Drawings done in Word should stay where you put them

[Clive]

I write medical books. It would be very helpful if the draw facility in Word
was better. There are many facilities but drawings drift all over the place
and the cursor behaves alarmingly erratically. Ideally one would draw an
outline and everything would remain in that outline.
If you change the page view, half a drawing disappears - its uncontrollable!

----------------
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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...3c8&dg=microsoft.public.word.drawing.graphics

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry, Clive, but I must diametrically oppose your opinion. The very name of
the program should suggest what it is intended for, and that is how it is
designed & programmed. The drawings are best done in a *graphics* program &
combined with the text form Word in a layout program - where you *can* put
stuff where you want it & have it stay there.

One of the (potentially) best word processing programs available has already
been bloated and destabilized far more than it should be due to the attempt
to make it 'appear' to be one-size-fits-all. If the flimsy, feeble "features"
weren't there in the first place, users wouldn't have to complain about how
problematic they are to deal with ;-)

Regards |:>)

 

[BruceM]

I agree that Word is already bloated and destabilized by idiotic "features"
and default settings that attempt to guess what you are trying to do. Word
is a versatile and powerful word processing program, but some of its best
features are hidden and nearly inaccessible. Word is probably behaving
exactly as it is designed to do. For instance, only inline graphics are
visible in Normal view. Objects in the graphics layer (those that are
wrapped, in front of text, or behind text) are anchored to a paragraph. You
may need to lock the anchor, clear the option of having the graphic move
with the text, or take other actions to get the graphic to behave as needed.
I think the behavior of text and graphics should be much more clearly
documented, and such options as locking the anchor should be more accessible
than they are.
For my purposes it would be perfectly dreadful to draw an outline and have
everything stay inside it. There is something called the drawing canvas in
versions of Word after 2000 that may do what you wish in terms of working
within an outline, but I'm not sure. The point is that your ideal features
may not be mine. Default options should be adjustable and much better
documented. I could go along with that suggestion. However, I will never
believe that Microsoft cares about user suggestions, certainly not to the
extent of letting polls guide product development. If they did, problems
that have existed through several generations of Word would surely be fixed
by now.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Microsoft does care about user opinion--or at least the desires of
"customers". Unfortunately, the customers they listen to are the large
corporate ones that buy applications for thousands of seats. Specialized
uses of Word tend to be overlooked.

 

[BruceM]

Well, yes, that's what I meant. Unfortunately, corporate IT decisions are
often made by people who are not necessarily knowledgeable about user needs.
Either that or the users in those environments need lots of automation.
I learned how to use Word in this newsgroup. I would never have known about
styles, or how to format outline numbering, or any number of other really
useful things if I had to rely on what Microsoft chooses to emphasize.
True, there are a few things about styles tucked away in the Help file, but
never is it mentioned that they are central to how Word works.
I have to admit that the "Microsoft responds to the suggestions with the
most votes" foolishness irks me. It is as bad as those "Report this problem
to Microsoft" boxes that show up when a program crashes. Both mislead the
user into thinking Microsoft is responding to their problems and concerns.
My point is that Microsoft does not seem to respond to what individual users
say, not even when a number of them say the same thing over the course of
many years.
Don't get me wrong. I think Word is a fine program, very versatile and
powerful after I finally changed enough options that it stopped trying to
help me all the time.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Without wanting to appear to be a champion, much less an evangelist, of Word
or Microsoft, let me just point out that problem reporting really does
affect what Microsoft does, and all users, but especially those with
always-on Internet connections, should be encouraged to report problems
every single time they occur. We MVPs have seen the way MS deals with these
error reports, and it is very impressive. The information you send helps MS
build up a database of what types of errors are occurring and what causes
them. The errors are dumped into various fault "buckets," and the MS techs
quantify and qualify the errors by frequency and severity and work toward
solutions to the most frequent and most severe (obviously, they can't deal
with those that are never reported). If you ever have the experience of
reporting an error to which a solution has been found, you will be an
immediate convert, as reporting the issue will bring you an instant reply
providing the solution.

 

[BruceM]

My understanding is that it is necessary to set it up with Microsoft before
error reporting occurs. My connection at work is always on, and I would
certainly report problems if I thought they were actually reaching somebody
at Microsoft. Are you telling me that all I need to do is click "Send
Report" or whatever it says, and the report will go winging off into a
Microsoft database? I would certainly report the error in that case. I
clicked that button quite a few times at first, but never received anything
in reply.
I have reported quite a number of errors when searching for solutions on the
Microsoft support pages. As far as I know they are all still problems, but
sometimes I find or develop a workaround, and would never realize that
something has been fixed.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Absolutely. Always click the button to send the error; no setup needed. I've
never actually gotten a reply, either, AFAIR, but I know it's conceivably
possible. I have just had very few errors, and apparently I don't get the
"popular" ones. MS also heavily uses the "SQM" (pronounced skwim) data
submitted via the CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program) in Office
XP and 2003, so we encourage everyone to enable that reporting as well.
There's always hope that enough of us atypical users will report usage to
tip the balance a bit in our favor.