Alan

3,440 reputation

821

bio	website	angryweasel.com/blog
	location	Bellevue, WA
	age	47
visits	member for	2 years
	seen	May 18 at 4:12
stats	profile views	96

I'm a long time tester and developer working for Microsoft where I'm currently a Principal SDET on the XBox team.

I've also worked on Microsoft Lync, Windows CE, Windows, and spent some time as Microsoft's Director of Test Excellence.

I am the lead author on the Microsoft Press book "How We Test Software at Microsoft", contributed chapters to a few other books (including "Beautful Testing") and frequently speak to, consult with, or teach classes to software developers and testers.

	3,440 reputation	bio	website	angryweasel.com/blog	visits	member for	2 years
821 badges		location	Bellevue, WA		seen	May 18 at 4:12

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Jun 8	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? you can email them to alanpa at where I work dot com :}
Jun 8	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? If it's possible to sanitize the docs enough to share, I'm happy to poke around a bit with them myself (still no reply from my Word contact).
Jun 8	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? @Bj - the compare function is part of the word object model - the vendor is MS :}
Jun 7	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? Other random ideas to try (only if you want) would be to change the order (open doc2 first then compare with doc1), or compare doc1 with doc1, then doc2 with doc2 (or edited variations) to see if it's one of the docs that is causing the problem. Still waiting to hear from my Word contact.
Jun 7	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? I pinged a colleague on the Word team for ideas. In the meantime, have you tried renaming the files - I just wanted to rule out that the filename or location wasn't the problem.
Jun 7	comment	What could cause a “command failed” error when using the Word.Application object to compare two documents? Do you know which line is causing the command failed message? I assume it's the Compare command, but I wanted to make sure. Then, is there anything interesting with the content with the docs that fail (embedded objects, etc.)? Finally, what happens if you try to compare the docs outside the script - i.e. using the Compare feature on the Review ribbon?
Jun 7	comment	Developing Unit Tests While Refactoring Legacy Code? +1 - the Feathers book is pure gold
Jun 6	comment	Recommend a Good QA Book +1 - love this book and love the tester as a detective analogy
Jun 6	comment	Recommend a Good QA Book Can this be community wiki - there's no "right" answer for this question.
May 30	comment	How do you design your test method/function @Tarun - I'm saying it's "easier" - nothing is easy :}
May 30	comment	How do you design your test method/function This approach works best in an editor that has something like Intellisense in Visual Studio.
May 29	comment	How do you design your test method/function I think @glowcoder is referring to How We Test Software at Microsoft - but it doesn't answer this question (but I'll try below)
May 25	comment	How to avoid duplicated bug reports, described from different user perspective ? +1 on preferring over-reporting to under-reporting.
May 25	comment	What are the benefits of Block Testing? Are you referring to block coverage ? I'm guessing from context (and as someone quite familiar with the book) that's the case, but if not, point me to a page number and I'll see what I can do to clarify. Do you have a more specific question?
May 20	comment	What additional benefits does an QA /Developer engineer bring to a project Yes - I agree with this comment completely.
May 20	comment	What are some tools for fuzz testing? I don't know that Hexawise does fuzzing - I thought it was purely for combinatoric test generation.
May 20	comment	What are some tools for fuzz testing? What are you fuzzing? Files, protocols? What sorts of streams does the application you are testing consume?
May 18	comment	Developers have code kata to practice skills. What test equivalents are there? ParkCalc is fun, but I don't think testing a super-buggy application is a good simulation of real-world testing (unless, of course, your apps are actually that buggy).
May 14	comment	What is meant by “Automated tests don't find new bugs”? IMO, that's sad.
May 8	comment	Testing techniques repository? Probably not, but can you give a few examples of what you mean by techniques - do you mean t"formal" est design ideas like pairwise testing and boundary analysis, or general ideas like "test for foreign characters and high contrast"?