why is ms word such a mess?

[graham.lovegrove]

Every time I have to revise a word document, I have to spend an
appreciable amount of time putting figures back where I want them,
sorting out caption problems, undoing 'automatic style updates', and
many other stupid things
that I haven't got itme for and shouldn't be doing. MS word is a mess.
It doen't seem to have any framework
to hold the components of a document, i.e. paragraphs, sections etc as
proper entities. All the control information seems to be in line, and
vulnerable to being deleted by some bug in the program.

In the eighties there was a species of program called Runoff
associated with PDP11 that was not WISIWIG and a bit inflexible, but
was completely reliable. I do not remember having any difficulty with
it doing exactly what you asked of it. With faster computers something
like that could be made to run real-time and provide WISIWIG output.
There is no excuse for this MS mess. If CEOs could see how much time
is wasted on Word conundrums there might be
to ditch it and find something better. There's no shortage of proper
software talent out there.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Do you want to whinge or do you want assistance with your problems?
You might start by reading
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TameAutoFormat.htm
Word is a style based application, so you need to investigate styles too.
And it is not a good idea to put your e-mail address in a public forum, for
now you will get loads of spam also.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

People tend to like what they know, and to dislike what they don't know.
Thus it's obvious why you think Word is a mess. In addition to Graham
Mayor's suggestion, you might find
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/sharing/WillMyFormatChange.html helpful.