Why PerfectIt Cloud Seems to Get Worse Every Time We Make It Better

10 August, 2021

By Chris McKay

Some of you reading this already know me. I run PerfectIt’s support.

If you hate tech (or even if you love it), you might have wondered why someone like me has made customer support my career. I do it because I love helping people. As a professional wordsmith, you probably get a dopamine hit from rewording a sentence so that it reads exactly the way it should. I get mine from helping you when your tech doesn’t work the way you expect it to.

Sometimes the best way I can help people is to explain exactly what’s happening. In the case of PerfectIt Cloud, I think it’s going to surprise you. But let’s start with the big news that I know you wanted to hear.

The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt Has Feature Parity Across Versions

You read that right!

We introduced The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt at the exact same time for both Windows and Mac versions. The features are almost identical. Both versions show you tips and advice direct from The Chicago Manual. Both versions offer links to get more detailed suggestions. The only differences are:

• It’s easier to link your account to CMOS Online with PerfectIt Cloud (no new license key required).
• The Windows edition has extra checks for Style Points as well as hyphenation with "percent", hyphenation with currency symbols, AD and BC, punctuation with "i.e." and "e.g.", style for "a.m." and "p.m.", and words following "so-called".

It seems like a long list when I write it out like that. But it’s about seven items of the 10,000+ that the style finds. When you check text, the results for Windows and Mac are almost identical. The number one request that I get for PerfectIt Cloud is that it’s not fair that Windows users get more. Now the improvements are equal.

Why You Might Still Write to Me

We’ve introduced this new feature equally. However, some of the other things that lead people to contact me in support are still going to take time to get right:

• PerfectIt Cloud still doesn't include customization
• PerfectIt Cloud can have timeouts on long documents

We don’t have any solution for the first one yet. I see that as a niche issue because the majority of our users don’t use the customization features anyway. Instead, I want to focus on that second one.

Here’s the thing.

The fact that we’ve made PerfectIt Cloud so much better actually increases the risk of a timeout. To explain why, I have to get a bit technical. Skip the next section if you just want to know what you can do to fix it.

The Technical Bit

The challenge is that PerfectIt Cloud has to check your text and a few related factors can make that more time-consuming:

• upload speed and file size;
• the length of the document; and
• the number of issues found in a document.

The slower your upload speed is (and the bigger the file size is), the more chance that PerfectIt Cloud times out while it's waiting for the document.

The longer your document is (and the more issues that PerfectIt finds), means that it takes longer for PerfectIt Cloud to do its checking.

These problems all add together exponentially. The result can be a timeout.

And now you probably understand why adding The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt can make PerfectIt Cloud seem less reliable. It is checking for so much more than it used to! As a result, there are inevitably more timeouts. The only reason why is that checking has become better.

What Can I Do?

If PerfectIt Cloud doesn’t work on your text, there are lots of things you can try:

• Split the document in half.
• Copy and paste the text only and check that file.
• Turn off the check that doesn’t work (the others still will).

Personally, I recommend contacting your internet service provider and asking about achieving faster upload speeds. Lots of providers advertise fast download speeds. However, having a fast upload speed can also make a really big difference (not just for PerfectIt but for everything you do online).

I’m Here to Help

The PerfectIt team is working on all these problems (and likely some that don’t directly impact you). And they are improving! We silently released a tweak for Mac users that makes PerfectIt Cloud more compatible with documents that are full of graphics just recently. There’s more to come.

In the meantime, I wrote this because I know everyone likes to solve problems on their own. But please know this. I like helping you! It’s why I do what I do.

If you’re still stuck, or if anything here has confused you, I’m waiting to hear from you at [email protected].

 

Chris McKay is the customer support manager and lead trainer for PerfectIt. He lives in Florida with his Great Dane; but his true home and heart will always be in Australia.