers!) looking to harvest email addresses to spread their ubiquitous garbage. There are a couple of measures you can take to avoid becoming grist for the spammers’ mill. One is to use a secondary account for posting to newsgroups; the other is to set up a “dummy” email address, such as <yourname@NOSPAM.domain.com.invalid>, in association with an account which will send but not receive. For a step-by-step on both of these methods, see here.

If you do decide to post to the newsgroups from a dummy email address, don’t forget to sign your name (a first name will do) at the bottom of your message. If you end up posting several questions or follow-ups, it will make you more memorable and possibly get you a better answer. Besides, it’s the courteous thing to do!

These days, it's recommended (by Apple!) to run an AntiVirus or content filter of some type if you are going to surf any part of the Internet.  Newsgroups are safer than most places because the format is almost always plain text, which does not enable nasties to hide in it.  But forums are HTML, and various bits of malware will get you, if your Mac is unprotected.

Netiquette

You’ll get the best results on newsgroups if you compose your posts according to a simple set of guidelines and keep common courtesy in mind at all times. Here are some points to keep in mind ...

My Top 10...

  1. Always reply to the newsgroup and not privately to the individual unless invited to do so! In Entourage, this means clicking on the “newspaper” icon rather than the normal Reply button.
  2. When posting about computer software, always give your operating system and application version numbers. Also note if you have updated your software and to what levels.
  3. Make your Subject heading descriptive of your question. “Help!!!” is not a useful title and will probably get your post ignored.
  4. Make a separate post for each unrelated question and title it appropriately.
  5. Maintain the “thread” (chain of related posts) by hitting “Reply to Newsgroup” (or “Post a follow-up to this message” in Google). Don’t start a new thread to reply to an existing post and don’t change the Subject (title) unless you have good reason to. If you change the Subject, you will “break the thread” in newsreaders that are not capable of advanced threading features (such as Entourage).
  6. If a discussion changes topic mid-thread, as often happens, then please do change the thread’s Subject appropriately. Example: Unicode Fonts [was “Re: Change my default font”].
  7. Always quote back at least the most relevant part of the post that you are replying to, for reference; but delete lengthy, unnecessary portions.
  8. When quoting back an entire thread, edit out extraneous sections of previous posts.
  9. Don’t send attachments. Anyone knowledgeable enough to answer your question is also knowledgeable enough not to risk opening an attachment from a stranger. Instead, post the attachment to a web server if you can, and include a link to it in your message. As a corollary (and to sneak an 11th point into my Top 10), avoid HTML messages unless there’s a very good reason to use them (like reproducing AppleScript code). HTML can make a hash out of quoting back, and besides that, many people have their newsreaders set to display as plain text anyway so if you’re depending on HTML formatting to make your point, they won’t see it.
  10. Avoid cross-posting (addressing your post to more than one newsgroup) whenever possible. If you really believe it’s necessary, at least note at the top of your message that you have done so. Example: Cross-posted to the MacWord and Entourage newsgroups. Avoid multi-posting (sending the same or similar posts with each one addressed to a different newsgroup) altogether.

A Last Word...

Dare I bring up the subject of top-posting vs. bottom-posting? Sure, why not.

The dyed-in-the-wool bottom-poster will insist that reading from the top of a page to the bottom is the natural thing to do and therefore your reply should always be at the bottom (and besides that, he would say, it’s the traditional way to do it).

His dyed-in-the-wool opposite would insist that it makes more sense to put your reply at the top of the page because then the reader doesn’t have to scroll endlessly to the bottom to find your reply (and besides that, she would say, you often don’t need to reference the history of the thread, so why make someone scroll past it; yet it’s there if you need it).

Here are my own rules of thumb (and I only break them once in a while): If a thread is already trending downwards as a result of previous bottom-posting, then follow suit by bottom-posting; if a thread is already trending upwards as a result of previous top-posting, then – guess what? – follow suit by top-posting. If you’re responding only to the last post in a thread and the rest of it is irrelevant, delete all but the single relevant post and then reply whichever way you prefer! Ditto if you’re the first responder to a post.

Finally, it is always appropriate to post in-line by inserting multiple replies into a post in response to specific points, providing that you trim unnecessary text from previous posts.

See you on the newsgroups!

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