Word: I Hate You (Caution: boring)

The BBQ Pit
1

Fucking Word. I understand that I use more complicated functions than simply cut-paste-footnote etc, but does this mean I am destined to spend the rest of my document-assembling life in a Word-created hell?

I’ve spent the last hour trying to cut and paste a document which contains (gasp!) a table. That’s all. Cut, paste. How hard is that? Now, I already knew that Micro-Fucking-Soft Word doesn’t like it when you try to do that, and I should have learned my lesson.

(Silly cowgirl. Word knows everything. Once you’ve made a table, you shouldn’t try to edit it. Just because it’s MY FUCKING DOCUMENT doesn’t mean I should have any control over how it looks, right?)

Ironic since this morning, in a more cool-headed state, I offered advice on outsmarting this FUCKING word program in someone else’s ‘Why is this program so stupid’ rant. And now that same program has driven me, who is usually so cool-headed about computers, around the bend.

[slightly technical ranting, probably not interesting]
Yes I use section breaks. I’m sorry. Does this mean I can’t also use tables? Why is it that when I paste a table into another document, it inserts section breaks where I don’t want them and deletes them when I do (thus fucking up my footers and page numbers)? Why, O Why, did you REFORMAT my table, so the table runs off the left of the page, and the title for the next page appears, squished up, to the right of the table? Do you think that’s how I WANT it to look? Why is the next page (the same table) formatted completely differently, but also WRONG? Why must you do this to me? Why is there an extra page at the end, in ‘Landscape’ instead of ‘Portrait,’ that I can’t get rid of without messing up the rest of it?

[/slightly technical ranting over]

I know, last year, you tried to screw me over with tables, on another document, in another job. I outsmarted you then and did what I wanted to, despite your most valiant efforts to prevent me. It took me two days of fretting but I finally did it. Do you hold this against me? Do you want me to spend two MORE days of fretting? Why can’t we be friends?

It’s now 5:30, I’ve spent an extra hour at work fighting with this fucking thing, and it’s now so unrecognizable that all I can do is erase the whole thing and start over. I should be home by now.

I will have nightmares about coming in tomorrow to face it.

Fucking Word.

Moral: NEVER EVER use tables in a word document (if you are using things like headers/footers, section breaks, titles, margins, text, cut and paste, indents … etc), no matter how flashy you think they look.

Phew. I feel slightly better. Thanks for listening.

… i’ll be back tomorrow with updates in the cowgirl vs Word saga. Unless I’ve killed myself - or my computer.

2

LaTeX

3

Two letters:

vi

(actually, don’t!)

4

Operator Error.

5

I hear ya. MS Word is horrid. WordPerfect is far better.

6

Oh god, for as irritating as Word can be I absolutely cannot stand WordPerfect.

7

MS Word was an utter piece of dogshit compared to WordPerfect, circa Office97 and WordPerfect 8. But WP seems to have gone down in quality while Word has gone up. Also, WP 2000 mysteriously crashes on my uber-stable Win2000 machine. Bad program or malicious Microsoft :dubious: ? Hard to say.

I use Word now, but I still dislike it. Whoever wrote the code that deals with tabbing and paragraph format needs to have his femurs crunched upon by angry wolves.

8

You know, formatting tables I can deal with. Section breaks, there’s always a backdoor. But those fucking Table of Contents, and Table of Figures thingies just never work out for me. I really should move on to LaTex.

9

Guys, I hate to say it but, Bill Gates knows more than you. I am sure he knows more than you on how you want your document to look. I mean, sheesh, he has billions of dollars! Do everything you can to be just like him.

Here are a few ways I have changed my lifestyle to better fit Microsoft’s suggestions:

  1. When someone spends a lot of time on little details, such as on store schedules, I will fix it to better suit Microsoft’s needs. I know that they can’t possibly mean Open: 9-5, so I correct it to Open: September 5. Saturdays they are now open September 2. Thanks Excel for clearing that up!

Or, when someone writes you a letter, just crumple it up and throw it away. There is no reason to read it, they obviously didn’t use Word to fix those glaring indentation mistakes. Send it back to them and tell them to get a real fucking word processor!

  1. Always, always, always point out mistakes in other people! The following conversation does not make sense: “Jeet?” “No, jew?” Underline it with a big ass red mark and don’t go away until they have fixed their errors! If they do not fix it, ask if they need your assistance several times. Thank you Clippy the paper clip! You are wonderful and your presence is missed in everyday activities!

  2. Which brings me to my next point: no matter how wrong you may feel about vocabulary, subject/verb agreements, etc., give your opinion on how a sentence can be fixed.

  3. Never, and I am serious about this one, NEVER do exactly what you are told. When you were in Kindergarten, wasn’t it fun to paste shit everywhere even when you have been told close to 30 times not too? We should all take a lesson from Word and revert to our childhood ways!

  4. Most importantly, for those of you who have careers, when the boss is hassling you about getting work done on time and trifle things like that, just go to sleep. If someone tries to wake you, act stunned and stare blankly until someone gives you a good beating. Then, and this is the important part, act as if you haven’t even heard of/seen the important document that your boss gave you. It’s not that important! If it was, he would have made a backup, even if you are his/her secretary!

That’s my two cents.

10

What’s LaTex? Wildly curious. You mean, there are alternatives to this Micro$oft Hell?

Someone told me that Linux can be my saviour from MS Office and I’m contemplating making The Switch (at home, anyway) but I’m scared that I won’t be able to go back. After all the years I’ve spent learning these keyboard commands. But at work everyone uses Word and since this document is going up on the Intranet it has to be compatible (last month we posted something in Word, and WordPerfect users (5% of total users) couldn’t open it properly, so I had to redo the thing on WordPerfect. And then our computers got upgraded (Windows 2000 Professional), and I no longer have WordPerfect, so those documents I made are sitting on the network, unloved.)

I think I can do it now, even though after I wrote the OP yesterday I was subject to a 2 hour trip home through a blizzard. But now I’m fresh and I’ve just fixed all the section breaks that somehow got messed up overnight (‘next page’ have changed to ‘continuous,’ many have mysteriously inserted themselves). Now I’m pasting everything one bit at a time, adjusting margins as I go, and trying to think only positive thoughts about Microsoft.

… it can smell fear, you know …

11

As much as I’m a fan of LaTeX, I wouldn’t consider it an alternative to Word in the short term. LaTeX is a program for typesetting documents, particularly scientific and engineering ones. But it’s a command-line driven program which requires you to create your document beforehand with a text editor, including special format codes which tell LaTeX when to, for example, emphasize text or start a new section. In other words, it has a steep learning curve. There are Windows implementations of LaTeX (PCTeX, for example), but they’re pretty much just text editors with a “run LaTeX on this” button added.

I use it all the time myself, because there isn’t a word processor made which produces mathematical equations as nimbly as LaTeX can. But it ain’t WYSIWYG. If you’re really interested, though, Google will lead you to many sources of info, starting with http://www.latex-project.org.

My sympathies on your Word problems…

12

OpenOffice
Star Office

13

Oooh, tables are the worst. I have also given up several times on getting the section breaks right. But the other day, I discovered a new horror: photos. Yes, my boss decided we needed digital pictures inserted in our manuals. This confuses Word so much…I almost felt sorry for it. Clippy appeared, but just kind of shrugged and gave me a “you’re fucked” kind of look.

Thank the lord I am getting new desktop publishing software next quarter and I can make real manuals using text from different sources and created in different programs!

14

That’s so awesome. I think I am going to be chuckling over this for days!

cowgirl, sorry to hear of your woes. I’d offer advice if I had any, but Word has long since defeated me. I’ve moved onto the stage of quiet, hopeless sobbing.

15

I hear you cowgirl and I feel your pain. For the most part I think I’ve defeated the beast but there are day’s when I just want to beat Mr Gates over the head with a blunt instrument.

(slight variation on MS Word rant)

Attention Temp Girl -

If you are using my computer to do something DO NOT CHANGE THE SETTINGS. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that MS Word’s auto-format feature is turned off. Do you think it is fun for me spend hours trying to fix my formatting only to have word un-fix it for me. Please don’t think just because you have access to my computer for a couple hours that it gives you any right at all to change anything. If you continue to do this I will beat you over the head with frozen fish.

(end slight variation on MS Word rant)

16

“I see you are writing a pit rant. May I fuck it up for you?”

(blink, blink. Stupid, smarmy-assed smile.)

“I see that you have right clicked numerous times over the part of the screen where I am and there is spit on the monitor. You have told me to get the hell out of Dodge on one hundred and forty-six workstations already, but you are using this PC for the first time. Would you like for me to get the hell out of Dodge one more time, or are you trying to insert spit into your pit post?”