Boy howdy, you are not kidding about the reference tracker. Those of you still using Word 2003 have no idea how much easier it is to write a paper in Word 07.
That’s quite wrong. There’s a “Save As” function in the exact same place it’s been for decades. I just checked, too. I’m not calling you a liar, just saying the heat of the moment must have clouded your senses or something. I would suggest that your school’s IT department is at fault, and you should get in touch with them.
Word 2007 requires an adjustment period from the older software. That’s what happens with new software. In this case, it’s damn good software, with a lot of great new features that are well worth the learning curve, and that’s something I never thought I’d say about a Microsoft product.
I really miss WP. I learned to word process on WP 5.0 on my mom’s old Compaq luggable (a 27-lb XT clone with a carry handle) and used 5.1 for a long time very happily. When we moved to Windows, WP came with us.
I still remember how to do everything in the Windows version of WP and I haven’t used it since 8.0, and I still feel uncomfortable in Word though I’ve been using it for years.
I (deeply) miss my Reveal Codes. I miss the ease of creating and formatting bulleted lists. I miss the easy pagination and header/footer options. I miss paired coding. I know how to convince Word to do most of what I need it to, but I was much more efficient with WP.
I have to admit to never make much use of the WP reveal codes back when I used it as my primary Word Processor. What makes the reveal codes so much more powerful than setting Tools-Options-View-Formatting Marks to All?
This can even easily be placed as a button on an office toolbar.
Yeah. I also hate driving on the right, or the left for that matter. I will damn well drive where I like! Except when it comes to oncoming traffic, with all those drones obeying The Man and driving on the “legal” side of the road. In that situation I am forced to drive on the same side as the rest of the sheep-like populace.
It could be that her pull-down menus are defaulted to only shows recently used commands at first, then the full menu after a short delay. To show all the commands, you have to click on the double down arrow at the bottom of the pull-down list.
On Word 2003, you fix this by going to Tools, Customize, Options and then click on “Always Show Full Menus.”
Another brilliant feature of Word.
Reveal Codes was awesome. Unfortunately MS wrong-footed Wordperfect over OS/2 and they’ve been playing second fiddle ever since.
I always thought that Reveal Codes only existed to fix a problem that it caused, i.e. that using in-text tags was an inherently flaky way of formatting text. MS Word doesn’t use that scheme, separating formatting from content in a more organised way, hence no need for Reveal Codes.
The biggest problem with Corel is that their bloody software has a nasty habit of trying to do too much. They do have some more options, and they help. But it does even more “automated” stuff for you than Word and it gets really, really annoying if you’re a “power user.” Plus, a lot of its supposed built-in cross functionality simply doesn’t work. And it does not play well with other programs, including several other Corel programs.
Mostly, though, I hate their documentation. Or lack thereof. They very often hide some really handy options behind a randomly-chosen name which means nothing in a submenu six layers deep, in a totally random location. There’s a lot of “randomly select each option until it comes out right.”
My first word processor was a machine that didn’t even have a power cord. All the power came from the pressure of my fingers pushing down keys. Crazy!
I learned WordPerfect for DOS in the late '80s. I’ve never used it in a Windows environment. I stuck with that for my personal writing even after I started using Windows on jobs. I used “Reveal Code” all the time, and produced perfectly formatted documents.
By 1995, my knowledge of DOS commands for WordPerfect was old-fashioned, and actually landed me a job that required that vanishing, arcane wisdom of the ancients.
I was resistant to learning Word, but after using it for a decade and a half, I’m so used to it that I don’t even think about how to format things. And for better or worse, it’s the standard now. I do wish it allowed direct conversion to a .pdf; I’ll have to get software to do that.
When I got a new computer and found myself with the MS Office Suite, I downloaded OpenOffice shareware. It worked okay, and, after all, is free, but there were things that irritated me: 1) the hassle of converting files; if I e-mailed a file I had to make sure and convert it to the MS equivalent; 2) some missing features. Specifically, OpenOffice Writer doesn’t have an equivalent to Word’s Draft View, and I found that very irritating. So I finally spent 80 bucks for an OEM version of MS Office Suite.
Now, Word Perfect is like an old girlfriend I haven’t seen in many years. Friendly, sweet, hot, but somehow we drifted apart. Still think about her sometimes while I’m doin’ MS Word. Oh, yeah.
Umm, I have MacLink Plus if I have to send stuff out in MS Weird “.doc” format. Works fine. No one ever sends stuff back saying “this looks like shit” or “I can’t read this file”. If you’re on a PC there’s a PC version called Conversions Plus. dataviz.com makes it. It’s not just for word processors, either: my PC-using gf uses Lotus 123 instead of Excel and uses it to convert Lotus dox to Excel spreadsheets if she has to share them out.
It helps that I mostly work standalone, can get away with a certain amount of curmudgeonly iconoclastic behavior because I don’t have work collaboratively (and certainly not in a word processing environment), etc… I can go weeks on end without using any flavor of word processor.
I don’t deny that Word has become a de facto standard (if not a true standard, which it cannot be without them publishing the specs on the format each time they modify it so all other wp programs can read from & write to it officially instead of backwards-engineering it). The OP didn’t ask which format was “winning” but which one was “better”.
Wordperfect is the superior word processing program, IMO, but the fact is it really depends on what kinds of documents you’re producing. Word is better where accessibility is concerned since more people use it. But if you plan on producing anything more complicated than straight text documents (newsletters or brochures - anything with embedded images) you’re better off getting an actual desktop publishing program such as InDesign.
If they’re straight text documents, and the people you share them with don’t need to have access to edit, then use Wordperfect and Adobe Acrobat and PDF the documents in order to share them.
I used Wordperfect intensively for about 3 years at work (for two companies, both larger than 200 employees with dedicated word processing departments). When my company decided to switch to Word we were pretty pissed, but it was a business decision - most of the clients were using Word so we had to be able to accommodate them. I’ve been using Word intensively for the past 7 years now and I still miss Wordperfect. 