Microsoft’s recursive search
Finding things on Microsoft’s site is an exercise in frustration.
Here is a case in point. I am looking for a fix to a problem caused when trying to open a VSTO (Office) project in Visual Studio. I get a helpful error that says “The project type is not supported by this installation.”. There are a few places around the web that talk of this problem and suggest ways to fix it. I follow one link to an MS web page:
Unfortunately this is an old link, and the page no longer exists. MS use their flagship Live Search to give me a set of alternatives. Unfortunately, and insanely stupidly, the very first link that comes up as a result of the search is the same link that I was trying to go to in the first place — the one that doesn’t exist.
Sigh.
Interestingly when I put the same search into Google and follow the link, I get the same ‘not found’ error but the first link on the page is not the recursive search link.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Unfortunately, I don’t find your experience with Microsoft in general all that surprising anymore. The quality of their products and services have continued to degrade while other competitors (Google) continue to innovative and push the envelope.