Why did Microsoft introduce the "art box"?!

[Aeschines]

It used to be in Word that if you drew an arrow or square or whatnot, you pressed the button and the thingie would appear directly in the document.

But now, as an “improvement”(?!), when you try to draw something, a big ol’ box appears on screen with the message “draw in this box.”

You can draw in the box if you like, although I can think of no reason for doing so. You can also still draw elsewhere–IF the message/box is not blocking where you want to draw.

1. Does anyone have a clue as to why this change was made?

2. Can you turn off this “function”?

3. Don’t you agree that MS Word is an abosolute disaster of a program? I genuinely like Excel and have no probs with PPT, but Word is just a nightmare.

Thanks for your help.–Aeschines

[Nametag]

@Aeschines

It used to be in Word that if you drew an arrow or square or whatnot, you pressed the button and the thingie would appear directly in the document.

But now, as an “improvement”(?!), when you try to draw something, a big ol’ box appears on screen with the message “draw in this box.”

You can draw in the box if you like, although I can think of no reason for doing so. You can also still draw elsewhere–IF the message/box is not blocking where you want to draw.

1. Does anyone have a clue as to why this change was made?

2. Can you turn off this “function”?

3. Don’t you agree that MS Word is an abosolute disaster of a program? I genuinely like Excel and have no probs with PPT, but Word is just a nightmare.

Thanks for your help.–Aeschines

1. I think Word has always used graphics boxes; I guess they made more obvious to disabuse people like you of your illusions

2. Dunno.

3. Oh, yes – Word’s a piece o’ crap, all right. I much prefer WordPerfect, in almost any release. I must say, though, that the Mac version of WP sucks rhino pus.

[Number]

@Aeschines

2. Can you turn off this “function”?

Go to Tools|Options|General and uncheck Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes. This disables the function in Word 2002 and 2003.