Let's rant about Microsoft Word!

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
C'mon! It'll be fun!



There are so many things I hate about this program! The first reason being that I'm practically forced to use it simply by virtue of the fact that everyone else does! Every document I create, most likely I'm going to email it to someone else. And they have to be able to open it with their Microsoft Word! And I'm a freelancer. If people can't open my documents, they won't be patient. They won't even tell me they can't open the attachment! They'll just move on to the next person.



Sigh. So Word it is, grumble grumble.



I figure I'm not the only one stuck in this predicament. I thought it would be fun to have a big venting session.



I hate Word because:



1. You try to highlight some text and it scrolls so fast, it's hard to grab just a paragraph. It automatically thinks you must want to grab the whole page! So it scrolls fast!



2. If you're trying to highlight part of a word, it thinks it's smarter than you, and you must want to highlight the WHOLE word! It does it for you automatically. For example, if you have the sentence "I feel badly about skipping dinner" and wanted to edit it to simply say "I feel bad" you would highlight right before the -ly in badly, and grab the rest of the sentence, too, and just hit delete, right? Well Word will grab the whole 'badly' word for you, because that's surely what you meant, right? Grrrr.



3. They claim Word Office X is revolutionary! Totally different! Looks like the same old crap to me!



4. That annoying paper-clip assistant. (Or whatever form you choose... still annoying. Worst of all, RARELY helpful, even when I have a question.)



5. Automatically tries to capitalize things for you. This is hell when you must type a list of email addresses. It will keep capitalizing the first letter of every address for you. Then it tries to make a hyperlink, too! At least you can turn this feature off. But really, why would you want a hyperlink in a Word doc? It looks like crap when you print it!



6. Word randomly decides to change fonts and font sizes on you. Who knows why.



OK I'll stop now to take a breather and to let someone else jump in.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 34
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SuperGrover

    And I'm a freelancer. If people can't open my documents, they won't be patient. They won't even tell me they can't open the attachment! They'll just move on to the next person.



    save as PDF and stop relying on Microsoft
  • Reply 2 of 34
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    It looks like you've lost you're temper and are trying to violate me. Would you like me to help you? <yes>



    Barto
  • Reply 3 of 34
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    rely on Adobe instead, yeah?



  • Reply 4 of 34
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    getting back to the topic of the thread...

    I hate word because when I try and drag a sentence into AIM for a friend to see, instead of sending the text Word automatically sends a PICTURE of the text... SO GODDAMNED ANNOYING!!!



    also it is an overpriced piece of crap...
  • Reply 5 of 34
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    The whole won't really copy and paste thing annoys me to no end as well. Seems like whatever you create in Word wants to stay in word and never go anywhere else as plain text.



    I have it because it is on our school computers and was also on the laptop I purchased. But I still use Appleworks daily.



    Do we even want to get started with tabs and paragraphs/outlining?



    Nick
  • Reply 6 of 34
    Oh my God, no! Tabs and paragraphing drive me up the wall!



    Thank you Paul and Trumpet for getting us back on topic. But to answer the Adobe suggestions... the people I send the documents to need to be able to update them in their Microsoft Word. so pdf's wouldn't do.



    Even if Acrobat let me save AppleWorks docs as Word docs, which I don't even know if that's possible... I would bet there's translation problems. I usually do some fancy formatting.



    Oh and Paul! Welcome to NYC for the summer! Isn't it great living here? Wish I could turn the rain faucet off so we could all enjoy it more.
  • Reply 7 of 34
    agent302agent302 Posts: 974member
    Screw Word, screw PDF. RTF is the answer, and everyone who has word can open it.



    (I stopped using both Word and Appleworks when I discovered that I could do everything I needed for writing essays for classes in TextEdit).
  • Reply 8 of 34
    Well yes, I use TextEdit a lot too. But for doing formatting-intensive stuff like resumes and lists... Word offers more consistency than RTF. Especially when you know everyone else will be using Word.



    But for something like an essay that's not locked to page, I agree. TextEdit is great!
  • Reply 9 of 34
    Another thing. Barto, I love the humor! It reminds me of something I saw a couple years ago where someone had made some photographic parodies of Word. Like I remember a pulldown menu where one of the options was Take Back Snide Comment to Boss. But the best photo had someone composing a letter that said something like Dear World, I can't take it anymore! And the paperclip said "Looks like you're committing suicide!" and it gave options which I can't remember.



    Does anyone know where I could find that?
  • Reply 10 of 34
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    Uncle Stevie seems to like open standards these days with MP3, AAC, MPEG 4, Bluetooth, SyncML etc.



    If he really wants to weaken Microsoft's hold on the office suite sector, he'll call a meeting with StarOffice, OpenOffice, Corel, Nisus and Mariner.



    At this meeting he would say the next AppleWorks/iWorks will use a new open file format, and convince them all to do the same.



    In order to use the new format, participants must ensure 100% compatibility to the standard.



    It's the only way.
  • Reply 11 of 34
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    My biggest pet pieve is that they charge SOOOO much for this POS.



    NOw Office 2003 for the PC is a huge improvement but seeing as you can't import a Windows PST into Entourage I am not expecting much improvement on the Mac side which sucks. Both programs are made by the same company but they can't agree on a standard file format. DUMB I TELL YA!
  • Reply 12 of 34
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    "Screw Word, screw PDF. RTF is the answer, and everyone who has word can open it."



    I wish this was true. I don't even understand WHY it isn't true--but I've had two people in the last week have problems opening .rtf documents with Word, which were written in Word X. Why? I have no idea--but they are Hollywood people, running (probably) Office 95 or some such ancient shit, and somehow my attachments got screwed if they aren't .doc.



    I find it very frustrating...because I can't ask them to troubleshoot, as I nominally work for them. Bah.



    Oh, and NYC this summer is wet and rainy. Double bah.
  • Reply 13 of 34
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    Yes, it is too expensive. It's only worth $49 to $69.



    The thing that really drives me nuts is how it thinks it's a better writer than me, or thinks it knows how I want to format something.
  • Reply 14 of 34
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    Well I know Open Office must be making some inroads against Microsoft Office. I have tried beta 1.1 on my PC and I advocate it for pretty much all non-mac users.



    I would advocate it for Mac as well if it were available with a native interface and not run through x-windows.



    It would really be in Apple's interest to give away a "safari-ized" Open Office and return the improvements to the community.



    Nick
  • Reply 15 of 34
    addisonaddison Posts: 1,185member
    Let's not grumble, it is absolutely brilliant. What real alternative is there...none with any credibility. I can ask any of my staff to use it and will not get a complaint, If I loaded AW or Think free Office I wouldn't hear the end of it. I have never had a problem with compattibility with the Windows version, but I expect thar there might be if you are doing something sophisticated.



    Hats off to Microsoft, they were so quick off the mark with this product when OSX was launched and they provided the only browser for a long time. Where would we be right now if MS hads not provided Office and a browser for the Mac. How sucessfull would the "Switcher" campaign have been? With office available people feel safe, without it then Apple would loose all credibility in the workstation/home user area.
  • Reply 16 of 34
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    SuperGrover most of your points are options that can be turned off or on.





    There's so much wrong with Word it's too depressing to type it here. My office mates got tired of hearing the four letter words coming out of my mouth while I was updating some documents at work. Word's biggest problems revolve around its trying to be smart for you. Example, i have a document that's all 10pt. When deleting stuff with backspace ... poof paragraph turns to 12pt? Why? I don't know. There's been times when I hit undo to correct some fscked up formating change Word picked out for me ... IT DOESN'T UNDO



    I use it on Windows computers mostly. Suggestions for other options don't fly. My office is not changing to something else. BUT I did notice that paper work for the Deans office tends to be RTF. So there's hope.
  • Reply 17 of 34
    Addison, that is true. It was nice of Microsoft to make OSX friendly software so quickly. But then, I'm still using my Classic Office software in OS9. I do use IE though, and it's not too bad.



    But the only reason people don't complain about having to use it is that it's the only word processor anyone knows how to use anymore! (Talking about the masses here, I know there are other programs out there.)



    Scott... yeah SOME of them can be turned off. The hyperlink option. But just about everything else on the list is a permanent annoyance. I agree with you about that stupid random font changing thing. Grrrrrr.
  • Reply 18 of 34
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Oh, God. Word.



    I last used it to write up a requirements document. I spent about 4 hours writing the document and two days trying to prevent Word from scrambling it into a random jumble of fonts and formatting. It's such a piece of crap that there's only one person in the office who "knows" Word, and anything fancy (as in, anything you couldn't convincingly format in HTML 1.0 using only the <P> tag) goes to her.



    The rest of us lament the fact that MS left just enough functionality out of Wordpad to keep it from being a much better all-around choice. There might be no choice for certain advanced uses, and I can only feel sorry for people who, as a result, have to use a word processor that's more arcane (and far more unpredictable) than most of the development environments I've seen. And that includes emacs.



    As for compatibility, I've exchanged spreadsheets in Excel format and fairly elaborately formatted Word files with people that I've created or edited in AppleWorks, and I've never had a problem. In fact, if I could have use AppleWorks to compose the requirements document I'd probably have been done in 4 hours, and had a .DOC formatted file to show for it.
  • Reply 19 of 34
    chinneychinney Posts: 1,019member
    I also have a GREAT DEAL of frustration with automatic formatting that Word does on your document. Rarely is it what you want and it takes substantial effort and time to undo it (if you can at all).



    Back when I was a PC user on DOS, I found I was extremely productive using WordPerfect for DOS 5.2. I especially liked the "reveal codes" feature which gave you substantial control over your document. Unfortunatly, WordPerfect screwed up their initial releases for Windows in the early/mid 90s (buggy as anything) and that pretty much left the field for Word.



    I don't know what was happening on WordPerfect for Mac at the time, as I was not yet, unfortunately, a Mac user. However, if WordPerfect had done a better job with their port to Windows, perhaps we would have more choice now for advanced wordprocessing software for both Mac and PC.



    I don't remember all the details, but I recall that some blamed MS for the difficulty that WordPerfect had with their initial port to Windows. Hidden programming, etc. Anyone know if this is true?
  • Reply 20 of 34
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SuperGrover

    Scott... yeah SOME of them can be turned off. The hyperlink option. But just about everything else on the list is a permanent annoyance.



    Eh? Perhaps I should clarify.

    Quote:

    1. You try to highlight some text and it scrolls so fast, it's hard to grab just a paragraph.



    Scrolling seems normal here. Look at these videos comparing Word and TextEdit. Scrolling speed is a tiny bit faster in Word, but it's still very close to the same as TextEdit.



    Quote:

    2. If you're trying to highlight part of a word, it thinks it's smarter than you, and you must want to highlight the WHOLE word!



    Can be turned off.



    Quote:

    3. They claim Word Office X is revolutionary! Totally different! Looks like the same old crap to me!



    Well, it does have a new icon.



    Quote:

    4. That annoying paper-clip assistant. (Or whatever form you choose... still annoying.



    Can be turned off.



    Quote:

    5. Automatically tries to capitalize things for you.



    Can be turned off.



    Quote:

    Then it tries to make a hyperlink, too! At least you can turn this feature off.



    You said it yourself.



    I'm not trying to defend Word here. I don't like it too much either. Yet, the majority of the basis for your argument comes from features that you don't even have to use! That would be like complaining about Mac OS X because it has huge 128x128 icons that take up too much space. These are options. Options like these are good because they can tailor to how different people work.
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