On reading the 2006 QuickStats National Highlights from the Statistics New Zealand website, I am prompted to write...

Dear Statistics New Zealand,

In the "2006 QuickStats, National Highlights" document available from here:

http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/2006-census-data/national-highlights/

On the final page is a link to the Excel viewer which would supposedly enable me to open Excel files.

Firstly, the link does not seem to work. When I click on it my browser opens at the location:
http://wipe04/NR/exeres/727CCC9A-22D0-4E71-960B-D72260540535.htm?NRMODE=Unpublished&WBCMODE=PresentationUnpublishedPreview#excel


Which my web browser (correctly) assures me is not a valid domain name. You might want to correct that.

Secondly, the "Excel viewer" is only a solution for those people using Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X. People using other operating systems such as Linux will not be able to install or run the "Excel viewer" application.

A better solution would be to provide a link to OpenOffice.org which provides a fully functional spreadsheet program that is capable of reading such files, and which is:

• freely available
• freely redistributable, and
• will work on a much wider variety of operating systems

Many thanks,
Andrew McMillan.

Actually I remember filling in that Census form online, about a week before the census, leaving out the questions that related to the night itself. Then on the night I discovered that I had already done it, and could not go back and add the answers to those questions.... Oops!

And when I try and post this as feedback to the stats website, I find that:

Server Error in '/CmsApp' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Man, I sure wish I could change that file and help them out with that little problem. I know: I'll send them some feedback, telling them! Yeah, that'll help...