# MSWord rant du jour **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 1, 2006, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553 "2006-03-01T02:02:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cowgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cowgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cowgirl)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/21 "2006-03-02T20:39:36Z")
Here I was, smugly thinking “Ahh, those MS Word troubles … glad I don’t have problems with those any more …” and then turned to this powerpoint presentation I’m doing, and because of the template I bloody cannot put stinking SLIDE mother-effing NUMBERS on it! ARG! Why? Why? Why is this so dumb? All my colleagues are stumped. All my friends (who I asked) lectured me on the overall uselessness of powerpoint and how it should be banned from all workplaces. I wholeheartedly agree with them on this but it does not help my immediate problem, and if I took that approach to my manager - “you can’t get your page numbers, why don’t we just ban powerpoint in North America’s largest bureaucracy, instead?” - she probably wouldn’t be into it. Lousy powerpoint. grumble. ---
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/22 "2006-03-02T20:55:15Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I’ll show myself out. Watch out for the door’s backswing… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/23 "2006-03-02T21:11:30Z")
> [@cowgirl](#): > > … North America’s largest bureaucracy… What, you work for Boeing? ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/24 "2006-03-02T22:48:16Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > Being a Microsoft apologist, I will probably be tarred and feathered for this. > > But having supported Word for about 15 months, I can honestly say that if it doesn’t do what you want, you’re not doing it right. > > To get the em-dash, type alt-0151. It’s in the character map. Easy. Sure it’s easy if you know where to find the character map. (Usually it is easy, as I said–two hyphens.) > [@](#): > > To figure out what’s going on with the page numbers, look to your section break. I can almost guarantee that’s where your problem is. Okay, where exactly do I look? That is, what am I looking for? 'Cause when I go into the heading, it looks like it will do roman numerals, and it also has the correct page number. But once I exit, back to arabic. The previous footer had roman numerals, the next one has arabic but starts over with 1… > [@](#): > > As mentioned before, if your headers and footers changed, it’s because you deleted the last paragraph mark. Right that makes a lot of sense. Because if I want to delete a paragraph, _of course_ I also want to delete the characteristics of every header and footer in the whole document. > [@](#): > > For the numbering problem, you’re probably not doing the subheadings with a tab. You using spaces instead? Naughty naughty. Nope, as I said, I got this particular document from somebody else, and while he did use spaces in a lot of places where tabs would have worked better (and used strings of periods to get dot leaders on his ToC page) this is not one of them. And the numbering problem isn’t in a subhead. It looks like the first #1 is a numbered list, #s 1 & 2 (which should be 2&3) are an outline, and #4 is a numbered list, again. Apparently the engineer who sent this thing wasn’t checked out on Word 2000. > [@](#): > > There’s ALWAYS a way to do what you want, and it’s usually simpler than you think. Yeah, I’m torn between converting the whole document to Word Perfect, where at least I can SEE what codes are in there, and sending it back to the author and telling him to fix it. Oh, wait–some of it’s in Chinese! Okay. Back to author. Hey, maybe he _wanted_ it that way. Dunno…once, long ago, I “fixed” one of these automatic outline thingies in another document, and it was simple, and it looked fine, except that I had inadvertently removed some command, apparently, that told it to keep starting over with each new outline. Throughout the document. Of which there were many. (This is also reminding me of why I hate it when authors write in outline style.) So in doing so I messed up text that occurred ten chapters later, turning things that should have been “(a),(b),(c),(1),(2)…” into “(aaaaa), (386), (387),…” so I’m leery. > [@](#): > > I’ll show myself out ::throws feathers:: ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/25 "2006-03-03T03:42:34Z")
Well, you could always try Maggie-ing the document. Create a new document and copy the old one into it, minus the very last paragraph mark. You need to have your View options set to show those, at least; personally, I just turn them all on. I hate having the damned dots-for-spaces, but it’s the only way to see the dotted lines showing page and section breaks, so . . . . It sounds to me as if the person who created the document did all their formatting on-the-fly. While I’m not Word expert, I have found that formatting as you go, rather than using predefined styles, is just _asking_ for trouble. You might want to copy the problem list into a clean document, apply the “Clear Formatting” style to it, reformatting it there, and then copying it back. No guarantees, but that might work. Or you could try converting it to RTF and seeing what Word thinks the coding should be there. RTF is a bitch to read though, so I wouldn’t recommend that except as a last resort. And, hmmm, sometimes doing a Save As RTF and then saving the RTF back to Word format helps. My personal opinion is that Word sucks mighty big rocks. It’s unstable, its numbering capability has been broken for years, and in general you have to employ too damn many workarounds to get it to do what _you_ want it to do as opposed to what it thinks you should be doing. Gimme FrameMaker or WordPerfect any day. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/26 "2006-03-03T16:26:42Z")
> [@Hilarity N. Suze](#): > > Sure it’s easy if you know where to find the character map. (Usually it is easy, as I said–two hyphens.) Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools. And if you want it easier, go into Word’s Autocorrect feature and add an entry. > [@](#): > > Okay, where exactly do I look? That is, what am I looking for? 'Cause when I go into the heading, it looks like it will do roman numerals, and it also has the correct page number. But once I exit, back to arabic. The previous footer had roman numerals, the next one has arabic but starts over with 1… Edit/Find/Goto, and look for a section break. I’ll betcha that you find one right where the numbering goes wonky. > [@](#): > > Right that makes a lot of sense. Because if I want to delete a paragraph, _of course_ I also want to delete the characteristics of every header and footer in the whole document. There’s a huge difference between deleting a paragraph and deleting a paragraph _mark_. > [@](#): > > And the numbering problem isn’t in a subhead. It looks like the first #1 is a numbered list, #s 1 & 2 (which should be 2&3) are an outline, and #4 is a numbered list, again. Ah. Well there you go. Don’t do that. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/27 "2006-03-07T20:46:48Z")
Maybe this is too late to be of use, but a couple of suggestions. To put this in perspective, I go all the way back to Word 1.1, so I’ve been wrestlin’ with this beast for a while. I’m one of those who thinks it gets buggier with every release. And that, I’m afraid, could be the problem with your page numbers. I’ve had this happen several times, expecially in long documents with lots of section breaks. There might be some piece of schmutz in the coding where you can’t get at it and, if so, nothing you do is going to make it go away. I’d try Morgyn’s idea, but probably the corruption will just tag along for the ride. Before we give up, though, double-check one thing. As you probably know, the command for formatting pages numbers isn’t in the headers/footers screen. Rather, back out in the main document, you go to Insert - Page Number - Format; make your selections; click “OK”; then Close (not Insert). Now go to the header and see whether it took, then Print Preview to double-check. As I said, though, I’ve had documents where Word simply refused to implement this command. As for the paragraph numbering problem, are they set up as formats or as field codes? And have you tried simply stripping them and entering the numbers manually? Not elegant, of course, but probably what I’d do. Or, if you’ve fixed the problem by now, what did the trick? BTW, someone said headers and footers are saved in a paragraph mark. Sort of. Actually, they are stored in the section divider (which, to Word, is a paragraph mark). So, when you’re deleting a section, be sure to delete the divider immediately following (rather than the one immediately before). Oh, and Morgyn, you can turn on paragraph marks but not the dots. To to Tools - Options - View - Show; check and un-check what you want and don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/28 "2006-03-08T17:08:14Z")
I hate trying to get phrases that look like they might be web sites not to be underlined and blue. It’s stupid - if you click on that phrase in the final printed document, the paper just bends. What’s it supposed to do??? Also, on one of my PCs, the Indent function locks the whole machine so bad I have to pull the plug out of the wall. Every damn time. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553/29 "2006-03-08T17:43:07Z")
Format - Autoformat - Options. Uncheck “Replace - Internet and network paths with hyperlinks.” Note that you have do do this on both the Autoformat and Autoformat As You Type tabs. For existing documents, right-click the hyperlinks; “Remove” is one of the options. As for the “indent function” problem, are you talking about the settings under paragraphg formatting or something else? If you mean buttons on your toolbar (haven’t looked at the out-of-the-box toolbar in years), the solution is to modify your toolbar and simply remove those buttons. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msword-rant-du-jour/346553.md?page=1)