MS Office XP Help- With Office 97, when working in Excel and Word I
could open the "open" pane, type in text or a file number, hit return
and get a list of all files in that folder that fit the number or word
criteria. I can't find how to set that up in Office XP Pro. I also
used to be able to list files in a
folder by decending order, instead of ascending order.

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Request for Question Clarification by elmarto-ga on 15 May 2003 13:12 PDT

Hello fritzstein!

These options are stil available in Office XP. However, they don't
work like in Office 97: typing in text uses the AutoComplete feature,
but doesn't perform a search. In order to perform a search, you have
to click on Tools (on the upper-right corner of the "open" pane), then
"Find...".

Regarding your other question, it can also be done. You have to click
on "Views" (next to the Tools button I've talked about above), then on
"Details". This action will add headers to the details of the files
(i.e. "Name", "Size", "Type", etc.). Clicking on "Name" will switch
the sorting order (ascending/descending).

I'm posting this as a clarification request since maybe you were
expecting these features to work just as in Office 97. If you're
satisfied with this advice, please let me know so I can post it as an
answer.


Best wishes!
elmarto

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Clarification of Question by fritzstein-ga on 15 May 2003 15:21 PDT

elmarto - I'll try that. i was hoping it would work like Office 97,
but I knew that I would have to configure something. The "find" option
should work. It's just a extra step. But, I think you have answered my
question. Regards, Fritz

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Clarification of Question by fritzstein-ga on 15 May 2003 15:35 PDT

elmarto - I followed your direction. The tools menu in the open pane
offers me "search" ot"find" (an interesting choice of terms from MS,
as "search" implies fruitless looking, where "find" implies sucess.
(nevermind)

I must need help with search in XP because I find it worthless and
slow. We file our budgets by job number, title and cleint name.
Sometimes I an looking for a file with one of those critea and there
may be many that fit that criteria. The old method was very efficient.
Any suggestions?

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Request for Question Clarification by elmarto-ga on 16 May 2003 08:18 PDT

Hi again,
Well, that's the only search feature in Office XP I know of. It was
certainly more efficient in Office 97, I agree absolutely. Have you
tried changing back to 97? :-)

Anyway, the only further suggestion I can think of is that you try the
"Advanced" tab in the "Find..." pane. Maybe this will work better for
you. Make sure you choose to search only in "My Documents" (or
whatever) in the additional search options box, otherwise it will take
years to perform a search, as it is set by default to look in all your
hard drives.

Please do tell me if this worked.


Best wishes!
elmarto

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Clarification of Question by fritzstein-ga on 17 May 2003 13:12 PDT

Aha - Thank you, deadly chiapet. That was the trick I was looking for.
How do we close this question now? And, elmarto did give me the answer
to how to show files in descending order. So how does that work? I'm
new here. Thanks, fritz.

The method of searching for files in Office 97 as you mentioned above
is still possible in Office XP with a very slight change. Type all or
part of the word as you would have done before, but before you hit
enter add an asterisk (*) to the end.

Example:
typing school* and pressing enter would find every file in the folder
starting or containing school in the filename (like schoolwork.doc,
1school.doc, etc...)

On the menu bar, click  TOOLS.  Then choose CUSTOMIZE. The when the
customize box pops up, click the OPTIONS tab.

Put a check in the box that says "SHOW STANDARD AND FORMATING TOOLBARS
ON TWO ROWS"

You should now have the tool bar items that you used on the other
version of Office.. You now should be able to see the buttons needed
to do what you do.