[sims] SIMS and Office 2013

[number34]

Has anyone had any problems with using it? Thinking inititially of working with individual report templates.

[glennda]

Has anyone had any problems with using it? Thinking inititially of working with individual report templates.

 

If its anything like office 2010 support won't come in for the next couple of updates. I would say April earliest most likely summer. Thats not to say it won't work but they won't help you if its broken.

[zag]

2010 support took capita something like 2 years to fully work.

 

Hopefully there are not too many changes in the new version though.

[vikpaw]

It's not like it works perfectly even now with 2010.

What does 2013 bring? A touch-screen interface?

[john]

It's not like it works perfectly even now with 2010.

What does 2013 bring? A touch-screen interface?

 

Direct PDF editing aparantly is the only amazing thing I've seen mentioned a lot. So that will be perfect for editing loads of downloaded resources from the Internet then to make them your own in 30 seconds aka remove the copyright from the bottom....

[zag]

Direct PDF editing aparantly is the only amazing thing I've seen mentioned a lot. So that will be perfect for editing loads of downloaded resources from the Internet then to make them your own in 30 seconds aka remove the copyright from the bottom....

 

That is actually quite a huge feature!

[tmcd35]

I've been personnally using SIMS with Office 2013 since it was made available on Technet a month or so back. I must say it works flawlessly and in some ways I am preferring it over previous editions. The way file open/saving and recent docs/folders is implemented is a vast improvement and as speed up my work flow no end. PDF editing is indeed very impressive - first thing I did was to test on an old document.

 

As much as I dislike ribbon as a concept, I've gotten used to it. And as much as I dislike the the Windows 2.0 2D design choices, the feature set are more important. I think this might be rolled out over the summer regardless of whether or not Capita officially support it.

[jamesmay]

Our data manager has been using for the last 10 days and no issues so far.

 

Things we like -

 

When you say attach in an email and then don't attach anything it prompts you.

When you open a xml file file it decides if its an file that would work in excel or word.

The PDF conversion.

Bit more intuitive.

It looks pretty........

[john]

Sounds like its worth a bang, I have downloaded it just not got around to installing it yet....

[glennda]

It looks pretty........

 

Oh I hate it!

[vikpaw]

but what about reports @tmcd35 - individual reports from AM7, bulk printing, mailmerge reports, late letters, those are the things that go awry. I guess they haven't changed the underlying engine much from 2010 if things seem to work.

[tmcd35]

but what about reports @tmcd35 - individual reports from AM7, bulk printing, mailmerge reports, late letters, those are the things that go awry. I guess they haven't changed the underlying engine much from 2010 if things seem to work.

 

So far (touch wood) it's worked well with everything I've thrown at it. We're still a few months away from anyone other than myself even knowing of it's existence. There are a number of area's I haven't tested yet but should do naturally in due course before we roll out. I've used it mostly with assessment and one or two ad-hoc reports so far. Not looked at mailmerge or late letters yet.

[number34]

I have found one problem. I had an RTF report set up that had macros in the templete to reformat tables, the macros have disappeared.

[zag]

Is it officially supported yet?

[PhilNeal]

Supported since spring 14. Beware of running mixed versions of Office particularly 2003 with later versions as the templates can become corrupted.

[robjd]

had no idea there were still schools not using 2013! Runs flawlessly on SIMS and believe me, my moaning lot of would soon complain if so much as a comma was one space to much to the left. Edited November 6, 2014 by vikpaw

[zag]

2013 is OK and the PDF editing is the reason I want to roll it out.

 

Just the interface is another massive Microsoft balls up and will probably get fixed in the next version.

[robjduk]

2013 is OK and the PDF editing is the reason I want to roll it out.

 

Just the interface is another massive Microsoft balls up and will probably get fixed in the next version.

 

The interface if fine ya moaning

Edited November 6, 2014 by vikpaw

[zag]

The interface if fine ya moaning sod

 

I've used it myself for the last year or so. The interface is horrible, far too bright. It still hurts my eyes today

[vikpaw]

just watch the language peeps - many schools will block / filter on language, and you want to make sure you're heard

[matt40k]

far too bright. It still hurts my eyes today

 

Then change the theme

[simrac]

We moved to Office 2013 at the start of September. I'm trying to get my first lot of reports done through Profiles and the embed codes for the student details won't work. I can verify it all I like but I'm having no luck.

[TheCrust]

After upgrading to 8.1 and Office 2013 across the board this summer, we're having problems with report printing now - i.e. printing a complete year group's worth of reports causes Word 2013 to bomb out part way through the process.

 

Adding the connection timeout to the connect.ini helped, but only up to a point - and it's frustrating the living daylights out of our data manager.

 

Our local SIMS support team (LEAMIS) passed us a hotfix they knew fixed a similar issue - but it was for Word 2010 so not applicable. They have asked me to try installing Office 2010 on a machine in place of 2013 to see if this allows the hotfix to resolve the problem. If it does, they can then ask Microsoft to repeat the fix for Office 2013.

[PhilNeal]

Is it possible that you have a mix of Office versions that are accessing the templates with?