[brainout]

dnharris14, on 22 March 2013 - 10:39 AM, said:

What's wrong with Word 2003? I can write macros and actually make a custom icon so I know what the macro is. It has auto correct and a dictionary. The menus take up less real estate than the ribbon. Functions and features can be found, and if you need to search for something, logic usually rules. 2007 was junk. 2010 was a little better. I had my hopes on upgrading to 2013, but after reading this, I will stay a Neanderthal. 2003 forever.

Or 2002. There are bugs in 2003 which 2002 doesn't have. That being said, most of the legal and financial world are still on Word97-2003, so you're in good company. We need to use what works, and 2007 et seq. don't work well. There was much MS could have done to improve 2002 - 2003, but instead of really doing that, they changed the interface, added in a few features which we already had through third-party add-ons. When I first used 2007, it wrecked my printer which worked fine with 2003. 2007 had a number of other problems, so I reverted to using my own computer, rather than the one my partner gave me.

There are a number of thoughtless folk who think that anything 'new' must be improved. That's not been true since about 2003, in software. It's not only MS who has made stupid mistakes with their 'upgrades'. I no longer will buy Corel, Adobe, IBM, Symantec and other vendor software in their later editions, because there are significant bugs and removed features; the older versions are better. I just bought several Adobe Acrobat SIX to make up for what Adobe Acrobat X cannot do, and stay on WordPerfect 9 (you can also get WordPerfect for Linux, btw).

So too, with Google stuff. In the last 12 months, Google programming in Youtube, Blogger, gmail has become really annoying. Something's fundamentally wrong with software programming, now. People are making changes that are worse, not better. The whole 'clean' thing seems to be behind it, and the result is not clean, but STERILE. As in, you can't do well what you could do before, because what worked before, has been removed, or replaced by something 10x dumber.

[Maddy]

I have just opened a document created in Word 2003 (probably) where all my text is spaced to fit on a page, but only just, so that each page starts and ends the same way. It has an assortment of formatting within: a header, headings, normally-spaced paragraphs, a bullet pointed list with 6 points after each bullet, and tabs, among other things.

Now, having opened it in Word 2013 to delete a single line from a single page and print the version I need for this year, I find that all my normally-spaced paragraphs look like they have 1.5 line spacing, the bullet points are much further apart, and the text now spews over onto two pages when it isn't supposed to. WHY!?!??!?!
Looks like I'm going to have to fart around with "Exactly x point" line spacing then go through this 13 page document with a format painting brush to fix it all and get it back aligned where it's supposed to be. Grrrrr. What a waste of my time.

[mdrmusic]

Hmm.. I've been using 2013 Pro since yesterday and I have to say I LIKE IT A LOT

[mdrmusic]

I've been using office pro 2013 for a few days. I mostly like it. I don't use Autocorrect or Dictionary but my partner NEEDS them so he DEFINITELY won't be upgrading to 2013. The thing that annoys me about 2013 are the useless 'colour' schemes. In my reality, plain white, light grey and a slightly darker shade of light grey are NOT colour schemes, they are just variations of black and white. And the banner 'themes' seem whimsical, useless, uninspired and tacky. I want a variation of colour themes. Besides those few things, i like that the programs open within 2 seconds and all functions are faster than office 2010, but that's only on my pc.

[Gibbous]

Like a fool, I installed Explorer 10 & Windows 8 which caused multiple problems with my computer. The programs resulted in nothing but headaches. The only way I could completely get rid of them was to go back to "factory" recovery. Now my computer works fine.

Do not invest in Office 2013, it's a cheap version of other Office Versions. The visual is crap, hard on the eyes, less sophisticated. Unfortunately, Microsoft has discontinued 2010 and I had to install Office 2013. I do not recommend any of the new MSN products because of the many "bugs". I hope to find Office 2010 in a dusty shelve somewhere so I can uninstall Office 2013 for Office 2010.

I also understand that Microsoft is going to monthly and/or annual renewal payments for their software. No further, "life of computer" programs.

[JimH443]

Gibbous, on Today, 05:57 AM, said:

I also understand that Microsoft is going to monthly and/or annual renewal payments for their software. No further, "life of computer" programs.

From what I remember, there are two versions. The one they're pushing is the subscriber version, of course. I seem to recall that there is a "pay once" version, but it has some severe limitations. The one I find most egregious is the fact that it can be installed on only one computer - EVER! If the computer you install it on goes belly up, so does your MS Office.

Then there's the question of, "How does MS define that one computer?" If you make any modifications / upgrades (such as adding RAM), does MS consider it to be a different computer?