Time to Kill Microsoft Word?

Allnighterking writes "Apparently the frustration with another Windows Product is starting to reach increasingly visible users. John Dvorak over at ABC News is starting to question if it's time to kill Word With Viable options like Open Office.org available for Windows as well as AbiWord and others. Since they are both using XML as a way to create the documents. Or perhaps dropping a separate application altogether and going with something like X Forms to create a browser based office suite."

Comments

Argh, the hidden codes!

[lothar97]

My biggest frustration with supporting Word users is the ol' "hidden codes" function. You'll be typing away on a document, and suddenly things are being aligned funny, line numbers appear in different areas, page count numbers restart at 1, things cannot be deleted, etc. WordPerfect has a "reveal codes" function which allows you to see the hidden info, and easiy delete the offending code. The answer I give people with this problem? Stop using Word.

I imagine if there was a "reveal hidden codes" feature in Word, it might be a lot easier to use

Re:Argh, the hidden codes!

[mingot]

Um...

Format->Reveal Formatting

Not exactly the same as reveal codes, but quite helpful.

Re:Argh, the hidden codes!

[Yorrike]

Unless you use Gentoo, or another source based distro, you're not required to recompile anything.

Slackware is a Linux distro for Linux people, like Gentoo is a Linux distro for people who like fine tuning and fucking around with configs (like me).

Don't want to compile or recompile a kernel? Use Suse, Fedora or Mandrake.

On a different note, you seem really, really angry for no reason other than people saying they don't like Word. Calm down.

Itanium

[halo1982]

Remember, this is the same John that predicted Apple would switch to the Itanium.

Re:What alternatives?

[salesgeek]

...Word is the best product in its class.

Not by a long shot. Both Lotus WordPro and WordPerfect have features, stability and ease of use on their side. Both have superior layout control. Both are better at complex text flow. Both are better at generating indexes and the like. Unfortunately, Word is bundled with Excel and Access, two products that are very, very good. Access less so than excel, which offers several features that kick the teeth of the competition in like PivotTables and Solver.

Archive migration is already on the way.

[twitter]

There are thousands upon thousands of these reports archived on network drives. How likely is it that a CEO/CFO/etc.. is going to mandate the transfer of all these documents to OpenOffice/Abiword/Etc.. ?

Most companies are already archiving those as Portable Document Format (pdf) files. This preserves print format much better than Word ever did. IBM would be happy to show you how and yes, you can search the text.

If your company was dumb enough to archive things in Word format and is not looking for reliable methods to get the information out, you might as well throw the things away. New Word itself has a hard time opening older Word documents, especially "complicated" ones with OLE from visio and other programs that your company might not have anymore.

Hopefully, people will learn and use reasonable text editors and type setters for future work.

How to keep word from asking for the CD

[zerofoo]

When installing word or any office program ALWAYS run a "custom" installation and get to the screen with all the grey boxes that turn white when selected for installation. Select the top-most box and click "run from installed location". All the lower boxes should turn white - that means they will all be installed on the HD.

After the installation is complete, the installer will ask if you want to delete the installation files or leave them on the hard disk. LEAVE THE FILES ON THE DISK. While this only applies to Office 2003, it does make patching or servicing the installation later a breeze.

-ted