MS Word

[Ian Hewitt]

I realise it is all user-error. I should find myself a good website full of advice or buy Word For Dummies or something, but I have used MS Word for years and I have never been able to figure out why it randomnly changes font type, size, and bold/unbold if I choose to delete something;

or why it randomnly decides to adjust my page margins and borders;

or why sometimes, if I insert a table on one page, it will not let me use the last half of the previous page;

or why when I move a table an inch to the left it magically leaps a page backwards and lands on top of another table somewhere else.

Does anyone else have these problems? Because they drive me completely insane....

Cheers
Ian

www.llowellen.com
A d20 world design project that's waiting for your imagination.

[Patrick]

One word: Windows

[Thanis Kartaleon]

www.openoffice.org

[Ian Hewitt]

OK. What about Windows?

Also, Open Office. I have been recommended to that before. Is it really that much better than Word 2000? Will I be able to transfer large existing documents without losing formatting and fonts (but losing the bugs) from Word to Open Office...?

Cheers
Llowellen

www.llowellen.com
A d20 world design project that's waiting for your imagination.

[Lilith]

Ian Hewitt wrote:

OK. What about Windows?

Also, Open Office. I have been recommended to that before. Is it really that much better than Word 2000? Will I be able to transfer large existing documents without losing formatting and fonts (but losing the bugs) from Word to Open Office...?

Cheers
Llowellen

www.llowellen.com
A d20 world design project that's waiting for your imagination.

You can get OpenOffice for Windows. It's my personal opinion that it's a lot better than Word 2000 and it has gotten A LOT better over the years. Just make sure you go with the latest stable version, which I believe is 2.0.

For the most part, you'll be able to keep MOST of your formatting. Make a backup copy of everything first, though! Always make backups! You won't lose fonts, as those are tied to your operating system, rather than the program.

[Ultradan]

Sometimes, it's the way you work on your project that is the problem...

Start by just typing your text (just the plain text)... Then check the spelling (if you need to). Make a quick save.

After all of that is done, THEN you work on esthetics. Click on the button on your tool bar that looks like a "P" (I don't know what it's called in english for I have the french version). This function will make everything that is invisible appear in your text (like spaces, tabs, returns, font changes, etc...). Now that all these things are visible, you won't accidentally delete them by mistake. So go ahead and bold, underline, and change font sizes as you wish.

When you're finished, press the "P" button again to hide the invisibles and save your text.

Hope this helps.

Ultradan

[Lilith]

Also, check out AbiWord as a alternative to Microsoft Word.