Microsoft Turd

[SCCutler]

Word (and its entire formatting scheme) has got to be among the most foul and insipid products ever concocted.

There is a reason that people who work with words (like, say, lawyers) are still better-served using WordPerfect, in which changes in formatting and overall behavior are open and obvious, and easy to change without munging up the whole rest of the document.

 

[dmccormack]

But it's helping you!!!!!

Sorta like the Government....

 

[fgcason]

But it's helping you!!!!!
Sorta like the Government....

...only inefficient.

 

[dmccormack]

...only inefficient.

That's redundantly saying the same thing all over.

 

[fgcason]

That's redundantly saying the same thing all over.

I'm still trying to figure out why at 2.5 billion instructions per second it takes a couple minutes to be up and running. It should be up and running long before you get your finger off the ON button. My old 1 mHz Apple IIe boots off floppies faster than this - seriously.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I'm still trying to figure out why at 2.5 billion instructions per second it takes a couple minutes to be up and running. It should be up and running long before you get your finger off the ON button. My old 1 mHz Apple IIe boots off floppies faster than this - seriously.

Software bloats into the memory space or CPU cycles available.

Seriously though, What's Spike doing?

I use MicroSoft Publisher to layout posters for scientific meetings- Word isn't really made as a layup tool. Publisher is overkill for my needs. Using PowerPoint doesn't work because it resizes text as you fill a text box and you wind up with boxes with different sized text.

Our MARCOM department uses Adobe Illustrator for serious lay-up.

 

[JoeSelch]

I recently installed Office 2010 (PC) for compatibility with my clients... I still have Office 2002 installed (also for compatibility [and sanity] reasons).
Now, it can take MINUTES for the 2010 software to load. Nothing in computing should take minutes! (save moving huge amounts of data) WTF?!?!

And, although, regrettably, I'm finding a few new interface things that I really like in 2010, there are still a couple of things I've not been able to figure out - like, how do I access some of my custom styles (that have clearly been loaded with the document)? They don't appear in the styles menus - at least not that I've been able to find. And, when I try to "re-create" one and give it the same name, it says that such a style already exists (which it does)... but I can't actually find it in order to apply it...

 

[mikea]

Preach it, Brother Spike!

I have to use that buggy peice o' shiate all teh time.

Don't 'chja just love pasting one phrase and having all of the formatting go out the window? All ya gotta do at that point is reformat the parapghaph, out indenmt by indent, level by level, page b age, ...keeping going out until you've re-done the whole document and wash, rinse, repeat the next time you delete or lose an invisible marker.

I have to do nested bullet point outlines. It's a good thing I'm working on my own these days. Co-workers would have called 911 on me long ago.

Your Wordperfect or WordStar would let you REVEAL CODES to see where the BOLD ON is so you put it where you want it...but see....when the Microsoft user panel researchers brought in the nice folks from the nursing home they all agreed that was way to confuzling soo they made it much more easiest.

ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I spend more time doing NOOO!!!!! DO WHAT I WANT!!!!!!!!! It was a simple edit!!!

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Mike- funny...I wish it would just paste plain text as a default with no funny formatting from whereever I picked up the text.

 

[ajstoner21]

My coworkers and I complain about Microsoft Excel/Word and their stupidity every chance we get.... Turning off all their "auto" crap, doesnt truly turn off everything....

 

[mikea]

Mike- funny...I wish it would just paste plain text as a default with no funny formatting from whereever I picked up the text.

You don't think in the hours and hours I fight with it I tried that?

I Ctrl-Z 5 times for every Ctrl-V. With Excel dig for "Paste Special" and once you find it, do WHAT I WANT Pleeeze!

I know now that the Microsoft #2 abortion, OLE, will paste in the entire RAM contents along with your vital statistics, medical history, and family tree information otherwise, and you don't get control back for 20 minutes until it's done.

 

[ajstoner21]

I use very large amounts of data in Excel, and plot very large sets of data. The plots love to freeze up and bog down the system. One formatting change, and the entire plot has to re-render. Forget about trying to print a plot directly to the printer, you'll crash the printer and **** off the whole office.... You gotta copy it, and paste special as a picture into word, just to print a plot with as much data in it as I do...

 

[dmccormack]

Mike- funny...I wish it would just paste plain text as a default with no funny formatting from whereever I picked up the text.

You can -- select Paste Special, then choose Plain text.

 

[mikea]

You can -- select Paste Special, then choose Plain text.

That's if Paste Special is available. In some contexts, it isn't.

I gotta see what the keyboard shortcut for Paste Special is. Ctrl-V somethin

 

[JoeSelch]

You can -- select Paste Special, then choose Plain text.

Ummm... that's not "by default"

 

[JoeSelch]

That's if Paste Special is available. In some contexts, it isn't.

I gotta see what the keyboard shortcut for Paste Special is. Ctrl-V somethin

One of the features I'm kinda liking in version 2010... right-clicking at the point of insertion gives you a bunch of options, and it's easy enough to select the Unformatted option from there. (OK, not as easy as plain old Ctrl-V; but, better than the old way.)

I did find a macro to install that allows you to set the default action for Ctrl-V - but, I don't remember what it was (might be worth googling), and there was something I didn't like about it (can't remember what) that caused me to uninstall it.

 

[wabower]

I'd say the last 14 posts are more than ample proof that young Cutler was correct in his evaluation of this software.

 

[SCCutler]

Software bloats into the memory space or CPU cycles available.

Seriously though, What's Spike doing?

I use MicroSoft Publisher to layout posters for scientific meetings- Word isn't really made as a layup tool. Publisher is overkill for my needs. Using PowerPoint doesn't work because it resizes text as you fill a text box and you wind up with boxes with different sized text.

Our MARCOM department uses Adobe Illustrator for serious lay-up.

Good question / comment.

I use a word processor, almost exclusively, to prepare legal documents and the like. Today, I was editing in Word (because I started with a Word doc), and it kept on screwing-up some bullet/number outlines. Nothing I could do would allow it to work - change something in one place, and the numbers elsewhere go wacky.

Not to say that cannot ever happen in WordPerfect - it can - but you can easily see what it is that is causing it. Not so in Word.

Preach it, Brother Spike!

I have to use that buggy peice o' shiate all teh time.

Don't 'chja just love pasting one phrase and having all of the formatting go out the window? All ya gotta do at that point is reformat the parapghaph, out indenmt by indent, level by level, page b age, ...keeping going out until you've re-done the whole document and wash, rinse, repeat the next time you delete or lose an invisible marker.

I have to do nested bullet point outlines. It's a good thing I'm working on my own these days. Co-workers would have called 911 on me long ago.

Your Wordperfect or WordStar would let you REVEAL CODES to see where the BOLD ON is so you put it where you want it...but see....when the Microsoft user panel researchers brought in the nice folks from the nursing home they all agreed that was way to confuzling soo they made it much more easiest.

ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I spend more time doing NOOO!!!!! DO WHAT I WANT!!!!!!!!! It was a simple edit!!!

See? JUST LIKE THAT!

I'd say the last 14 posts are more than ample proof that young Cutler was correct in his evaluation of this software.

Thank you, sir.

---

So I saved the file, opened it in WordPerfect, ran a simple macro I wrote to remove all formatting, and am reformatting the entire mess. I'll send it to them in a PDF, and if they want it in Word, I'll re-save as an RTF and let them figger it out.

Snarl!

 

[Palmpilot]

Mike- funny...I wish it would just paste plain text as a default with no funny formatting from whereever I picked up the text.

I suppose you could launder it by pasting it into Notepad and then copying it from there.

 

[denverpilot]

Or vim. I write my docs in vim and then paste them into god-awful Word later for idiots that need fonts to read good old' ASCII text. (And no, geeks. I rarely need Unicode text. ASCII works just fine for me.)

The number one reason to punch the Word developers in the face is their love of turning a single hyphen into a long hyphen and the annoying-as-hell auto-capitalization for idiots who don't know how to use their $/(;(-@$ shift key.

I've threatened to learn TeX on occasion but it's too much work for too little reward. Plus why, when I can CTRL-V vim text into word, hit CTRL-A, and then select Comic Sans to drive the entire rest of the world crazy?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I suppose you could launder it by pasting it into Notepad and then copying it from there.

Actually, I do that when bringing some stuff into Excel. For example, I copy a paper title from the PDF, bring it onto notepad- gets rid of the formatting from Adobe. I remove the line breaks, then cut & paste into Excel so the entire title is on a single line.. Lastly, I turn it into a link to the PDF file so I can open the file with a click.

The problem with Word is that it tries to help you, but it doesn't quite know how.

 

[AdamZ]

I switched from Word Perfect to Word probably oh I dunno 12-13 years ago at the insistance of our Bar Assn's IT person who was also a friend. The reason was that it was felt that since the rest of the world used Word client's preferred to receive documents in that format. I believe that back then the two did not merge or interact very well if at all. Now of course WP is probably on version 27 and that has changed.

I screw formatting up all the time I've always just thought it was my lack of knowledge of the program but now that I hear that Spike who is looked up to as the epitome of all lawyers then I'm thinking he perhaps it ain't me.

 

[steingar]

Can't disagree with any of you folks. You have to be a fourth level Microsoft Jedi to actually make any of their $h!t work as it should. And it is utter liquid frustration to try and do a really simple thing and not have the program allow you to do it.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Can't disagree with any of you folks. You have to be a fourth level Microsoft Jedi to actually make any of their $h!t work as it should. And it is utter liquid frustration to try and do a really simple thing and not have the program allow you to do it.

Yep.

For illustrations in application note drafts, I make a 2 row table. The first row is the illustration, the second is the caption. I have to manage the figure numbers myself, but it works sooooo much better than the image/caption/layout system that Micro$oft uses.

Some programmer screwed up the footnote/end note reference stuff- it actually seems to work properly!

 

[wsuffa]

Now, now, Microsoft is just helping the jobs situation by making it essential that professionals hire admins - in Spike's case, that would be a legal assistant.

 

[mikea]

It just occurred to me that I should sneak a copy of Open Office on to the work PC, edit in that and then save as a Word doc. In time the Mordoc - preventer of information technology scan will find it, but owell.

 

[wsuffa]

It just occurred to me that I should sneak a copy of Open Office on to the work PC, edit in that and then save as a Word doc. In time the Mordoc - preventer of information technology scan will find it, but owell.

I'm not even sure I could do that. Our laptops are so locked down that it requires the IT help desk to remotly authorize any program installation.... and that includes Active-X controls.

 

[Adodero]

Or vim. I write my docs in vim and then paste them into god-awful Word later for idiots that need fonts to read good old' ASCII text.

I used to do the same thing, I wrote all my writeups (usually ~7 pages) in vim, then mailed them for review as a .txt.

They always ended up in a .doc, but at least I knew I wasn't the one responsible for that

 

[ebacon]

Long live Brief by UnderWare, Inc.

I just got the hang of Word a few years ago and now they went and changed the interface. Frustrating.

 

[Palmpilot]

I just got the hang of Word a few years ago and now they went and changed the interface. Frustrating.

Same problem with Windows. I really hate being forced to learn a new user interface, and what I hear about Windows 8 is not encouraging.

 

[Sac Arrow]

Unfortunately Office has taken steps backwards to decrease productivity. I don't know about Office 2010 but I had to deinstall Office 2007 and reinstall 2003 simply because the layout and user controls of 2007 is awful and non-functional.

That said, I do have Libre Office installed in a Macbook, and while functional, it isn't quite as good as MS Office.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Unfortunately Office has taken steps backwards to decrease productivity. I don't know about Office 2010 but I had to deinstall Office 2007 and reinstall 2003 simply because the layout and user controls of 2007 is awful and non-functional.

That said, I do have Libre Office installed in a Macbook, and while functional, it isn't quite as good as MS Office.

Awful- yes.


Non-functional-It does work, pretty much as well as older versions. It does take time to find where stuff is now located on the various "ribbons". I get to use both versions at work- the laptop has the new version while old computers relegated to instrument controllers have 2003.

 

[mikea]

...Non-functional-It does work, pretty much as well as older versions. It does take time to find where stuff is now located on the various "ribbons". I get to use both versions at work- the laptop has the new version while old computers relegated to instrument controllers have 2003.

Just today I wanted to view two sheets of the same workbook at the same time. VIEW. Split. Nope. Arrange. Nope.

Googled to see how to open up multiple views of the same workbook. New-->Window. sure. That's in Excel 2003.

2007!

View-->New Window it was in front of me on the worthless crappy space-stealing ribbon and I COULD NOT SEE IT! #$%^&*()_!!!!!

 

[SkyHog]

LibreOffice FTW.