[Phil[_5_]]

I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Greg Maxey]

I would imagine that about 4 years before Microsoft stops support Word2007
they will stop supporting Word2003. That might be regretable ;-)

If you are an expert user then you will soon see that advantage gained with
Content Controls will offset the loss of AutoText autocomplete tip.
AutoText is still there but sadly the autocomplete tip feature is missing.

If you are into XML (which I fall in and nearly drown from time to time) you
will find it in enhanced significantly.

Me and a lot of other users have had similiar feelings as you are having
now.

Fellow MVP Graham Mayor has some good tips on his website if you want to try
to make Word2007 look something like Word2003.
http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

I decided to just knuckle down and accept the changes. I sitll have Word2003
on my PC, but find myself using it less and less as I grow accustomed to the
new interface in Word2007.

Good Luck.

--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.


Phil wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Aeneas]

You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the following:

LIVE PREVIEWS AND GALLERIES
*The potential results of many formatting changes can now be viewed in the
active document in a Live Preview without actually changing the document by
hovering the pointer over a thumbnail in many of Word 2007s galleries
*Numerous galleries that include predefined sets of formatting and layout
that can be applied with a single click are available

DOCUMENT €“ PACKAGE OF ZIPPED XML FILES
*The file format is no longer binary but rather a zipped package consisting
of multiple XML files in text format and folders for each document
*Helps make your documents safer by separating files that contain scripts or
macros, making it easier to identify and block unwanted code or macros
*Helps make your document file sizes far smaller by using ZIP and other
compression technologies to reduce file size by as much as 75 percent
compared to the binary formats that are used in earlier versions of Word
*Helps make your documents less susceptible to damage and more readily
recoverable
*The XML format supports other new features, such as document themes, Quick
Style sets, SmartArt, building blocks and content controls
*Allows you to incorporate data from various sources more easily

SAVE AS PDF FORMAT
You can save files in PDF format (or XPS format) by installing a free add-in
program provided by Microsoft

BUILDING BLOCKS
Building Blocks are available that provide you with built-in
professionally-designed, pre-formatted cover pages, headers, footers, text
boxes, boilerplate text, etc. (building blocks) with a single click; custom
building blocks can also be created

DOCUMENT THEMES
*Document themes allow you to Live Preview and then change the design
(fonts, colors, graphics effects) throughout the entire document with several
clicks in conjunction with the active Quick Style set
Applying a different document theme applies the same colors, fonts and
effects to your documents for a consistent, aesthetically-appealing look
*A single document theme generates a variety of Quick Styles for each type
of graphics (picture, shape, SmartArt, chart, text box or WordArt) and for
CONTAINERS for text other than sections and the document
*The actual number of Quick Styles for each type of graphics is 30 or more
and for text other than lists, sections and the document is 25 in total in
each Quick Style set
*The 30+ Quick Styles for each type of graphics update their colors, fonts
(if applicable) and effects whenever a different document theme is applied,
effectively creating a brand new set of 30+ styles
*The 25 text Quick Styles in each set update their colors and fonts whenever
a different document theme is applied
* When changing color settings such as the font color, border color (text,
table, picture), outline color (shape, SmartArt, text box), fill color
(shape, SmartArt, text box) and shading color (text, table, picture), making
the selection from the €œtheme colors€� in the color picker harmonize
automatically with the active document theme

PROPAGATING FONT PAIRS
*A new font pair concept (+Body and +Headings) is incorporated in document
themes that changes the font of nearly all body text and all headings with
just 2 clicks
*The default font pair for the default document theme, €œOffice,€� is Calibri
(+Body) and Cambria (+Headings)

(DEFAULT) AND NORMAL STYLE
*It is now possible to change default font formatting and paragraph
formatting settings (Set Defaults tab of the Manage Styles dialog box) that
ripple from the Normal style into nearly all other paragraph styles and
linked styles
*Moreover, default paragraph formatting settings can also be set from both
tabs of the Paragraph dialog box (new in Word 2007)
*The Normal style €“ the paragraph style that word automatically applies to
all text you enter and the style upon which nearly all paragraph styles and
linked styles are based €“ helps make text far more readable; with the default
€œOffice€� document theme and the default €œWord 2007€� Quick Style set

NEW TYPEFACES
*Typographic capabilities that include new typefaces provide you with a
clean, fresh look to your documents and make them far easier to read,
especially electronically
*Word 2007 also includes improved ClearType support for better on-screen
rendering

GRAPHICS QUICK STYLES
*Graphics Quick Styles can be applied to pictures, clip art, shapes,
SmartArt, charts, text boxes and WordArt
*They automatically harmonize with document themes to create
aesthetically-appealing results; see also Table styles and Table Quick Styles

QUICK STYLE SETS FOR TEXT
Quick Style sets allow you to Live Preview and then change all the heading
styles, body styles, etc. with just a few clicks; there are 11 sets of 25
named styles each that are attractively designed to harmonize with other
members of the set and with the active document theme

SMARTART
SmartArt presents a visual representation of information that you can
quickly and easily create, choosing from among several different TYPES such
as List, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy and Relationship, each of which has
numerous different LAYOUTS and coordinates automatically with the active
document theme

ENHANCED CHARTING
Powerful charting capabilities allow you to prepare professional-looking
charts using the enhanced charting features in Excel 2007, which are also
available in PowerPoint; they coordinate automatically with the active
document theme

CONTENT CONTROLS
*Content controls allow you to add text and graphics to a document or a
template in predesigned pieces such as rich text, plain text, combo lists,
drop-down lists, pictures, date pickers and building blocks
*This feature is especially useful for creating templates and can be used to
update documents automatically with information from other sources

CONTEXTUAL SPELL CHECKING
Contextual spell checking verifies that you are using the word in the right
context

DOCUMENT INSPECTOR (REMOVE METADATA)
The Document Inspector lets you easily remove before distributing a document
private metadata and hidden data that you dont want others to access

TRI-PANE REVIEW PANEL
*The tri-pane review panel allows you to find out the changes made to a
document easily
*You see both versions of a document with deleted, inserted, and moved text
clearly marked


"Phil" wrote:

I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Phil[_5_]]

On 18 Jan, 21:37, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
I would imagine that about 4 years before Microsoft stops support Word2007
they will stop supporting Word2003. That might be regretable ;-)

If you are an expert user then you will soon see that advantage gained with
Content Controls will offset the loss of AutoText autocomplete tip.
AutoText is still there but sadly the autocomplete tip feature is missing.

If you are into XML (which I fall in and nearly drown from time to time) you
will find it in enhanced significantly.

Me and a lot of other users have had similiar feelings as you are having
now.

Fellow MVP Graham Mayor has some good tips on his website if you want to try
to make Word2007 look something like Word2003.http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

I decided to just knuckle down and accept the changes. I sitll have Word2003
on my PC, but find myself using it less and less as I grow accustomed to the
new interface in Word2007.

Good Luck.

--
Thanks for the advice Greg. How do you manage to run both 2003 and
2007, i thought 2007 automatically overwrote 2003.

I don't want to project my being a super geek on WORD but i do have
most of the menus at my finger tips as alt-keystrokes and know where
to find everything from contents lists to styles to Tables, etc. I
had expected to find 101 new features but I really can't see anything
useful new and I've used it all for a week. It all seems aimed at
inter-working within the big organisations. The flexibility re change
tracking is much less than it used to be.

Phil



Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[grammatim[_2_]]

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.

On Jan 18, 5:10*pm, Aeneas wrote:
You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! *I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. *And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Greg Maxey]

Phil,

Both versions of Word can co-exists quite happily on a single PC. See the
webpage link by Graham Mayor to fix the single issue of file type
registration.


--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.


Phil wrote:
On 18 Jan, 21:37, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
I would imagine that about 4 years before Microsoft stops support
Word2007
they will stop supporting Word2003. That might be regretable ;-)

If you are an expert user then you will soon see that advantage
gained with
Content Controls will offset the loss of AutoText autocomplete tip.
AutoText is still there but sadly the autocomplete tip feature is
missing.

If you are into XML (which I fall in and nearly drown from time to
time) you
will find it in enhanced significantly.

Me and a lot of other users have had similiar feelings as you are
having
now.

Fellow MVP Graham Mayor has some good tips on his website if you
want to try
to make Word2007 look something like
Word2003.http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

I decided to just knuckle down and accept the changes. I sitll have
Word2003
on my PC, but find myself using it less and less as I grow
accustomed to the
new interface in Word2007.

Good Luck.

--
Thanks for the advice Greg. How do you manage to run both 2003 and
2007, i thought 2007 automatically overwrote 2003.

I don't want to project my being a super geek on WORD but i do have
most of the menus at my finger tips as alt-keystrokes and know where
to find everything from contents lists to styles to Tables, etc. I
had expected to find 101 new features but I really can't see anything
useful new and I've used it all for a week. It all seems aimed at
inter-working within the big organisations. The flexibility re change
tracking is much less than it used to be.

Phil



Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it!
I see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now
totally lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used.
And some are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

That last feature is one I just read about today, and it sounds quite
helpful.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Aeneas" wrote in message
news
You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the following:

LIVE PREVIEWS AND GALLERIES
*The potential results of many formatting changes can now be viewed in the
active document in a Live Preview without actually changing the document
by
hovering the pointer over a thumbnail in many of Word 2007's galleries
*Numerous galleries that include predefined sets of formatting and layout
that can be applied with a single click are available

DOCUMENT - PACKAGE OF ZIPPED XML FILES
*The file format is no longer binary but rather a zipped package
consisting
of multiple XML files in text format and folders for each document
*Helps make your documents safer by separating files that contain scripts
or
macros, making it easier to identify and block unwanted code or macros
*Helps make your document file sizes far smaller by using ZIP and other
compression technologies to reduce file size by as much as 75 percent
compared to the binary formats that are used in earlier versions of Word
*Helps make your documents less susceptible to damage and more readily
recoverable
*The XML format supports other new features, such as document themes,
Quick
Style sets, SmartArt, building blocks and content controls
*Allows you to incorporate data from various sources more easily

SAVE AS PDF FORMAT
You can save files in PDF format (or XPS format) by installing a free
add-in
program provided by Microsoft

BUILDING BLOCKS
Building Blocks are available that provide you with built-in
professionally-designed, pre-formatted cover pages, headers, footers, text
boxes, boilerplate text, etc. (building blocks) with a single click;
custom
building blocks can also be created

DOCUMENT THEMES
*Document themes allow you to Live Preview and then change the design
(fonts, colors, graphics effects) throughout the entire document with
several
clicks in conjunction with the active Quick Style set
Applying a different document theme applies the same colors, fonts and
effects to your documents for a consistent, aesthetically-appealing look
*A single document theme generates a variety of Quick Styles for each type
of graphics (picture, shape, SmartArt, chart, text box or WordArt) and for
CONTAINERS for text other than sections and the document
*The actual number of Quick Styles for each type of graphics is 30 or more
and for text other than lists, sections and the document is 25 in total
in
each Quick Style set
*The 30+ Quick Styles for each type of graphics update their colors, fonts
(if applicable) and effects whenever a different document theme is
applied,
effectively creating a brand new set of 30+ styles
*The 25 text Quick Styles in each set update their colors and fonts
whenever
a different document theme is applied
* When changing color settings such as the font color, border color (text,
table, picture), outline color (shape, SmartArt, text box), fill color
(shape, SmartArt, text box) and shading color (text, table, picture),
making
the selection from the "theme colors" in the color picker harmonize
automatically with the active document theme

PROPAGATING FONT PAIRS
*A new font pair concept (+Body and +Headings) is incorporated in document
themes that changes the font of nearly all body text and all headings with
just 2 clicks
*The default font pair for the default document theme, "Office," is
Calibri
(+Body) and Cambria (+Headings)

(DEFAULT) AND NORMAL STYLE
*It is now possible to change default font formatting and paragraph
formatting settings (Set Defaults tab of the Manage Styles dialog box)
that
ripple from the Normal style into nearly all other paragraph styles and
linked styles
*Moreover, default paragraph formatting settings can also be set from both
tabs of the Paragraph dialog box (new in Word 2007)
*The Normal style - the paragraph style that word automatically applies to
all text you enter and the style upon which nearly all paragraph styles
and
linked styles are based - helps make text far more readable; with the
default
"Office" document theme and the default "Word 2007" Quick Style set

NEW TYPEFACES
*Typographic capabilities that include new typefaces provide you with a
clean, fresh look to your documents and make them far easier to read,
especially electronically
*Word 2007 also includes improved ClearType support for better on-screen
rendering

GRAPHICS QUICK STYLES
*Graphics Quick Styles can be applied to pictures, clip art, shapes,
SmartArt, charts, text boxes and WordArt
*They automatically harmonize with document themes to create
aesthetically-appealing results; see also Table styles and Table Quick
Styles

QUICK STYLE SETS FOR TEXT
Quick Style sets allow you to Live Preview and then change all the heading
styles, body styles, etc. with just a few clicks; there are 11 sets of 25
named styles each that are attractively designed to harmonize with other
members of the set and with the active document theme

SMARTART
SmartArt presents a visual representation of information that you can
quickly and easily create, choosing from among several different TYPES
such
as List, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy and Relationship, each of which has
numerous different LAYOUTS and coordinates automatically with the active
document theme

ENHANCED CHARTING
Powerful charting capabilities allow you to prepare professional-looking
charts using the enhanced charting features in Excel 2007, which are also
available in PowerPoint; they coordinate automatically with the active
document theme

CONTENT CONTROLS
*Content controls allow you to add text and graphics to a document or a
template in predesigned pieces such as rich text, plain text, combo lists,
drop-down lists, pictures, date pickers and building blocks
*This feature is especially useful for creating templates and can be used
to
update documents automatically with information from other sources

CONTEXTUAL SPELL CHECKING
Contextual spell checking verifies that you are using the word in the
right
context

DOCUMENT INSPECTOR (REMOVE METADATA)
The Document Inspector lets you easily remove before distributing a
document
private metadata and hidden data that you don't want others to access

TRI-PANE REVIEW PANEL
*The tri-pane review panel allows you to find out the changes made to a
document easily
*You see both versions of a document with deleted, inserted, and moved
text
clearly marked


"Phil" wrote:

I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

That's one I just discovered today, and it does sound very desirable.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message
...
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.

On Jan 18, 5:10 pm, Aeneas wrote:
You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Phil[_5_]]

Hi Greg

That's a point, I hadnt thought of that. Could you spell out what that
link was?

Phil


On 19 Jan, 00:00, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
Phil,

Both versions of Word can co-exists quite happily on a single PC. See the
webpage link by Graham Mayor to fix the single issue of file type
registration.

--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
On 18 Jan, 21:37, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
I would imagine that about 4 years before Microsoft stops support
Word2007
they will stop supporting Word2003. That might be regretable ;-)

If you are an expert user then you will soon see that advantage
gained with
Content Controls will offset the loss of AutoText autocomplete tip.
AutoText is still there but sadly the autocomplete tip feature is
missing.

If you are into XML (which I fall in and nearly drown from time to
time) you
will find it in enhanced significantly.

Me and a lot of other users have had similiar feelings as you are
having
now.

Fellow MVP Graham Mayor has some good tips on his website if you
want to try
to make Word2007 look something like
Word2003.http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

I decided to just knuckle down and accept the changes. I sitll have
Word2003
on my PC, but find myself using it less and less as I grow
accustomed to the
new interface in Word2007.

Good Luck.

--
Thanks for the advice Greg. How do you manage to run both 2003 and
2007, i thought 2007 automatically overwrote 2003.

I don't want to project my being a super geek on WORD but i do have
most of the menus at my finger tips as alt-keystrokes and know where
to find everything from contents lists to styles to Tables, etc. I
had expected to find 101 new features but I really can't see anything
useful new and I've used it all for a week. It all seems aimed at
inter-working within the big organisations. The flexibility re change
tracking is much less than it used to be.

Phil

Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it!
I see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now
totally lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used.
And some are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Graham Mayor]

http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Phil wrote:
Hi Greg

That's a point, I hadnt thought of that. Could you spell out what that
link was?

Phil


On 19 Jan, 00:00, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
Phil,

Both versions of Word can co-exists quite happily on a single PC.
See the webpage link by Graham Mayor to fix the single issue of file
type registration.

--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
On 18 Jan, 21:37, "Greg Maxey" wrote:
I would imagine that about 4 years before Microsoft stops support
Word2007
they will stop supporting Word2003. That might be regretable ;-)

If you are an expert user then you will soon see that advantage
gained with
Content Controls will offset the loss of AutoText autocomplete tip.
AutoText is still there but sadly the autocomplete tip feature is
missing.

If you are into XML (which I fall in and nearly drown from time to
time) you
will find it in enhanced significantly.

Me and a lot of other users have had similiar feelings as you are
having
now.

Fellow MVP Graham Mayor has some good tips on his website if you
want to try
to make Word2007 look something like
Word2003.http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm

I decided to just knuckle down and accept the changes. I sitll have
Word2003
on my PC, but find myself using it less and less as I grow
accustomed to the
new interface in Word2007.

Good Luck.

--
Thanks for the advice Greg. How do you manage to run both 2003 and
2007, i thought 2007 automatically overwrote 2003.

I don't want to project my being a super geek on WORD but i do have
most of the menus at my finger tips as alt-keystrokes and know where
to find everything from contents lists to styles to Tables, etc. I
had expected to find 101 new features but I really can't see
anything useful new and I've used it all for a week. It all seems
aimed at inter-working within the big organisations. The
flexibility re change tracking is much less than it used to be.

Phil

Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

Phil wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did
it! I see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am
now totally lost and can't find any of the features i regularly
used. And some are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling
it and reverting to 2003?

Phil

[Phil[_5_]]

My reaction was exactly the same as that of grammatim - if that's all
that's on offer i wish i'd stayed with 2003. I'm in the process of
reloading 2003 but of course it will take ages as I'll have to
reinstall all the service packs and updates. What a pity microsoft
couldnt have pointed out that one can keep both versions.

By the way, it might be useful to know of people posting here whether
they work for microsoft. Barnhill makes that clear, but Aeneas?

To be frank I feel badly treated by microsoft over this. I've been
with OFFICE - WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS, OUTLOOK for over 10 years and have
naturally therefore got used to a given user interface. The right
thing to have done would have been to offer a full compatibility mode
and then people could migrate as and when they feel like they want to.
Nobody minds minor UI changes but this is total. I think I'll keep
outlook2007 and revert to 2003 for the rest.

And they still didn't fix what, for me, was the biggest problem - the
size of the single monolithic PST file. If, like me, you use an
incremental archive system, its just terrible, finding that this
massive file has to be archived every single time, when it should be
organised into much smaller files - say one per folder.

Phil




On 18 Jan, 22:37, grammatim wrote:
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.

On Jan 18, 5:10 pm, Aeneas wrote:

You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it! I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Greg Maxey]

Phil,

I don't work for Microsoft either. In fact right now I don't work at all
and serioulsy considering a Work for Food Program ;-)

--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.


Phil wrote:
My reaction was exactly the same as that of grammatim - if that's all
that's on offer i wish i'd stayed with 2003. I'm in the process of
reloading 2003 but of course it will take ages as I'll have to
reinstall all the service packs and updates. What a pity microsoft
couldnt have pointed out that one can keep both versions.

By the way, it might be useful to know of people posting here whether
they work for microsoft. Barnhill makes that clear, but Aeneas?

To be frank I feel badly treated by microsoft over this. I've been
with OFFICE - WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS, OUTLOOK for over 10 years and have
naturally therefore got used to a given user interface. The right
thing to have done would have been to offer a full compatibility mode
and then people could migrate as and when they feel like they want to.
Nobody minds minor UI changes but this is total. I think I'll keep
outlook2007 and revert to 2003 for the rest.

And they still didn't fix what, for me, was the biggest problem - the
size of the single monolithic PST file. If, like me, you use an
incremental archive system, its just terrible, finding that this
massive file has to be archived every single time, when it should be
organised into much smaller files - say one per folder.

Phil




On 18 Jan, 22:37, grammatim wrote:
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.

On Jan 18, 5:10 pm, Aeneas wrote:

You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the
following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did
it! I see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am
now totally lost and can't find any of the features i regularly
used. And some are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

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 message ...
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*

[Aeneas]

Phil:

To satisfy your curiosity (or perhaps cynicism) I do not work for Microsoft
or any related company. Nor do I work for a "large" company. I have been
semi-retired for years and consult for several companies (fewer than 10
employees each) that place a premium on professional-looking and
aesthetically-appealing PowerPoint presentations, Excel workbooks and, in
particular, Word documents. Many of the features I noted above contribute
significantly to producing these products. We have received numerous comments
from our clients' customers on the impressive quality of these products since
switching to Office 2007. Comments have included compliments on the superior
readability, the eye-popping graphics (SmartArt) and the presentation-quality
charts. In all cases, the documents have been created and saved in 2007
formats and a second version has been saved in 2003 or earlier formats.

Although I think Office 2007 is the most significant advancement in software
since Lotus 1-2-3 was introduced, it may not be the right product depending
on a person's needs or his/her ability to embrace change.

Some, who take the time to read about what Office 2007 offers, will decide
it doesn't suit their needs and decide not to buy it; many others will be
impressed and buy it. Typically, those in the latter group will take the time
to learn the new user interface and how to take advantage of other new
features (both of which can be very frustrating) and, in most cases, be
rewarded for their efforts.

Others will have Office 2007 forced upon them by a decision of company
management. Some will refuse to spend the time to learn the new interface and
take advantage of the new features; instead they will incessantly complain,
often blaming the "evil empire (Microsoft)" or their stupid bosses. Most who
choose to endure the frustration of learning the new software will be richly
rewarded for their efforts.

Good luck with your future purchasing decisions.



"Greg Maxey" wrote

Phil,

I don't work for Microsoft either. In fact right now I don't work at all
and serioulsy considering a Work for Food Program ;-)

--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.


Phil wrote:
My reaction was exactly the same as that of grammatim - if that's all
that's on offer i wish i'd stayed with 2003. I'm in the process of
reloading 2003 but of course it will take ages as I'll have to
reinstall all the service packs and updates. What a pity microsoft
couldnt have pointed out that one can keep both versions.

By the way, it might be useful to know of people posting here whether
they work for microsoft. Barnhill makes that clear, but Aeneas?

To be frank I feel badly treated by microsoft over this. I've been
with OFFICE - WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS, OUTLOOK for over 10 years and have
naturally therefore got used to a given user interface. The right
thing to have done would have been to offer a full compatibility mode
and then people could migrate as and when they feel like they want to.
Nobody minds minor UI changes but this is total. I think I'll keep
outlook2007 and revert to 2003 for the rest.

And they still didn't fix what, for me, was the biggest problem - the
size of the single monolithic PST file. If, like me, you use an
incremental archive system, its just terrible, finding that this
massive file has to be archived every single time, when it should be
organised into much smaller files - say one per folder.

Phil




On 18 Jan, 22:37, grammatim wrote:
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.

On Jan 18, 5:10 pm, Aeneas wrote:

You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the
following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did
it! I see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am
now totally lost and can't find any of the features i regularly
used. And some are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Phil[_5_]]

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*

[grammatim[_2_]]

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 -

- Show quoted text -

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Just a correction. I do not work for Microsoft. Only very rarely will anyone
who *does* work for Microsoft post here (it's intended to be a peer-support
forum); when they do, they usually include "[MSFT]" in their screen names.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message
...
My reaction was exactly the same as that of grammatim - if that's all
that's on offer i wish i'd stayed with 2003. I'm in the process of
reloading 2003 but of course it will take ages as I'll have to
reinstall all the service packs and updates. What a pity microsoft
couldnt have pointed out that one can keep both versions.

By the way, it might be useful to know of people posting here whether
they work for microsoft. Barnhill makes that clear, but Aeneas?

To be frank I feel badly treated by microsoft over this. I've been
with OFFICE - WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS, OUTLOOK for over 10 years and have
naturally therefore got used to a given user interface. The right
thing to have done would have been to offer a full compatibility mode
and then people could migrate as and when they feel like they want to.
Nobody minds minor UI changes but this is total. I think I'll keep
outlook2007 and revert to 2003 for the rest.

And they still didn't fix what, for me, was the biggest problem - the
size of the single monolithic PST file. If, like me, you use an
incremental archive system, its just terrible, finding that this
massive file has to be archived every single time, when it should be
organised into much smaller files - say one per folder.

Phil




On 18 Jan, 22:37, grammatim wrote:
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.

On Jan 18, 5:10 pm, Aeneas wrote:

You might regret uninstalling Word 2007 if you value any of the
following:

[see previous message for the list]

"Phil" wrote:
I've just upgraded to 2007 from 2003 and am wondering why I did it!
I
see no extra functionality and, as a WORD expert user, am now totally
lost and can't find any of the features i regularly used. And some
are missing - e.g. AutoText.

Does anyone know any good reason why I might regret uninstalling it
and reverting to 2003?

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

While not disagreeing with your statement in principle, I'll point out that
in the specific instance you cite (esta establishment), and AutoCorrect
entry would be more suitable than AutoText, anyway. You might want to
consider how you could use AutoCorrect for at least some of your AutoText
entries.

As for the popup, if you didn't remember that the letters you are typing
were an AutoText entry name, why would you be typing them? If you weren't
typing them in order to insert the AutoText entry, then the ScreenTip would
just be a distraction (I had to remove my business name from the AutoText
entry list--where it was put by Word, not me--because it popped up every
time I typed "word").

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message
...
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*

[grammatim[_2_]]

That's actually kinda funny ...

I've just read through the year-old thread "how do i enable the old
menu bar" where many of the shortcomings of Office2007 have been
discussed, especially right after its release, and it does little to
enhance confidence in the new version.

But: I'm looking longingly at the recently introduced tiny notebook
computer (with 7" screen , 512 Mb RAM and 4 Gb storage, weighing 2
lbs., and a $350 price tag -- I don't want to get too specific lest
everyone suddenly rush off and sign up on the waiting list for the
$500 model that will have double those memory amounts in the same-size
unit) that runs on Linux and comes with 40 apps including OpenOffice
(plus, it says it can run XP Pro if you already own the disk). I
downloaded the 500-page OpenOffice manual, and it _looks_ like it can
do just about everything I'm used to (probably not Track Changes, but
that's not the sort of thing one would do on the road anyway). (I've
never had a reason to use a spreadsheet, so Excel is irrelevant.)

Am I missing something? Does OpenOffice have drawbacks I won't
discover until I try to start doing something a little sophisticated?

(I guess for me specifically, I need to know if it supports Unicode,
right-to-left, and character scripts.)

Thanks all!

On Jan 19, 4:22*pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
While not disagreeing with your statement in principle, I'll point out that
in the specific instance you cite (esta establishment), and AutoCorrect
entry would be more suitable than AutoText, anyway. You might want to
consider how you could use AutoCorrect for at least some of your AutoText
entries.

As for the popup, if you didn't remember that the letters you are typing
were an AutoText entry name, why would you be typing them? If you weren't
typing them in order to insert the AutoText entry, then the ScreenTip would
just be a distraction (I had to remove my business name from the AutoText
entry list--where it was put by Word, not me--because it popped up every
time I typed "word").

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message

...



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.

[Phil[_5_]]

Suzanne

No, I just gave that as a hypothetical example. I don't want the
automatic and always substitution of Autocorrect. I'm just trying to
save time on long words that are easily misspelt but have numerous
different endings:
Aristotle, Aristotelian
philosopher, philosophical, philosophically, philanthropic

Etc.

Autocorrect will just substitute willy nilly even in cases where I
don't want the substitution to occur. Autotext did precisely what one
wanted - after you typed 'phil' you got a bubble offering to
substitute philosophical which you could accept or reject. i guess you
can do this with F3 but it just isnt nearly as user friendly.

But whether F3 is user friendly or not is beside the point. It is a
golden rule applying to any product like WORD that people have been
using for many years - you don't suddenly remove features just because
you're conscious of a new, corporate market user who finds the monster
you've created difficult to understand. You look after the existing
user and graft on an easier UI for the corporate bods.

Phil



On 19 Jan, 22:22, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
While not disagreeing with your statement in principle, I'll point out that
in the specific instance you cite (esta establishment), and AutoCorrect
entry would be more suitable than AutoText, anyway. You might want to
consider how you could use AutoCorrect for at least some of your AutoText
entries.

As for the popup, if you didn't remember that the letters you are typing
were an AutoText entry name, why would you be typing them? If you weren't
typing them in order to insert the AutoText entry, then the ScreenTip would
just be a distraction (I had to remove my business name from the AutoText
entry list--where it was put by Word, not me--because it popped up every
time I typed "word").

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message

...

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*

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

But you don't have to use "phil" as an AutoCorrect prompt for
"philosophical." You can use anything you like, such as "phix," say, or
anything else that you wouldn't ordinarily type as a word. This is good
practice for AutoText as well, so that you're not bothered by ScreenTips
when you don't want them.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message
...
Suzanne

No, I just gave that as a hypothetical example. I don't want the
automatic and always substitution of Autocorrect. I'm just trying to
save time on long words that are easily misspelt but have numerous
different endings:
Aristotle, Aristotelian
philosopher, philosophical, philosophically, philanthropic

Etc.

Autocorrect will just substitute willy nilly even in cases where I
don't want the substitution to occur. Autotext did precisely what one
wanted - after you typed 'phil' you got a bubble offering to
substitute philosophical which you could accept or reject. i guess you
can do this with F3 but it just isnt nearly as user friendly.

But whether F3 is user friendly or not is beside the point. It is a
golden rule applying to any product like WORD that people have been
using for many years - you don't suddenly remove features just because
you're conscious of a new, corporate market user who finds the monster
you've created difficult to understand. You look after the existing
user and graft on an easier UI for the corporate bods.

Phil



On 19 Jan, 22:22, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
While not disagreeing with your statement in principle, I'll point out
that
in the specific instance you cite (esta establishment), and AutoCorrect
entry would be more suitable than AutoText, anyway. You might want to
consider how you could use AutoCorrect for at least some of your AutoText
entries.

As for the popup, if you didn't remember that the letters you are typing
were an AutoText entry name, why would you be typing them? If you weren't
typing them in order to insert the AutoText entry, then the ScreenTip
would
just be a distraction (I had to remove my business name from the AutoText
entry list--where it was put by Word, not me--because it popped up every
time I typed "word").

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Phil" wrote in message

...

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*

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

You can download and install the Windows version of Open Office
http://openoffice.org at no cost. That's probably a better marker for how it would handle your needs and existing documents. There
are converters available for the Office 2007 XML files with the Open Office Oasis ones as well as older file types.

================
"grammatim" wrote in message ...
That's actually kinda funny ...

I've just read through the year-old thread "how do i enable the old
menu bar" where many of the shortcomings of Office2007 have been
discussed, especially right after its release, and it does little to
enhance confidence in the new version.

But: I'm looking longingly at the recently introduced tiny notebook
computer (with 7" screen , 512 Mb RAM and 4 Gb storage, weighing 2
lbs., and a $350 price tag -- I don't want to get too specific lest
everyone suddenly rush off and sign up on the waiting list for the
$500 model that will have double those memory amounts in the same-size
unit) that runs on Linux and comes with 40 apps including OpenOffice
(plus, it says it can run XP Pro if you already own the disk). I
downloaded the 500-page OpenOffice manual, and it _looks_ like it can
do just about everything I'm used to (probably not Track Changes, but
that's not the sort of thing one would do on the road anyway). (I've
never had a reason to use a spreadsheet, so Excel is irrelevant.)

Am I missing something? Does OpenOffice have drawbacks I won't
discover until I try to start doing something a little sophisticated?

(I guess for me specifically, I need to know if it supports Unicode,
right-to-left, and character scripts.)

Thanks all!
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

[grammatim[_2_]]

Thanks ... I suspect it might be like moving from FrameMaker (Mac) to
Word (Windows), which I had to do when I got a job with a publisher
who only uses PCs and put one in my house. And I never moved to OS X
because Adobe bought out FrameMaker (for the purpose of destroying it)
and refused to make the upgrade leap. And, as I may have mentioned,
even though it released a recent Windows version, didn't give it
Unicode ability. That is, I'll miss some things but get used to its
new ways.

I wonder whether the Windows and Linux versions feel the same --
WinWord's keyboard shortcuts are rather different from MacWord;s, for
instance.

On Jan 19, 8:24*pm, "Bob Buckland ?:-\)" 75214.226(At Beautiful
Downtown)compuserve.com wrote:
You can download and install the Windows version of Open Office
*http://openoffice.orgat no cost. *That's probably a better marker for how it would handle your needs and existing documents. There
are converters available for the Office 2007 XML files with the Open Office Oasis ones as well as older file types.

================
* "grammatim" wrote in ...
That's actually kinda funny ...

I've just read through the year-old thread "how do i enable the old
menu bar" where many of the shortcomings of Office2007 have been
discussed, especially right after its release, and it does little to
enhance confidence in the new version.

But: I'm looking longingly at the recently introduced tiny notebook
computer (with 7" screen , 512 Mb RAM and 4 Gb storage, weighing 2
lbs., and a $350 price tag -- I don't want to get too specific lest
everyone suddenly rush off and sign up on the waiting list for the
$500 model that will have double those memory amounts in the same-size
unit) that runs on Linux and comes with 40 apps including OpenOffice
(plus, it says it can run XP Pro if you already own the disk). I
downloaded the 500-page OpenOffice manual, and it _looks_ like it can
do just about everything I'm used to (probably not Track Changes, but
that's not the sort of thing one would do on the road anyway). (I've
never had a reason to use a spreadsheet, so Excel is irrelevant.)

Am I missing something? Does OpenOffice have drawbacks I won't
discover until I try to start doing something a little sophisticated?

(I guess for me specifically, I need to know if it supports Unicode,
right-to-left, and character scripts.)

Thanks all!
--

Bob *Buckland *?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

* *Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

[Graham Mayor]

Aeneas wrote:
Some, who take the time to read about what Office 2007 offers, will
decide it doesn't suit their needs and decide not to buy it; many
others will be impressed and buy it. Typically, those in the latter
group will take the time to learn the new user interface and how to
take advantage of other new features (both of which can be very
frustrating) and, in most cases, be rewarded for their efforts.

Others will have Office 2007 forced upon them by a decision of company
management. Some will refuse to spend the time to learn the new
interface and take advantage of the new features; instead they will
incessantly complain, often blaming the "evil empire (Microsoft)" or
their stupid bosses. Most who choose to endure the frustration of
learning the new software will be richly rewarded for their efforts.


I did not get involved in the beta trials - life's too short - but I have
been using Office 2007 since the launch and it certainly has merit, but for
those coming to it with an in-depth knowledge of the earlier version, the
change is traumatic. I now use it more or less continuously, but there is no
doubt I am less productive than I was with the earlier version, and when
faced with any complicated task it is usually simpler to start Word 2003
(which I still have available) and use that.

I personally think that Microsoft squandered good will from its vast user
base with this unneccessary change by not providing a backward compatible
user interface. Patrick Schmid's excellent Ribbon Customizer
http://ribboncustomizer.com/ goes some way to bridge the gap, but frankly
it gets in the way of learning the new layout.

Business will have a huge training implication to consider along with the
cost of the change. Users cannot simply abandon 2003 and start up work the
next day with 2007 without training or time to learn. Some users will have
been with the familiar Word layout for more than ten years. Ten years of
familiarity takes a lot of putting aside just for a pretty new face.

Then there are the implications for all the specialised processes using vba,
many of which will have to be re-written. Autotext no longer works properly
because of the lack of autocomplete (though potentially it is much better),
and it is much more difficult to customize the interface to suit personal
work practices. Even custom labels have to be re-compiled (though to be fair
that happened also at the change from Word 2000 to 2002). Only the XML file
format is really worth the effort, and that could have been added to 2003 as
the compatibility pack shows.

Excel too I now find much more difficult to use, though as I do not use it
to anything like the extent I use Word I can live with that. Only Outlook
and Publisher seem to have benefited from the changes and that is because
they have not been changed so much and the changes have been largely
beneficial. And I simply refuse to update FrontPage.

I am not averse to change and I am quite happy to learn new software if the
changes are truly beneficial. I am afraid that here the cosmetic changes are
not justified by the results. The old military expression 'bull**** baffles
brains' is well served by Office 2007


--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

[Phil[_5_]]

re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in 2003
- very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?

Phil




On 20 Jan, 09:00, "Graham Mayor" wrote:
Aeneas wrote:
Some, who take the time to read about what Office 2007 offers, will
decide it doesn't suit their needs and decide not to buy it; many
others will be impressed and buy it. Typically, those in the latter
group will take the time to learn the new user interface and how to
take advantage of other new features (both of which can be very
frustrating) and, in most cases, be rewarded for their efforts.

Others will have Office 2007 forced upon them by a decision of company
management. Some will refuse to spend the time to learn the new
interface and take advantage of the new features; instead they will
incessantly complain, often blaming the "evil empire (Microsoft)" or
their stupid bosses. Most who choose to endure the frustration of
learning the new software will be richly rewarded for their efforts.

I did not get involved in the beta trials - life's too short - but I have
been using Office 2007 since the launch and it certainly has merit, but for
those coming to it with an in-depth knowledge of the earlier version, the
change is traumatic. I now use it more or less continuously, but there is no
doubt I am less productive than I was with the earlier version, and when
faced with any complicated task it is usually simpler to start Word 2003
(which I still have available) and use that.

I personally think that Microsoft squandered good will from its vast user
base with this unneccessary change by not providing a backward compatible
user interface. Patrick Schmid's excellent Ribbon Customizerhttp://ribboncustomizer.com/ goes some way to bridge the gap, but frankly
it gets in the way of learning the new layout.

Business will have a huge training implication to consider along with the
cost of the change. Users cannot simply abandon 2003 and start up work the
next day with 2007 without training or time to learn. Some users will have
been with the familiar Word layout for more than ten years. Ten years of
familiarity takes a lot of putting aside just for a pretty new face.

Then there are the implications for all the specialised processes using vba,
many of which will have to be re-written. Autotext no longer works properly
because of the lack of autocomplete (though potentially it is much better),
and it is much more difficult to customize the interface to suit personal
work practices. Even custom labels have to be re-compiled (though to be fair
that happened also at the change from Word 2000 to 2002). Only the XML file
format is really worth the effort, and that could have been added to 2003 as
the compatibility pack shows.

Excel too I now find much more difficult to use, though as I do not use it
to anything like the extent I use Word I can live with that. Only Outlook
and Publisher seem to have benefited from the changes and that is because
they have not been changed so much and the changes have been largely
beneficial. And I simply refuse to update FrontPage.

I am not averse to change and I am quite happy to learn new software if the
changes are truly beneficial. I am afraid that here the cosmetic changes are
not justified by the results. The old military expression 'bull**** baffles
brains' is well served by Office 2007

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web sitewww.gmayor.com
Word MVP web sitehttp://word.mvps.org

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Phil,

There wasn't any specific focused work on the Master Documents area (originally added to match one in WordPerfect g). Some folks
have reported it being more stable than previously, which may be from the change to the new file formats and to some work on
stability in numbering and styles.

You can reduce the 'between versions' setup run behavior with the NoReReg registry key setting covered in the 'Multiple versions of
Word' section of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

==============
"Phil" wrote in message ...
re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in 2003
- very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?

Phil
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

[grammatim[_2_]]

Does that suggest that Master Document in 2003 might work better on
the new format? Though, I installed the Compatibility Pack and don't
see any change at all in Word -- .docx didn't suddenly appear in the
Save As menu, for instance. I suppose I have to wait until someone
sends me a .docx file to see if it will open.

On Jan 20, 8:38*am, "Bob Buckland ?:-\)" 75214.226(At Beautiful
Downtown)compuserve.com wrote:
Hi Phil,

There wasn't any specific focused work on the Master Documents area (originally added to match one in WordPerfect g). *Some folks
have reported it being more stable than previously, which may be from the change to the new file formats and to some work on
stability in numbering and styles.

You can reduce the 'between versions' setup run behavior with the NoReReg registry key setting *covered in the 'Multiple versions of
Word' section ofhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

==============
* "Phil" wrote in ...
re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. *I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. *Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in 2003
- very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. *Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?

[Phil[_5_]]

Thanks Bob that seems to do the trick nicely. I notice Msoft as usual
issue all the usual warnings...

For WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS it now seems to work thus: Whatever version
was last loaded (2003 or 2007), if I double click a DOC, XLS, MDB file
then that version (2003 or 2007) gets used. Which is fine.

I wonder why Msoft never seem to think in terms of making life as easy
as possible for users? If they dis, they might think to mention these
things and not leave people to rummage round to find out!

I did have a quick look at OpenOffice but feel nervous about going
that route, it seems to spell even more change - different file
formats for example, and I tried to load a MDB database with BASE and
it freaked out and just disappeared. And my EXCEL XLS charts looked
very weird. I was impressed with the intuitively obvious UI,
reminiscent of Office2003.

Phil



On 20 Jan, 14:38, "Bob Buckland ?:-\)" 75214.226(At Beautiful
Downtown)compuserve.com wrote:
Hi Phil,

There wasn't any specific focused work on the Master Documents area (originally added to match one in WordPerfect g). Some folks
have reported it being more stable than previously, which may be from the change to the new file formats and to some work on
stability in numbering and styles.

You can reduce the 'between versions' setup run behavior with the NoReReg registry key setting covered in the 'Multiple versions of
Word' section ofhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

==============
"Phil" wrote in ...
re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in 2003
- very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?

Phil
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

[Graham Mayor]

See http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm re the reconfiguration
issues.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Phil wrote:
re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in 2003
- very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?

Phil




On 20 Jan, 09:00, "Graham Mayor" wrote:
Aeneas wrote:
Some, who take the time to read about what Office 2007 offers, will
decide it doesn't suit their needs and decide not to buy it; many
others will be impressed and buy it. Typically, those in the latter
group will take the time to learn the new user interface and how to
take advantage of other new features (both of which can be very
frustrating) and, in most cases, be rewarded for their efforts.

Others will have Office 2007 forced upon them by a decision of
company management. Some will refuse to spend the time to learn the
new interface and take advantage of the new features; instead they
will incessantly complain, often blaming the "evil empire
(Microsoft)" or their stupid bosses. Most who choose to endure the
frustration of learning the new software will be richly rewarded
for their efforts.

I did not get involved in the beta trials - life's too short - but I
have
been using Office 2007 since the launch and it certainly has merit,
but for
those coming to it with an in-depth knowledge of the earlier
version, the
change is traumatic. I now use it more or less continuously, but
there is no
doubt I am less productive than I was with the earlier version, and
when
faced with any complicated task it is usually simpler to start Word
2003 (which I still have available) and use that.

I personally think that Microsoft squandered good will from its vast
user
base with this unneccessary change by not providing a backward
compatible
user interface. Patrick Schmid's excellent Ribbon
Customizerhttp://ribboncustomizer.com/ goes some way to bridge the
gap, but frankly it gets in the way of learning the new layout.

Business will have a huge training implication to consider along
with the
cost of the change. Users cannot simply abandon 2003 and start up
work the
next day with 2007 without training or time to learn. Some users
will have
been with the familiar Word layout for more than ten years. Ten
years of
familiarity takes a lot of putting aside just for a pretty new face.

Then there are the implications for all the specialised processes
using vba,
many of which will have to be re-written. Autotext no longer works
properly
because of the lack of autocomplete (though potentially it is much
better),
and it is much more difficult to customize the interface to suit
personal
work practices. Even custom labels have to be re-compiled (though to
be fair
that happened also at the change from Word 2000 to 2002). Only the
XML file
format is really worth the effort, and that could have been added to
2003 as
the compatibility pack shows.

Excel too I now find much more difficult to use, though as I do not
use it
to anything like the extent I use Word I can live with that. Only
Outlook
and Publisher seem to have benefited from the changes and that is
because
they have not been changed so much and the changes have been largely
beneficial. And I simply refuse to update FrontPage.

I am not averse to change and I am quite happy to learn new software
if the
changes are truly beneficial. I am afraid that here the cosmetic
changes are
not justified by the results. The old military expression 'bull****
baffles
brains' is well served by Office 2007

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web sitewww.gmayor.com
Word MVP web sitehttp://word.mvps.org

[Graham Mayor]

Master Document has not changed.
If you install the compatibility pack you should have Save As Word 2007
Document in the Save As dialog.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


grammatim wrote:
Does that suggest that Master Document in 2003 might work better on
the new format? Though, I installed the Compatibility Pack and don't
see any change at all in Word -- .docx didn't suddenly appear in the
Save As menu, for instance. I suppose I have to wait until someone
sends me a .docx file to see if it will open.

On Jan 20, 8:38 am, "Bob Buckland ?:-\)" 75214.226(At Beautiful
Downtown)compuserve.com wrote:
Hi Phil,

There wasn't any specific focused work on the Master Documents area
(originally added to match one in WordPerfect g). Some folks have
reported it being more stable than previously, which may be from the
change to the new file formats and to some work on stability in
numbering and styles.

You can reduce the 'between versions' setup run behavior with the
NoReReg registry key setting covered in the 'Multiple versions of
Word' section ofhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

==============
"Phil" wrote in
...
re Graham Mayor below

Thanks for all that. I agree with every word you say - Outlook2007 is
OK, an improvement I feel, but everything else is a disaster. I've
used WORD for at least 10 years, have written 2 books and god knows
how much else with it - thoroughly conversant with contents lists,
styles, change tracking, footnotes/endnotes, multi-section documents,
etc. Now its taking me weeks to get familiar with all this in 2007
and in every case so far, once i've found how to do it, I find it
harder and more awkward than it used to be. One major drawback in
2003 - very large documents - the 'Master Document' facility was a
well
known shambles so I assumed it would be fixed. Has it? Not as far as
I
can see.

I agree with Graham that one just has to keep both versions
available. Though I note that if I use WORD2003, next time I load
WORD2007 there's a 2 minute delay while something gets reconfigured.
Any way to stop that?