Let me say at the outset that I agree with you and am equally dismayed by
this development. I work in Normal (Draft) view most of the time and was
surprised to find, in Word 2007, that a change in font spacing is not
reflected in Draft view: When I used my button to Condense by 0.1 Point, and
there was no visible change. This really threw me, as I'm accustomed to
seeing a change in Word 2003. But I have to add that I don't think this will
be "fixed," so we will just have to learn to live with it.
Microsoft's defense or rationale is that Normal view (more appropriately
renamed Draft view) was never intended to be WYSIWYG; that's what Print
Layout view (and, even more, Print Preview) are intended for. Normal was
intended as a high-performance option for entering a lot of text
efficiently, with the expectation that users would switch to Print Layout
for fine-tuning placement of graphics, line and page breaks, and the like.
Now that most computers are capable of displaying complex layout without a
noticeable performance reduction, Print Layout is "the new Normal." This has
been reflected for several versions in the fact that, when users said they
were using "the normal view," they meant Print Layout, not Normal.
What I have found to be a very comfortable compromise for a lot of my work
is to use Print Layout view with "white space between pages" hidden. This
gives the same continuous flow of text that is so useful in Normal (with the
added advantage that you can see footnotes, if any, without having to switch
to the footnote pane), but it is WYSIWYG. You might want to try that.
