5 ms·

> I think Word is a pretty mediocre product and has some ludicrous limitations. But really - this is just as nonsensical from the other side. I wrote a ~200 pa

> I think Word is a pretty mediocre product and has some ludicrous limitations. But really - this is just as nonsensical from the other side. I wrote a ~200 page (digital) textbook on 3d Modeling using Word. Word is incredibly customizable, I had hotkeys setup to do everything I wanted, figures and diagrams manages themselves rather well, and I was easily able to get into a state of flow using Word. Now it took several days to get Word that customized, but having seen what it can do, I will not call it mediocre. However hot Word tip of the century is, and has always been, put all images inside a text box, they'll behave the way you expect then, and behave bizarrely otherwise. Should be noted I wasn't doing any typesetting or any such thing, just writing the document, I understand that beyond just writing, LaTeX is a far superior tool.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I've used MS Word over very many years and I'm happy to say that it is a far better product now than it ever was in terms of reliability and doing what it's supposed to do. I'd even call it... good. But that is now, and the number of times I've been burned in the past and watched other people being burned, and the distress it is caused those who just want to get their job done and the time wasted; those memories fade slowly.
- bdamm 6y ago
  This. Word is decent until it becomes a crashing, byzantine reformatting mess. Then it becomes some kind of obscene torture device as bug states propagate with the documents and restarting only brings inescapable anxiety.
MegaDeKay 6y ago
I'm right (write?) there with you. I routinely write documents hundreds of pages long in Word that are filled with cross-references, figures, complex tables, and Visio objects. Word is very solid (though it wasn't always so) and maintains really good performance even with large documents. Cutting and pasting massive amounts of content from one place to another in the document can be done with more or less reckless abandon. My hot Word tip is to use Styles. My other hot Word tip is to use cross-references. If you type "See Figure 3-1" in full, you're doing it wrong. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, please fix a) the unreadable text in the Styles drop-down selection list in dark mode and b) stop asking my if the large amount of data I put on the clipboard should be available to other apps when I exit Word. With SSDs, this anachronism takes me far longer to read and click No to vs. just saving the damn clipboard content without asking me.
- davidgay 6y ago
  > My hot Word tip is to use Styles. Wow. That was my hot tip for Word 1.0 too. I felt they did a rather too good job of hiding them subsequently.
  - blackoil 6y ago
    For me, Styles take about 50% of space on Home ribbon, so I wouldn't say they are hiding it.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > My hot Word tip is to use Styles. This works great with your own document or small experienced group. But let any "normal" person do any changes... and you're back to local modifications. And is actually hard to figure out what was done ad-hoc and what via styles.
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    "Restricted editing" -> "Limit formatting to a selection of styles" Done.
    - sdoering 6y ago
      Thanks a lot. This is exactly what one needs to do when using Word Documents in a group setting. Always. We enforce this and it makes it so much easier for everybody. We also enforce that no one is allowed to mess with the style definitions once they are fixed for the specific project. It is the same as if one is using code formatting rules and enforces them by configuration of linting tools. Do some people complain, because they cannot do their personal pet peeve? Sure. Do I care in terms of the greater good for the project or the team? Only in so far as I learn not to want said people in my projects/teams. Do some people point out specific and relevant flaws in the designe/code/style rules? Sure. Do they count? Hell yes. I love these people in my teams/projects. They know how to understand systems, think systematically and also how to communicate relevant criticism in a productive way.
chalst 6y ago
> However hot Word tip of the century is, and has always been, put all images inside a text box, they'll behave the way you expect then, and behave bizarrely otherwise. This points to the real criticism of Word: that its internal representation of text is quite different to its appearance (i.e. WYSIWYG does not imply WYSIWYM) and if you make even a little use of its advanced features and reedit, you will quite likely get a document that behaves perversely. I have quite often seen Word users give up on reformatting a section, cut and paste it into another application and then cut and paste-back-without-styling so that they can reformat from scratch.
- oblio 6y ago
  The can generally use Format Painter for that. Or they could just use a style, which overrides local settings.
  - chalst 6y ago
    Quite a few of the properties a run of text might have are not controlled by styles, and Format Painter makes gives a uniform format for all the selected text: if you go this route, you still might have lots of hand reformatting to do. The point I was making is that the more of Word's advanced features you use, the more of these kinds of mismatch you risk encountering.
pintxo 6y ago
Did they fix this bug, where images in text-boxes where omitted from the automatically generated figure list? This caught me off-guard during my thesis.
tpoacher 6y ago
I don't think people are saying it can't be done. I think people are saying if you value your time or care about the risk of failure, you wouldn't do it like that.
turtles_ 6y ago
Downside with pictures in text boxes - you can't put footnotes in text boxes so if you need to cite pictures with any of the referencing styles that use footnotes that makes it a no go. It's an awkward and arbitrary limitation that ruins Word for a surprisingly common use case
jonathanstrange 6y ago
How do you get rid of Word's insistence to select text that I do not want to be selected? That is the one feature of Word that drives me nuts as a LaTeX and markdown user. I'm sure there must be a setting to change it somewhere, though. Right?

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I've used MS Word over very many years and I'm happy to say that it is a far better product now than it ever was in terms of reliability and doing what it's supposed to do. I'd even call it... good. But that is now, and the number of times I've been burned in the past and watched other people being burned, and the distress it is caused those who just want to get their job done and the time wasted; those memories fade slowly.

bdamm 6y ago
This. Word is decent until it becomes a crashing, byzantine reformatting mess. Then it becomes some kind of obscene torture device as bug states propagate with the documents and restarting only brings inescapable anxiety.

MegaDeKay 6y ago

I'm right (write?) there with you. I routinely write documents hundreds of pages long in Word that are filled with cross-references, figures, complex tables, and Visio objects. Word is very solid (though it wasn't always so) and maintains really good performance even with large documents. Cutting and pasting massive amounts of content from one place to another in the document can be done with more or less reckless abandon. My hot Word tip is to use Styles. My other hot Word tip is to use cross-references. If you type "See Figure 3-1" in full, you're doing it wrong. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, please fix a) the unreadable text in the Styles drop-down selection list in dark mode and b) stop asking my if the large amount of data I put on the clipboard should be available to other apps when I exit Word. With SSDs, this anachronism takes me far longer to read and click No to vs. just saving the damn clipboard content without asking me.

davidgay 6y ago
> My hot Word tip is to use Styles. Wow. That was my hot tip for Word 1.0 too. I felt they did a rather too good job of hiding them subsequently.
- blackoil 6y ago
  For me, Styles take about 50% of space on Home ribbon, so I wouldn't say they are hiding it.
viraptor 6y ago
> My hot Word tip is to use Styles. This works great with your own document or small experienced group. But let any "normal" person do any changes... and you're back to local modifications. And is actually hard to figure out what was done ad-hoc and what via styles.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  "Restricted editing" -> "Limit formatting to a selection of styles" Done.
  - sdoering 6y ago
    Thanks a lot. This is exactly what one needs to do when using Word Documents in a group setting. Always. We enforce this and it makes it so much easier for everybody. We also enforce that no one is allowed to mess with the style definitions once they are fixed for the specific project. It is the same as if one is using code formatting rules and enforces them by configuration of linting tools. Do some people complain, because they cannot do their personal pet peeve? Sure. Do I care in terms of the greater good for the project or the team? Only in so far as I learn not to want said people in my projects/teams. Do some people point out specific and relevant flaws in the designe/code/style rules? Sure. Do they count? Hell yes. I love these people in my teams/projects. They know how to understand systems, think systematically and also how to communicate relevant criticism in a productive way.

chalst 6y ago

> However hot Word tip of the century is, and has always been, put all images inside a text box, they'll behave the way you expect then, and behave bizarrely otherwise. This points to the real criticism of Word: that its internal representation of text is quite different to its appearance (i.e. WYSIWYG does not imply WYSIWYM) and if you make even a little use of its advanced features and reedit, you will quite likely get a document that behaves perversely. I have quite often seen Word users give up on reformatting a section, cut and paste it into another application and then cut and paste-back-without-styling so that they can reformat from scratch.

oblio 6y ago
The can generally use Format Painter for that. Or they could just use a style, which overrides local settings.
- chalst 6y ago
  Quite a few of the properties a run of text might have are not controlled by styles, and Format Painter makes gives a uniform format for all the selected text: if you go this route, you still might have lots of hand reformatting to do. The point I was making is that the more of Word's advanced features you use, the more of these kinds of mismatch you risk encountering.

pintxo 6y ago

Did they fix this bug, where images in text-boxes where omitted from the automatically generated figure list? This caught me off-guard during my thesis.

tpoacher 6y ago

I don't think people are saying it can't be done. I think people are saying if you value your time or care about the risk of failure, you wouldn't do it like that.

turtles_ 6y ago

Downside with pictures in text boxes - you can't put footnotes in text boxes so if you need to cite pictures with any of the referencing styles that use footnotes that makes it a no go. It's an awkward and arbitrary limitation that ruins Word for a surprisingly common use case

jonathanstrange 6y ago

How do you get rid of Word's insistence to select text that I do not want to be selected? That is the one feature of Word that drives me nuts as a LaTeX and markdown user. I'm sure there must be a setting to change it somewhere, though. Right?