Microsoft is Not Here to Automate Your Work

You know, it's funny what people expect that they aren't going to get.  People use Microsoft Office and they expect things will be best.  But they never try anything else.  So they never know how much their work could be better. A lot of this wishful thinking revolves around Office automating their work and improving their productivity.  This is not what Microsoft does.  Automation in Windows and Office is really poor. Everything is computer-assisted, not computer-automated. The closest thing is recalculation in Excel.  Meanwhile, Word won't even update a date unless you tell it to. Now let's take Microsoft's side for a moment. A lot of automation is specific to a job, a worker, an organization.  So Microsoft gives us VBA macros so that we can do our own automation better than some out-of-the-box solution would. The refutation of this point is left to the reader. But here's the thing... what is the 'best' that people expect?  Well, we might expect a strong compound-document architecture in Word, but... no.  We might expect Project to allow simultaneous edits and direct web publishing, but...   We might expect PowerPoint to provide a smooth Web export with AJAX features...   We might expect Excel to help you track formula modifications over time...  We might expect a lot of things.  Those things all have to do with collaboration. Microsoft doesn't have to do the terrible implementations it does of collaborative software.  It doesn't have to force clunky, tedious manual processes on its users.  But what happens if you really foster collaboration?  Well, I suspect that Microsoft makes less money. When you create an Office document, you have trapped your content in a proprietary data format.  No one tries to read a Word document without licensing a copy of Office; and the same with PowerPoint and Excel.  You spend hours with Word screwing up your tables, Excel incorrectly correcting your formulas, and PowerPoint helping you create beautiful lies.  Cha-ching.  Then your pitiful customer gets to endure the same programs in order to get to your work.  Cha-ching.  Everyone in the department who wants to use your work gets another chit from the corporate license.  Cha-ching. Before you make the same assumption that some Microsoft product will help you with your job, take a moment to look at what your job is.  What are the actual requirements you have?  What is your intended business process around written content, presentations, calculations, graphs? Remember Microsoft is interested only in selling software licenses and getting recurring revenue.  The more power an Office product really gives you, the more automation it allows, the less you actually need it.  The less you need to buy.  Microsoft makes money from you working on its products - not accomplishing anything.  Caveat emptor.