Microsoft Word *****. Discuss.

Joe

I've just spent the last six months working on a 7 volume, 2,000 page client proposal.

It's perfectly formatted, looks tremendous and has never arbitrarily changed fonts or lost bullets.

Overblown as a program perhaps but not a steaming pile of nastiness.

Jim

quote:

7 volume, 2,000 page client proposal.

That is large.

MAybe after that much practice I'll be good too!

Joe

I didn't type it, our proposal department - who do this for a living - created the Word docs and the graphics after input from the subject matter experts who were responsible for each section.

I guess my point was that MS Word was central to our bid and works reliably.

Jim

Hmm, I think that's the point. For the everyday bod who hasn't done a degree in the ways of the "Word", it can be very frustrating. If you've had training and use it every day, then maybe it does exactly what you want reliably.

I fall into the non "Word" degree category and find it challenging to say the least....it seems to think it knows best all the time!

Ian

We've stuck resolutely to the daddy of word processing, WordPerfect.

The convenience of a fully operational mini spreadsheet properly embedded within a word processing document far outweighs the minor hassle of exporting to clients in pdf. Referencing cells within a Word table without easily identifiable column and row headings is a nonsense!

It's a shame WordPerfect no longer supports Apple.

You would need to ask my brother-in-law re this one. He translates books for a living. Chinese to Hebrew to Italian to German to Greek etc etc etc. Think he speaks 7 or 9 languages and was the first person to translate the bible from HeEbrew directly into Chinese.

He uses Word so it can't all be bad as he has translated small books such as War and Peace.

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:

Overblown as a program perhaps but not a steaming pile of nastiness.

Jim

I think joe90 is a Macboy... Don't Macs come with Claris or some other obscure word processor?

I used to use Ami-pro which I thought was fab, all the facilities I needed but no more. Now, like the rest of the world I use Word and have got used to it. A couple of years ago I tried out WordPro (the then current version of Ami, and it had lost all its slickness, they seemed to have added all the extra Word features and turned it into a horrid messy program)

My hints for Word - for basic use, use the standard styles. There's a drop down menu, top left with things like normal, heading 1 etc. These work pretty well, don't try to change them or fiddle with them.

For more advanced use, its worth setting up a standard set of styles to give all your docs a consistent look. I did this a while ago and it's fantastically flexible for creating long docs with proper para numbering, nested bullets etc. You can define the font, para numbering, indentation, space before/after for each type of para. It takes a while but once you have say a standard report template with consistent para numbering and styles, a proper footer (including last saved date/time, page x of y, etc) it makes creation of the next report a piece of cake.

Being a person who only needs to create and edit simple documents up to say ten or fifteen pages in size I choose to use one of the other products. I do not know if OOo.org scales up to a 7 volume, 2,000 page client proposal (collaborative?) effort but in my world OOo.org does 100% of what I wish to do. One aspect of some Microsoft products is the use of restricted or propriety formats that try to lock a user or one who creates data into the Microsoft world view.

I use Ubuntu Linux and other open source products whenever possible as so far all of my computing requirements can be undertaken without recourse to Microsoft but if my needs change I will search for the right tool and you never know it I might pick a Microsoft crafted tool.

Deane

I have Mac's at home and use Word on those also. It looks different on the Mac but functionally it is similar. You can buy iWork which contains Pages 2 and Keynote 3 but I haven't used either of them enough to comment on how they perform. Claris is pretty much history now apart from Filemaker Pro which it still sells I believe.

Jagster

Word is powerful and some of it is not instantly intuitive but you can't blame the program because you haven't RTFM.

Cheers

Jim

PS. As a 15 year Mac user it feels strange to be defending Microsoft code!

Re Open Office or Neo Office, I would expect it to scale up to the type of document that ExHi talks of, NeOffice have just released an update to their manual which is 600 pages long and comes in about 10 or so sections, so the product supports separate chapters being worked on by different teams of writers.

I've been using Open Office for about a year now and it is most impressive. I've used it for large text documents, technical literature, DTP work, and it has generally shown itself to be as good if not better than MS Office - at least as far as the word processor is concerned. Re the office suite in general, Excel is ahead of Calc on features whereas Writer is superior to Word, which is eccentric, weird and peculiar.

EW

EW have you used the Base part of OO?

I installed Office XP Pro over Office 2000 Small Business, and I lost the functionality of the insertion of addresses out of Contacts, which is a total cock-up. I shall go back to 2000 SB soon when I get time, but apart from that I thinks it's superb. I just wish I had the time to learn it properly, and maybe learn to type properly too!

Having used both Open office and Microsoft Office, I prefer Open Office as it's more versatile and a better quality software package.

Writer IMO is better than Word.

Word doesn't read ODF files by default, whereas Open Office can read Doc files no problem.

MS Office up to and including 2003 wasn't able to produce PDF files by default, unlike Writer. You can produce a PDF in Word 2003, if you install a small program called CutePDF and ghostscript. By using it under the printer option it will produce a PDF for you.

Open Office is smaller in size and runs more efficiently in my experience. That I put down to the fact it doesn't suffer from the bloated code of Microsoft Office. It is also an open source cross platform project, that can be used on various operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac.

It's coding has benefitted from and been refined over the years by a myriad of developers around the world. As the developers are end users themselves, they have a vested interest in writing something that works well for themselves and other users. It's freeware so the developers aren't guided by a company profit margin either.

In comparison Microsoft Office is developed by Microsoft developers in house, primarily for Microsoft Windows, with the Company's profit margin as the bottom line and the use of proprietary code to try and tie people into Microsoft software.

Unlike Open Office, MS Office hasn't had the benefit of having its coding refined by the developer community at large and it shows.

It is also worth remembering 99% of Virii, spyware, and other nasties are written to exploit the known loopholes/weaknesses in Mirosoft's unrefined, bloated code.

I know of very few people who'd go back to Microsoft after trying OpenOffice. Unfortunately, Excel has some outputs and scientific functions lacked by Calc, so white-coat wearers are often locked into Excel; no doubt things will improve soon.

I can't think of ANYTHING Word does better than Writer, however; and in terms of outputs, as Peter C has said, it is flatly superior.

Generally, most people should not consider paying for MS Office as there is a superior, free alternative.

EW

I had no idea. I'll look into it.

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:
Bullet points disappear and reappear at random.

Fonts change arbitrarily and without warning.

Anybody else HATE this steaming pile of nastiness?

Thank GOD it's not me!

I've been using the DOS version of Word since (iirc) 1989, and Windows since 1991, and the last couple of iterations of Word have indeed sucked.

I did Pittman word processing exams in Word for DOS in 1990 and that package worked well. How can they have gone downhill with later versions? ...but they have!

Does Open Office have a contacts kind of thing where you can pop in addresses to head letters?

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:
What an awful programme.

Bullet points disappear and reappear at random.

Fonts change arbitrarily and without warning.

And on. And on. And on.

Anybody else HATE this steaming pile of nastiness?

Totally agree - it is mediocre software full of bugs. Have to use it for work. Word Perfect 4.1 for the Amiga made 20 years ago remains vastly superior IMO. I use Pages for serious work and save in Word Format - I also prefer Open Office which is much simpler to use and seems relatively big free. I really don't like Word it is almost as bad as PowerPoint - again I use Keynote and save it PowerPoint format. Excel is fine though - best bit of MS office by far.

I know folks will say its opinion, but a bug is bug and Word's formatting capabilities are not consistent. It has lots of rubbish features too - why can't I just have a proper English dictionary and delete all the others (if somebody knows how to do this it would useful). Why does it define styles for me - don't want to it - I want to dictate the styles I use. Why doesn't default to pasting in graphics as an in-line picture.

Rant over

ATB Rotf

quote:

Originally posted by Deane F:

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:

Overblown as a program perhaps but not a steaming pile of nastiness.

Jim

I think joe90 is a Macboy... Don't Macs come with Claris or some other obscure word processor?

Not any more, Deane, Claris was Apple Works - although better than Word not that great. Pages is much better, but you can just use OpenOffice on a Mac, Linux PC or Windoze PC - OO Writer is like Word with all garbage removed and it's free.

ATB Rotf

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
You can buy iWork which contains Pages 2 and Keynote 3 but I haven't used either of them enough to comment on how they perform. Claris is pretty much history now apart from Filemaker Pro which it still sells I believe.

Jim - Filemaker is subsidiary of Apple as far as I know. Filemaker is a very powerful, easy to use database. Much better than Access IMO.

ATB Rotf

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
Does Open Office have a contacts kind of thing where you can pop in addresses to head letters?

Yes it does - I use the Mac version (NeoOffice), but I've used OO on a PC and it's the same - much more compatible between different computers than the Microsoft product.

Pages on the Mac is better, it can open and export .doc files, pdfs etc and only cost £60

Or Open Office is free for both platforms

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:
Bullet points disappear and reappear at random.
Fonts change arbitrarily and without warning.
And on. And on. And on.

Are you sure you are running Word the way that Microsoft intended ? I find that you must first be running the Whole MS system to end up with the MS output the way that MS intended it.

And from my years as a Tutor in such matters I inveriably find that the cause of frustration is often found to have a common denominator in the equation....