h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...Whenever images, text boxes or virtually anything that isn't text, enters the equation? Don't get me wrong, I've used Word for years and can now work my way around most of its quirks, but I still spend at least as much time messing around with wrap positioning of objects as I do actually writing the bluddy document.

Why can't (and do word processors exist that?) Word simply understand that I've placed an image *here* and want it to stay *here* regardless how much I resize it or write around it. I don't want it to disappear at random every time it decides it can't fit there anymore so it'll just go to the end of the document..

I must press that Word 'back' button more than any other in any other software..

(Yes I know I could just choose 'behind' as the wrap option, but I've done that before and found it impossible to access once there's another layer over it )

so how do you handle it? I use tables...

It's hit and miss to be honest. I could swear Word has an artificial intelligence and its mission is to piss users off. Whatever works in once document doesn't necessarily seem to work in another My greatest word discovery ever, was the q-like symbol which reveals all the hidden formatting. This often (but not always) explains why things wont go where there put.

The biggest faff ever of course is when you try to change orientation for just one or a range of pages. Is this *really* such an obscure function that it has to be hidden in a sub-menu under 'margins' which then requires the ugly work-around of highlighting the text manually that you want to be in a page with a landscape view.. Or (and this is really taking your life in your hands) you could mess with page and section breaks

Could that big 'orientation' button not just have a tick box saying 'this page or whole document'

Alt+I, then B and a list of different "breaks" come up.
Choose section break, next page.

Repeat.

Place cursor between the breaks.
Put section in landscape.

Yes, but why can't I just tell word in two clicks that I want this page and anything I put in this page to be in landscape? It can't be that unusual an operation?

What I mean, is it's not intuitive. Whereas the way i describe it would be. The way it's actually done requires to be taught, *then* it's easy. Good programs should allow the most common functions to be sussed out without recourse to online forums

True...

Pour whisky into throat. Don´t use keyboard.

Word is really annoying *mainly* because it's not WordPerfect.

Word just *does* things, randomly, *without asking first*, and then won't let the user do things. And as for changing the effing options or the Normal template ... I change them, I save them, but Word thinks it knows better *and changes them back*.

I *never* use tables, if I want to tabulate I use Excel. I think what astonishes me more than anything else about Word is that Word is total pants, whereas Excel (from the same suite) is pant-wettingly fantastic.

Anyway, to fix a graphic where you want it - ah, sorry, I have a later version on this computer, which is different, and allows you to fix an absolute position. In earlier versions, somewhere in Format Picture there is an option which allows you to 'pin' the graphic to something (paragraph, page edge). Fiddle about with this, if you choose the right option the graphic stops moving about to new random locations when you do stuff to the text, and stays where you want it. I'm really sorry I can't be more precise about how to do this but I know it's possible.

We have a new template to use at work. When we're in the template (and we have to use it FOR ALL OUR OUTPUT), the quickcorrect thingy won't work. So if we can have it set up so that nn space automatically turns into neighbour nuisance, well, tough luck, that's not working now. In the template we use 200 times a year. It works in any other template. Just not that one. The IT boffins are baffled.

I'm not bitter.

The last time they sent us on a full day Word training course (which I completed in 20 minutes), the trainer went round asking us to state our learning objectives. I said mine was to be able to make Word work like WordPerfect. The trainer pulled a face. 'I'm not sure I can help,' he said.

In all fairness, Word is not now the ultimate in total pants, which it was a few years ago. It's just total pants.

Mol

Mol, Word isn´t a problem. You just have to pretend your IQ is lower than your shoe size.

Ah, the tree of Microsoft flexibility and user-friendliness...

Excel

^

Powerpoint

^

Publisher

^

Access

^

Project

^

Internet Explorer

^

Outlook

^

Visio

^

^

^

Win3.1

^

^

^

Word

If you think it's bad with just one or two images, just try a whole raft of them .I have an assessment/report to complete which is very visual; it has to show that I can use GIS software, so lots of maps and tables and other images need to be in there. It's a ferkin nightmare; nothing stays where I put it and heaven forbid I should try to resize anything or write enough text for it to go onto the next page
It honestly must be the most unproductive software ever. Over the years I would say without a doubt that I have spent waaay more time trying to format Word than actually adding content.

The worst is when you come to assemble a huge document parts of which have been worked on by several different contributors, all have whom have used the same template in drastically different ways...and it was a shite template in the first place.

I have become famous for issuing projects with mini manuals on how to use the template.

It was all easier in the old days, before we were expected to produce such high quality documents.

Before 2010 and that damn ribbon things were pretty intuitive ...then the ribbon happened and everything became 4times as hard and you had to *know* how to do stuff.

Removing the graphs wizard in Excel and the really easy way of modifying graphs was the most stupid thing to do.

Over 20years of muscle-memory down the drain in one easy step.

We must be in the minority though. If *everyone* found Word difficult, unpredictable and illogical to use, they'd change it... right?

can't you use Powerpoint for this thing? it's designed to be used like that.

It's interesting that we're still often forced into writing document-like documents (ie in Word) when Powerpoint would be a more effective means of communication. ho needs to wade through acres of topping and tailing 'boilerplate' text to work out the two or three things that are actually being said.

I have a friend who was once constructively dismissed over his alleged inability to write reports. He has since thrived in a consultancy where they are *banned* from writing reports. 'If you can't say it on three slides, nobody wants to know'.

Myself, I can work with either - but with reports my aspiration is always to make them read like slightly fleshed-out presentations.



Kinda disagree with MB placing Project so high in the rankings. Now, OK - I agree it's a very sophisticated project management tool which is probably very good at stuff like making sure your double glazing doesn't arrive before your concrete is poured (or whatever - admittedly I wouldn't know). But if, like me, all you ever want is a fecking Gantt chart it actively fights against you. And you have to know a lot before you even get to that stage.

Hmm, yes Powerpoint would probably have been a better tool and I suspect would even be an acceptable format to submit this assessment in, however .... I'm nearly finished it now and I just don't have the willpower left to cut and past everything into a new document.

When I'm told to submit a report, experience tells me that they're looking for a Word document, but due to the material of this report, perhaps powerpoint would've been accepted... Oh well ,next time