You're using the Microsoft web interface for accessing the newsgroups,
which is terribly cumbersome. You could instead connect directly to the
Microsoft news server, as described in Chip Pearson's site:

http://cpearson.com/excel/DirectConnect.htm

If you're stuck behind a firewall, you could go to
http://www.ExcelForum.com/ which supposedly has a pretty good web
interface (I haven't had to use it).

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
http://PeltierTech.com/Excel/Charts/
_______

MWE wrote:

I find this newsgroup structure cumbersome and not
particularly well designed. I have experienced several
consistent problems:

1. how do you actually know if your post was posted? I
have "lost" as many posts as have been successful. Most
cases were posts were lost I was able to determine that
the site was apparently down (no posts around the time I
posted), but why does the system indicate that the post
was successful?

2. how do you get from a search to the actual post and
its children? It is easy to open the particular item, but
how do you get back to the general list of posts and
replies with the "current line" being the item hilited as
part of the search?

3. what do you do when you search, find an item, but the
item is NOT there when you go back to the general list of
posts?

4. why is the order of posts not PRECISELY by posting
date? I Have noticed as I am searching for a particular
post that the list is not always in post order