Rant: MS word

[DrPizza]

okay.. you're setting up how you want a page to look.... position of everything, margins, etc.

why the fvck are headers and footers under the "view" menu??

I like word perfect so much more for its intuitive feel.
Oh well.

and, if you're formatting the layout of a page, why wouldn't margins be under format??
So, to determine indents and spacing for paragraphs, I go to format...

but to determine indents and spacing for a page, I go to the "file" menu....

I hate requirements to use Word for papers...

 

[olds]

DOH!

 

[yankeesfan]

why not just use word perfect and save it as a .doc?

 

[jjones]

I've always hated MS Word, but that's what I use. Fortunately, I really don't use it that much so the irritation with it remains at a minimum.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Tex >> MS-Word for anything scientific.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Why not just use any program and save the file as a .doc?

 

[Deeko]

Who cares what menu its under?

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: Deeko
Who cares what menu its under?

Me, and probably a lot of people who use it for the first time. And using another program and saving as a MS Word (.doc) doesn't always get the desired results. Even in todays day and age with modern 'converters' stuff still gets farked up.



:thumbsup: to the Rant.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: Deeko
Who cares what menu its under?

Me, and probably a lot of people who use it for the first time. And using another program and saving as a MS Word (.doc) doesn't always get the desired results. Even in todays day and age with modern 'converters' stuff still gets farked up.



:thumbsup: to the Rant.

Well first off, Word has been around for years and years, everyone knows where the stuff is...but fine

"Headers and footers" are under view for a very clear reason: You are choosing to view the headers/footers toolbar. Seems intuitive enough for me.

Margins, eh, maybe that could be in format. Maybe they leave it under file because its been there for 20 years, moving it to be more "intuitive" would be more confusing.

 

[DrPizza]

I've always wondered if the reason WordPerfect's software is so much more intuitive than Word is because Word was basically copying the success of Wordperfect. But, they couldn't create identical menus without running into copyright problems. What they could do, and get away with for quite a while, was to shove the software down our throats by requiring vendors to bundle it with the various flavors of windows over the years, unless they wanted to lose certain special priveledges.

I hate Word! I can deal with it for routine tasks, but with anal retentive teachers with very specific guidelines for papers "name, last name followed by a comma then first name and the page number must be on every header beginning with the second page" etc. make it difficult as I have to find all these little technical details. And no, saving a wordperfect document as a .doc isn't quite going to float... It'll get the majority of the document formatted just fine, all except the little pita details I'm still dealing with on and off.

 

[Staples]

You can try Open Office. It looks more like Word Perfect.

 

[OulOat]

It's easy in Latex

 

[piroroadkill]

Not to be one to add anything useful, but you know you could always move it to whereever you wanted by using customise.

I hope I don't have to explain how.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I've always wondered if the reason WordPerfect's software is so much more intuitive than Word is because Word was basically copying the success of Wordperfect. But, they couldn't create identical menus without running into copyright problems. What they could do, and get away with for quite a while, was to shove the software down our throats by requiring vendors to bundle it with the various flavors of windows over the years, unless they wanted to lose certain special priveledges.

I hate Word! I can deal with it for routine tasks, but with anal retentive teachers with very specific guidelines for papers "name, last name followed by a comma then first name and the page number must be on every header beginning with the second page" etc. make it difficult as I have to find all these little technical details. And no, saving a wordperfect document as a .doc isn't quite going to float... It'll get the majority of the document formatted just fine, all except the little pita details I'm still dealing with on and off.

In all seriousness, try LaTex. Perfect formatting (almost) every time, regardless of how anal retentive the guidelines are. (if you've ever read IEEE papers you'll know what I mean)

 

[LtPage1]

Originally posted by: piroroadkill
Not to be one to add anything useful, but you know you could always move it to whereever you wanted by using customise.

I hope I don't have to explain how.

word 5.1 was the best version. the only real new feature since then is the addition of clip art.

 

[aplefka]

By margins, you do mean the thing where all you do is hover over the hanging indent? All you do is drag it, that's what I do all the time when I need to change margins to make stuff smaller, like cheat sheets for tests.

Header/Footer under View has always just been normal for me.

However, I don't like when people who are noobs at a program complain about it, especially MS programs, because MS adds all this bullsh1t for people like you and you don't even use it.

 

[Babbles]

I hated it at first, but due the popularity one really has no choice but to learn how to use it. I hated doing my laboratory writes ups and research stuff on it because the screen would light up like a frigging Christmas tree with all of the things that Word doesn't like.

 

[breweyez]

actually...word is intuitive....you just havent learned the shortcuts

double click in the header/footer area to open it...you dont have to use menus(except for the first time)

put your pointer on the ruler where the margins are and drag it to where you want(hold down alt key to get exact measurement.....the paragraph controls also do this)

double click in the ruler area and you go straight to page setup>margins tab

the reason the margins are in page setup...is because it has to do with the whole page

you need to learn the program...it is very powerfull.....but you have to put your time in

if you wont put in the time to learn it...then you should take the advice of those who said to create the document in WP, then save as ?????.doc

 

[blakeatwork]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
okay.. you're setting up how you want a page to look.... position of everything, margins, etc.

why the fvck are headers and footers under the "view" menu??

I like word perfect so much more for its intuitive feel.
Oh well.

and, if you're formatting the layout of a page, why wouldn't margins be under format??
So, to determine indents and spacing for paragraphs, I go to format...

but to determine indents and spacing for a page, I go to the "file" menu....

I hate requirements to use Word for papers...

Ummm, why not just re-arrange the icons to the Header menus you prefer??

Not really that difficult..

 

[breweyez]

Originally posted by: blakeatwork

Originally posted by: DrPizza
okay.. you're setting up how you want a page to look.... position of everything, margins, etc.

why the fvck are headers and footers under the "view" menu??

I like word perfect so much more for its intuitive feel.
Oh well.

and, if you're formatting the layout of a page, why wouldn't margins be under format??
So, to determine indents and spacing for paragraphs, I go to format...

but to determine indents and spacing for a page, I go to the "file" menu....

I hate requirements to use Word for papers...

Ummm, why not just re-arrange the icons to the Header menus you prefer??

Not really that difficult..

this guy isnt interested in learning the program....you can actually rearrange the menus in word if you wanted to....or create custom toolbars with specific macros

if you know how to do something in WP....you can also use the "wordperfect help" under the help menu to find out how to do it in word

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: blakeatwork

Originally posted by: DrPizza
okay.. you're setting up how you want a page to look.... position of everything, margins, etc.

why the fvck are headers and footers under the "view" menu??

I like word perfect so much more for its intuitive feel.
Oh well.

and, if you're formatting the layout of a page, why wouldn't margins be under format??
So, to determine indents and spacing for paragraphs, I go to format...

but to determine indents and spacing for a page, I go to the "file" menu....

I hate requirements to use Word for papers...

Ummm, why not just re-arrange the icons to the Header menus you prefer??

Not really that difficult..

Whoa! There's something I didn't know I could do!
The problem isn't that I'm a noob to word processing...
The problem is that I have specific guidelines that I have to follow perfectly. I'd be able to find all the submenus to do those specific things much more quickly in wordperfect, because the menus are far more intuitive (I gave a specific example above of how formatting margins is under two different pull down menus, depending on the specific margins you wanted to change) And yes, of course I know how to just drag the margins around instead of using the menus... it just provided a quick example of how poorly the menus are designed in Word.

Note: LaTeX would be a piece of cake. I spent a semester learning it (among other things) But, LaTeX isn't Word, is it? Requirement: Word.
I have to submit it electronically. Why the requirements? I have no idea. Personally, if I required a paper to be submitted to me, I'd accept just about any format. I probably wouldn't even have a preference between MLA and other styles, so long as the student was consistant.

I quite bothering having students write papers years ago though - too much plagiarism and I was sick of searching for it to prove it. Every student seems to think that they're smarter than the rest of the students and they can pull it off without me catching it: "uhhh, I'll bet he uses Google, so I won't use any sources in the first 500 google hits... he'll never find it." Yeah, right, I just find a few key phrases and google for those. The papers I assigned were generally for extra credit in math. It's not worth the bother for me.

 

[datalink7]

Notepad > *

 

[ProviaFan]

Use the right tool for the job... MS Word is fine for letters and stuff, but for any sort of serious page layout, it sucks. That's why I use InDesign CS instead.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: LtPage1

Originally posted by: piroroadkill
Not to be one to add anything useful, but you know you could always move it to whereever you wanted by using customise.

I hope I don't have to explain how.

word 5.1 was the best version. the only real new feature since then is the addition of clip art.

:thumbsup:

True dat! It ran fast too. The newer versions are just resource hogs.