RE: What Are the Main Problems You Have with MS Word?

["Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com>]

Okay, using Word 95, 97, and 2000:

1) Autonumbering. It breaks easily, renumbers easily, and is difficult
to use reliably. And, if you move the DOC to somebody else's PC, it can
get messed up all over again. This has been true since version 2 and I
expect it has not been fixed for 2002.

2) Laying out graphics by floating is unreliable, even with locked
anchors; if you place more than one or two floating graphics on a page,
they bump each other to preceding and following pages, and getting them
to lay down where you want them (and, yes, there is room) is difficult
and time consuming. This has been true since version 95, and maybe
before. I expect it has not been fixed for 2002--the fix has been to
place graphics inline, by default.

3) Even with auto- features turned off, Microsoft Word standard styles,
as set by Microsoft programmers, sneak into your document. That is, even
if you only use four heading levels, you will unavoidably end up with
Heading levels 1-9 in your document. This has been true at least since
version 6.

4) Styles are unreliable and moving your DOC to other PCs can overwrite
your styles with disastrous results. This has been true since at least
version 6.

5) Microsoft has reserved so many style names, it is actually difficult
to come up with new ones. Moreover, Word relies too heavily on built-in
style names; for example, if you use heading styles other than the
default Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., your work becomes more difficult in
defining TOCs and migrating to other products, etc.

6) Extensively customizing Normal.dot in Word 95 and 97 cause
instabilities in MS Word. The MS developer I was working with at the
time explained Word was not designed for such customizations--new styles
and changes to existing styles only, no macros. I dunno if this was
fixed for 2000 or 2002. 

7) Every so often, your template becomes corrupt--Normal.dot as well as
your custom template. This frequency seems tied to document size and
having secure backups of templates is a must. I ran into this a lot in
Word 95 and 97, but have not really pushed the envelope since then.

8) Master docs has been broken since version 6. I know it was still
broken in Word 2000, dunno about 2002. Broken meaning that you risk
damaging or destroying data by using this feature in long, complex,
documents.

9) Word's list of styles is a pain to use, to the point that it
discourages style use. Indeed, this seems to be even more difficult to
use in Word 2002, with the relocation of style modification and
definition and different access to the list of styles than before.

10) What, still no hypertext for index entries?

Cheers,

Sean

P.S. Yes, I do know how to turn off autoformat, autocorrect, and
autoupdating of styles. Apparently, some automations are hard-coded or
damn sneaky.

-----------------------------------------
Sean Brierley
Software Documentation Specialist
Haestad Methods 
http://www.haestad.com 
203-805-0572 (voice) 
203-597-1488 (fax)
 


-----Original Message-----

>At the risk of opening the flood gates: what are the main problems 
>that list users have with MS Word?
>


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