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What I Like About Microsoft Word...
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Episode 46October 21st, 2005
When I speak at conferences, trade shows, and user groups, someone invariably asks me what word processor I use. When I reply, "Microsoft Word, and I happen to like it a lot," some of them mutter something about their Mac being a Microsoft-free zone and look at me as if I just told them I'm married to Satan himself.
I do understand. I think it's nutty, but I do understand: Some people have a very strong anti-Microsoft bias. I mean, it's true that they're the company responsible for foisting the Win-Doze™ operating system on the world. But, at least in my humble opinion, that doesn't make them totally evil.
So although, like many of you, I abhor almost any flavor of Windows, I happen to like almost all of the Microsoft Mac software and hardware products. Heck, I use at least three of them every day-the Microsoft Office 2004 suite for Mac OS X (of which Microsoft Word, my word processor of choice, is a component), my excellent Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer and my exceptionally comfortable (but now discontinued) Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro.
Some people say they wouldn't use a product produced by "the evil empire," but I just chuckle and grin, knowing that Microsoft Word, which I've used on the Mac for nearly 20 years, is without a doubt the best possible choice for the kind of word processing I do. Never mind that every editor or publisher I deal with (with the exception of Bryan here at Mac Observer, who would let me submit my column scribbled on toilet paper if it meant I would turn it in on time) requires me to submit my work as a formatted Microsoft Word document.
Even if nobody told me I had to use Word, I would choose to use Word. Among other things it's rock solid, keeps up with my typing easily, and has every feature I need as well as plenty of features I don't. And, since it allows me to customize the keyboard shortcuts for almost every feature it offers, I've really been able to streamline the job of writing with Microsoft Word.
Without further ado let's take a brief look at just some of the features that I feel make Microsoft Word the best word processor for my needs:
Styles
A style (sometimes referred to as a style sheet) lets me quickly and easily assign a complete set of formatting attributes to any text. For example, the Body style I'm using in this document formats text as Times, 12 point, plain, single spaced and left-aligned, with 6 points of space before and after each paragraph.
There are three additional styles I use in my columns: "Bryan," which I use for notes to my editor that shouldn't appear in the finished product; "Caption," which I use for figure captions; and SH, for subheads. All four styles can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Text styles: Subhead (1); Body (2); Bryan (3); and Caption (4).
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
Figure 2 shows the Modify Styles dialog boxes responsible for the four styles.
Figure 2: The Modify Styles dialog boxes responsible for the four styles in Figure 1.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
There are a couple of other cool things about styles. One is that I can change a paragraph's style without even touching the mouse. To do that, I just press Command-Shift-S to activate the Style field on the formatting toolbar, and then type the Style's name (Body) as you can see in Figure 3. The paragraph where the cursor is at the time, or any text I've selected (i.e. highlighted) will immediately take on all of the attributes of that style.
Figure 3: Changing a paragraph's style without touching the mouse…
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
Another cool thing about styles is that I can assign a style for the following paragraph, so when I press Return at the end of a paragraph the next paragraph is automatically assigned the correct style. For example, when I use the Caption style I almost always want the next paragraph to be in the Body style, which is what happens when I press the Return key at the end of a paragraph formatted with the Caption style. And since I usually follow a paragraph of body text with another paragraph of body text, that's what I get when I press Return at the end of a paragraph of body text.
Styles are a very powerful way to format documents. If I decide that I want Body text to appear in the Courier font, I merely modify the Body style in the Modify Style dialog box and assign the Courier font. As soon as I click OK, every paragraph formatted with the Body style changes from Times to Courier. Neat, huh?
Finally, it's easy to copy a style from one paragraph to another using keyboard shortcuts: Command-Shift-C (to Copy Style) and Command-Shift-V (to Paste Style), which can be a very handy feature indeed.
Non-contiguous text selection
Another of my favorite features is discontiguous text selection. By that I mean I can select words, sentences, and even whole paragraphs that aren't touching each other as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Discontiguous selections before applying formatting to them.
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Figure 5: Discontiguous selections after applying Bold and Italic formatting to all of them at once.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
I love being able to do that.
Notebook view
The Notebook view is more than just a simulated sheet of notebook paper. In fact, it's probably my favorite new feature that was introduced in Office 2004.
The great thing about Notebook view is that it lets you record audio and type notes at the same time, synchronizing them as you listen and type. That makes it perfect for Steve Jobs product introductions or for recording telephone interviews for a podcast.
In Figure 6 you can see my notes for the Steve Jobs product announcement speech last week (on October 12th). If I click the little speaker icon (highlighted at the lower left), the audio that corresponds to that line of text begins to play and I'd hear Steve making a joke about learning OS X using my book, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger For Dummies. Needless to say that was my favorite part of the presentation (though the new iMacs and video iPods are pretty cool).
Insert figure RandRFig46-6 here.
Figure 6: The notebook view mates audio with typing in real time.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
It's a brilliant idea-coordinated audio and typewritten notes-and it works beautifully. As you can see highlighted in the upper right of Figure 6, the mention of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger For Dummies came approximately 5 minutes and 15 seconds into the speech. This makes it extremely easy to find the voice content you're looking for, even if the audio portion runs an hour or two.
I love this feature, especially when I'm using my PowerBook with its built-in microphone. The quality isn't great but it is definitely good enough to refer to when I write about the event later.
User-definable keyboard shortcuts for everything
I'm a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts and love programs that allow me to assign my own keyboard shortcuts to their commands. Case in point-as I mentioned earlier, Word uses the shortcut Command-Shift-S to activate the Style field on the formatting toolbar. Almost every other program I use reserves that keyboard shortcut for the Save As… command. I wanted Microsoft Word to do the same so I opened up the Customize Keyboard dialog box (found under the Customize command in the Tools menu) and changed the Style command to Control-S as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Changing the Style command from Command-Shift-S to Control-S.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
Word didn't come with a shortcut for the Save As… command, so I created one (Command-Shift-S) as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Adding the shortcut Command-Shift-S to the Save As… command.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
Configurable keyboard shortcuts rock and it's my belief that every program ought to have them. Fortunately, Word not only has the feature, but unlike some programs, it's available for almost every feature the program offers including many that have no menu command. Neat!
Live word count
Last but not least is a feature that's near and dear to my heart-live word count. You see, my assignments are often given as a specific number of words. For example, my Houston Chronicle columns must be between 500 and 550 words. Microsoft Word makes it easy for me to keep track by displaying the current word count in the status bar at the bottom of the document window as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: This column currently contains exactly 1,514 words.
(Click the thumbnail for a larger image)
For what it's worth, Bryan, my editor here at the The Mac Observer, doesn't give a rat's ass how many words I use. Just for the record, I used 1,514 as you can see in Figure 9.
And that's all he wrote...
Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus has been a Macintosh user for a long, long time and has written 49 computer books including Mac OS X Tiger For Dummies and GarageBand for Dummies. He also offers expert technical help and training to Mac users, in real time and at reasonable prices, via telephone, e-mail, and/or unique Internet-enabled remote control software. For more information on Bob and his services, visit www.boblevitus.com.
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Send impolite comments to DeleteWithoutReading@boblevitus.com, or post your comments below.Most Recent Columns From Dr. Mac: Rants & Raves
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Dr. Mac: Rants & Raves Archives
Observer Comments
I like MS word for the MAC. I use it everyday. There are just things that drive me crazy. The number one thing on the list is the lack of ability of MS Word (2004 fully patched) to realize the new screen resolution after I connect my powerbook to my external monitor. To try (1) open a document (a few pages long) while not connected to an external monitor (2) scroll down and up verify that everything is great (3) connect to your high resolution monitor (mine is only 1280x960) (4) zoom the window (5) scroll down/up/down. My experience is that the bottom of the page is now "smudged". If you make the window smaller than the old resolution everything is great again. If you close Word and reopen all is good as well.
Drives me crazy...
(I posted the previous comment)
The way that Word automatically makes numbered lists/lists with bullets etc. drives me crazy. It's really hard to get it to do what I want it to.
Similarly, formatting indents is very hard to control. All I really want is something simple, like setting the tabs at the top and then watching the paragraph re-format itself, but Word keeps going off on a tangent setting the tabs somewhere completely different. That drives me crazy too.
The problem I have with Word, Windows or Mac, is that it's about half-smart. It thinks it knows what you want, and even if you tell to not do things, it does them anyway. The formatting stuff that Guest noted is particularly infuriating. Using computer-generated letterhead and dealing with the header/footer commands is another headache, and one that usually has me growling and pacing the floor trying to cool off.
The first thing I do when faced with a new version of Word is go on a search-and-destroy mission to rid it of all those "helpful" default settings. Once that's accomplished, things are better, at least until some clueless dweeb sends me something to be included in a document I'm putting together, at which time the Word-default formatting in their text overrides mine and I wind up shouting at the stupid POS again. 
Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:17 pm Subject: Re: I don't use all those features, but....
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
it's really a breeze using the Table feature in Word. Perhaps other software programs are up there now, but at one stage my only alternative was Appleworks, which was truly horrendous for making tables.
I do agree with that. My wife got MS Office/Mac because of Appleworks' miserable excuse for tables.
I have a lot of anti-microsoft sentiment, or try to (haha), but I do like many of the office programs. What I don't like is that each version gets so much slower to open. On my G5 1.8 with 1GB of ram, any of office 2004's programs take 1-3 minutes to open. Opening a single page word document with only text will 'pop' open the main, blue word window, quickly, but it takes the 1-3 minutes to actually fill in the page and before you can actually type anything.
It finally infuriated me so much that I took it off and went back to Office v.X, which still opens slow, but only about 30 seconds to a minute.
I do miss a couple of the newer features, but I don't have time to wait around. Oddly, Entourage opens quickly, though I prefer Apple Mail anyway, so don't use it.
QuoteGuest wrote:
(I posted the previous comment)
Similarly, formatting indents is very hard to control. All I really want is something simple, like setting the tabs at the top and then watching the paragraph re-format itself, but Word keeps going off on a tangent setting the tabs somewhere completely different. That drives me crazy too.
I have Word, but don't use other than to see the .doc files clients send me and I usually use TextEdit for that job. I use InDesign as my word processor because I like the way I am in control of formating, and other things, like you say Word can drive you nuts. Of course InDesign is twice as expensive as Word, but I use it for business and deliver PDF files.
Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:32 am Subject: Another Office gotcha
My biggest gripe is that the default keyboard shortcuts for MS Office (Mac) are coded to be identical to MS Office (windows), which is as close as they come to "standard" on the Windows platform. The rationale seems to be that Office should behave the same on both platforms. The unfortunate consequence is that Office Mac behaves markedly differently to every other Mac (HIG compliant) application. Someone needs to take note that a Mac user is far more likely to frequently switch between Mac Office and other Mac apps than between Mac Office and Windows Office.
Once you include all the available modifier keys, you would be surprised at the number of keyboard shortcuts you have to rewrite just to make Word's left/right/up/down/pg up/pg down behaviour match that of other Mac applications.
Entourage is so volatile in Office X that it is almost unusuable. I do manage to use it for sending Word attachments, because people always seem to have trouble opening Word files sent with Mail, but the received messages have all these grey lines like you see behind the menu bar obscuring them and when I try and get it to reveal the messages underneath it crashes and then crashes everytime I reopen it. I can't believe how bad it is.
My recollection is that the modern hostility toward Microsoft among Mac users largely started because <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02/26/80193.aspx">Word 6 for the Mac</a> was such a terrible release that some even theorized it was intentionally ruined in order to destroy the Mac as a platform. Of course, today's Word has nothing in common with Word 6. But grudges can last a long time.
I have a 1.42 GHz MacMini (1GB), along side a 0.45GHz Cube (1GB) running Office2004 and OfficeX respectively, but huge documents open in under 10 seconds but in most case I can scroll or edit within 3 seconds *including* launching Word on both Macs.
If your numbers not on-par, then there is something wrong with your Mac. Suggestions are (at your own risk), to remove the normal.dot tempate and to remove any Microsoft folder inside your preference folder. I am certain that the speed issue can be solved (although you might need more then those two suggestions)
Look at available free disk space on your boot volume. Launching Office increases the virtual memory requirement (it's quite a big thing to launch) and this VM is taken from your boot volume. Don't run your system with less then 3GB free space. Personally, I always partition my drives so my documents and addional apps don't battle with the system for disk space.
I use Word since version 4 (around 1990) and have been using most versions since on both Mac and Windows. As a developer, I do a lot of automation programming on both Windows and MacOSX. I think I can say that I know a lot of what Word is capable off (and Excel, but to a lesser extend).
Personally, I am glad that I can do my work on a Mac (even my programming for Windows), but Word is the one exception (after changing many of the default settings) of a good Microsoft product. But I did not yet work with Pages.
My personal favorite in Word is the use of outline-view. Even more then what the author is describing, you can format the outline of an article, simply by dragging (I can't take anyone serious who says he likes a feature because it doesn't include a mouse). If you reuse a certain stylesheet a lot (the difference between a style and a stylesheet is that a stylesheet is a collection of styles), you can first type text, then attach a template that has the right styles in it's stylesheet and you are 90% done.
For those paragraphs that require a different style (notes, caption, etc.) that you did not apply through outline, you can just apply it to the first occurence and use repeat (default command-Y) to apply it to each of the following occurences. (Re)formatting a document in Word is a matter of a few minutes (but can often be done in less then one)
I have been working on projects where complete organisations (>1000 employees) needed to move to Office, so I know a thing or two about maintainance of templates, stylesheets, macro's and other "personalized" information. I have always been using a Macintosh, although these organisations where Windows oriented.
I wouldn't shed a tear if Microsoft went belly-up tomorrow (after what they've done, I think it would be just fair if it happened) and I think I could switch to an alternative for Word. But I would certainly miss it.
Sun Oct 23, 2005 9:02 am Subject: Word is an okay word processor...
...and I would have no problems with the application if people used it only for that purpose. The problem is that too many people think that it can also fill in for applications like Quark/InDesign and press-ready books can be created with it, or that since it will export to HTML, it's a web-authoring application.
No, it's not. It's for typing out words and tables, maybe adding the occasional chart or picture of your grandchildren, then printing out to your inkjet or laser printer. It is not a layout tool, even though it sometimes pretends to be.
In addition, I also really, really dislike the entire "every function has a cute button, but only a few functions are in the menubar" paradigm that Microsoft uses in all of their Office applications. Yes, Word has a lot of features, but they're all hidden in the Customize Toolbars area, which you have to go searching through every time a simple bit of functionality is needed. Then, once you've added a thousand buttons to the toolbars, it becomes information overload; with all of those icons, it becomes difficult to find the button you're looking for, making the application really inefficient to use.
I don't like Windows, but I do like Word, Excel, and even Access (I remember learning basic database programming with Access 2.0, and writing a teeny production application with it). I particularly like the tables processing. Almost every other word processor on the Mac has been horrible with tables.
However, it's not worth the high price to me. NeoOfficeJ gets the job done, even with tables.
Word 12 (for Windows) being previewed a lot recently addresses the "hidden" features thing in a big way, in fact, that's probably one of the biggest changes for the upcoming revision. Research found that almost all requested features were already in Word, but users just didn't know they were there. Hence, a complete interface redesign is in the works for Office 12 (on Windows) that will make all the different and extensive features easily accessible through a new tabbed UI. I don' t think they've committed to when these new UI changes will find their way into the Mac version, and in fact, the UI may not fit into MAC HIG (though it does remind me of Macromedia one version back).
Office 12 has received mixed pre-reviews has you can imagine, being an MS product. However, making it easier to use by making all these unknown features "findable" will surely help it continue to hold off the competition.
It's still a monster of an application though.
Autocorrect is one feature I love of Microsoft Word that Pages (the alternative I would consider) doesn't have (or does it and I just haven't found it???). Nobody mentioned it yet, so I gather you all take it for granted or something, but honestly, it rocks. Whenever I misspell anything, rather than simply correcting the word via spell-check, I add it to the autocorrect dictionary (which Word makes so so easy). Thus, I only ever make a particular typing mistake once, and after that it gets fixed automatically.
The rest of the app mostly works well for me too, so I'll stick with it.
Mon Oct 24, 2005 10:50 am Subject: It started off great
I first used Word & Excel in the late 80s on the first Mac with a HD and I thought it was fantastic. It took years for MS to come close on a PC.
Now there is a lot of bloat, meaning tons of stuff that most people don't care about. The problems is that there are sufficient numbers of people that do need some of these features to make it difficult for MS to pull them out.
Personally I customize two tool bars that have exactly what I want and only use them, which makes it far easier to use Word in today's world. I've used the same setup for years and building the toolbars is the first thing I do when I install a new version.
The other important thing to me is AutoCorrect. I do business overseas so I set "qqq" for "Australia" and "qqqw" for "Australian". Using the same letters over the years has made life a lot easier.
Even though I've used Word a lot I am moving to Pages a lot. TypeIt4Me has taken care of AutoCorrect and I only go to Word for specific needs, such as tables.
AutoCorrect is good, but other than that, I hate auto-anything. As another poster mentioned, Word thinks it knows what you want, but it rarely does. I've even turned off spelling and grammar check in the prefs, only to have it turn on by itself the next time I launch Word. VERY annoying. I still find lots of Word's "features" don't work as one would expect, or are overly cumbersome to use. I only use Word in Windows now, and only when I have no choice (with regards to both word processor and OS).
Pages, Nisus, Mellel, NeoOfficeJ...lots of alternatives for Mac users.
My problem is Word wants to create it's own document in it's own format. It wants to double space lines when I have single space selected. It wants to capitalize every first word of a sentence no matter what. Why can't I just type it the way I want and then let me choose the tools to format it? That's why I don't like Microsoft Word. It seems to be to powerful and doesn't let the user control it. Instead it controls you.
Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:26 pm Subject: Word is OK for one-offs
Word works OK as long as your formatting needs are fairly basic (like... um, writing columns), and I can see where a reporter/columnist would like the audio recording features. You start a document, bang it out on location, revise it at home, and send it in. You're done. No problem for Word, usually.
But for long documents with fairly complex formatting, or documents that have to be updated and maintained over a period of years, Word simply bites. It was OK up to Word 7/95, which was basically a W32 port of Word 6, but then the bloat took over and things like numbering broke in Word 97 and (to my knowledge) have never been fixed. It's a shame, because I too like Word's configuration flexibility (you can add and delete menu items as well). But for the writing I do, it's simply too flaky to use.
Yes, Autocorrect. I forget about it, but it's actually the ONLY reason I haven't switched to Nisus. I love autocorrect. I like the simple interface of Nisus, though I'm quite comfortable customizing Office's menus.
My biggest 'gripe' is the speed issue as mentioned above. I have a G5, and just launching word will take 35 bounces of the icon before the project gallery appears... This is after taking someone's suggestion of throwing away the prefs and the normal.dot template..
It's free and available for almost any platform. I'm still using the 2.2 version because text rendering seems clearer. It's not perfect, but I like it.
http://www.abisource.com
Tue Oct 25, 2005 12:43 pm Subject: eastern languages
One big problem with Word is that it does not integrate with the system well. In my specific case I need to work with large documents containing a lot of languages like Japanese and Korean and so on... This a bit of a problem since I need to have a japanese version of Word cause the western version does not handle Unicode fonts well.
I'm not even starting about eastern formatting... 
Since OsX is totally multilingual and very good with Unicode it'd be nice for word to be able to use these basis.
Look at Mellel for example... very good WP with multilingual capacity and formatting abilities.
Cheers
I've been using Word since 1.0 on the Mac. I never used Word Perfect in the DOS days and im an MCSE with a powerbook. I consider myself unbiased on the subject but I have to say with 15 years of desktop publishing experience that:
MS WORD IS THE MOST PAINFUL PIECE OF CRAP.
It is bloated, difficult to decipher what 'feature' a user has used to create a file, doesn't import into other programs reliably, does not handle graphics well, is appaling with features like two columns, and too many other things to mention. How could anyone like this program? He must **LOVE** powerpoint. (An entire different rant of headaches.)
MS Office is the McDonalds of Aps. You know what your getting--but does that make the experience any more enjoyable?
I have trouble believing this is the same company that created Windows. XP is pretty amazing considering the X86 history of the product.
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