The first weekend in January, I went to the annual meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America (in Chicago!! --who goes to Chicago in
January?), where PowerPoint presentations are de rigueur (and most of
the speakers _also_ hand out printed handouts duplicating all the
slides -- I thought the point of a slideshow was to save paper), and
at least half of the ones I saw used exactly the same out-of-the-box
graphics setup that added nothing to the content of their talks and
took up screen space that could have been used for making their
diagrams a little bigger.
_That's_ what I object to most. When I learned to use PowerPoint and
did my first such presentation in November, there was nothing at all
on the screen that I didn't specifically put there -- and I couldn't
even format all of that as I wanted, since PP insists on bullets, or
if not bullets, then hanging indents.
(Incidentally, the PP newsgroup was just as helpful as this one,
though PP problems are a lot more limited than Word problems, so I
don't look there any more.)
On Jan 19, 12:09*pm, Phil wrote:
Bob Buckland said:
"As far as documents looking alike (consistency of presentation?) with
most things, some folks see the Office 2007 changes and expansion of
AutoText into Buiding Block galleries, as a means for making reusable
content more easily identifiable and accessible, others see it as a
change they didn't ask for"
Can I get straight here - I think what I called Autotext in 2003 is
missing completely, that's my complaint. *In 2003, I could set 'esta'
as autotext for 'establishment', so after i typed 'esta' I would get a
bubble asking if i wanted 'establishment' substituted, press enter and
the substitution occurred. *That facility is absent from 2007. You may
say the enter has been replaced by F3, but you have to know and
remember that you've saved an autotext. The whole beauty of the 2003
feature was that you didnt have to remember because of the bubble that
appeared.
As for the facility to insert boiler-plate text, that's useless for
simple word expansions such as this. *All this boiler plate text seems
suited to corporate life, in fact the whole 2007 release seems aimed
at corporate workers, and not at the individual with his own PC. *No
wonder Msoft made this special offer (in UK anyway) that anyone with
an academic email address could buy the whole lot for about 1/4 of the
normal price. But then they find there's nothing in it for them, and
before people point to the new reference/citation facility, I've had a
look and it seems very clunky without Endnote, and that costs as much
again, and works just as well with 2003.
The only good news is that I've managed to get WORD,EXCEL,ACCESS
loaded as both 2007 and 2003. *Aside for that I blow 2007 a big
raspberry.
Phil
On 19 Jan, 15:14, "Bob * Buckland ?:-\)" 75214.226(At Beautiful
Downtown)compuserve.com wrote:
Hi Grammatim,
As far as documents looking alike (consistency of presentation?) with most things, some folks see the Office 2007 changes and
expansion of AutoText into Buiding Block galleries, as a means for making reusable content more easily identifiable and accessible,
others see it as a change they didn't ask for, I suppose 
but as with other Word features they can be avoided and the galleries
can be depopulated of their examples. Each version of Word has included samples that can be used and modified (fortunately Microsoft
has left the 'Blue Skies and 'Adventure' themed ones from earlier versions behind for this decade g).
The ability to setup custom packets of styles, headers and footers with logos and specific formatting can be helpful in company
environments where standardization to a corporate 'look' is wanted, as well as 'boilerplate'/approved wording of certain letters and
forms to allow, if nothing else, replicate using preprinted letterhead/form letters in the printer from inside of Word g.
For folks in schools, or in the scientific community, who need to meet specific formatting and layout needs, the galleries can also
come in handy, letting folks focus more on content than on how to match a layout.
The access to templates in Office Button=Open is one I've seen as appreciated by the casual user of Word from home for
letter/email/calendar flyer, etc creation. *For those folks, the allure of an improved 'compare documents' feature could be on their
'why bother changing that' list g. It's not an easy task to 'please millions' of folks with differing opinions of what they'd want
to see change'. *
FWIW, Bill Gates is in his retiring this summer. *Perhaps one day folks will be saying 'Bill Gates wouldn't have done that when he
was in charge' as the next versions of Office come out, or 'I wonder what Bill would think of this' g.
=================
* "grammatim" wrote in ...
Nothing listed by Aeneas strikes me as desirable -- especially what
they seem to be promoting especially heavily: the imposition of pre-
provided designs instead of the creativity of individual designers
(or, call it advertising departments). Evidently Mr. Gates wants all
documents ever produced henceforth to look alike.
The one useful feature of Word2007 that's been mentioned here is the
clearer method of comparing versions of documents.
--
Bob *Buckland *?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
* *Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*- Hide quoted text -
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