Having recently returned to using MS Word, after a few years of using, for the most part, OpenOffice, all the while missing WordPerfect1 it’s become clear that there are, in fact, many improvements to MS Word, but that, for good or ill, many things have been rearranged and it’s not always easy to resolve basic user interface geography problems. Microsoft has rearranged the furniture, the landscape, and the application has advanced far ahead of the documentation. For instance, Microsoft has made it very easy to find and download a large number of Word templates, but doesn’t make it simple to figure out where they should be saved so they’re available when creating a new document using the File | New command sequence. The old Word “Template Organizer” is gone, and while it was less than ideal, I did, eventually learn how to use it. In fact, the basic Windows application horizontal menu navigation has changed by omitting Help as the rightmost top-level menu.
The best thing I can say about the current “Help” arrangement in MS Word is that it sorts by relevance, apparently without assigning weight on the basis of whether or not the Help content in question was generated by Microsoft, or by outside sources. And one suspects that the quality-control system for Microsoft “Help” entries is less rigorous than Wikipedia. Once an entry in Wikipedia has been through its understaffed and therefore slow vetting process, Wikipedia entries are, in my experience, consistently outstanding. Any they are always looking for volunteers. The foregoing sentence should not be construed as a subtle hint, but rather an outright unambivalent exhortation.
In response to my search about template file paths, MS Word onlinehelp led me to Christine Kent’s outstanding post Where does Word 2010 store files? Ms. Kent, on her blog Christine Kent’s Microsoft Word Blog, is not voluminous or encyclopedic. But every post I’ve read seems to pinpoint a critical function or problem which isn’t well-documentedin the Microsoft help pages, either the client-based help files, or the Microsoft Online help system. Some examples:
The pitfalls of the Word help system might be required reading for anyone designing technical documentation.
How to organise your styles If you’re going to use MS Word, this is one of its most powerful feature sets. But setting it up and organizing it is a bit daunting, and, in my view,somewhat counterintuitive. But they’re there, and Christine Kent can help you use them rather han my strategy, which has been to avoid and ignore them on the assumption that learning them would be too hard or unproductive. And that would have been a correct assumption if I were relying on the Microsoft native instruction and help systems.
List of new features when upgrading from 2007 to 2010. Again, CK2 This post may make you feel better about having purchased MS Word or MS Office 2010, and give you a few ideas which may make you more productive, improve your work, or both.
In addition to Christine Kent’s Microsoft Word Blog, Ms. Kent has also published several books on making the best use of MS Word and MS Excel, which are quite neatly segmented into which version one is using or upgrading to, such as Microsoft Word 2010 upgrade from 2003: A New Way of Working. This approach makes a lot of sense: changes between the 2003 and 2007 versions were substantial, and the changes from 2007 to 2010 even more so. For anyone changing from the 2003 version to the 2010 version to learn anything about the intermediate 2007 edition would not only be a waste of time, it would be absolutely counterproductive. So Ms. Ken has also written an entirely separate volume, Microsoft Word 2010 Upgrade: Building on Word 2007 for those making thee 2007 to 2010 jump.
The quality of Ms. Kent’s explanations puts one in mind of the O’Reilly Media books; I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to eventually see her byline on books with the O’Reilly imprint. The only other book(s) that I’m aware of and swear by about MS Word are from Payne Consulting, which has published 12 books on Word and Excel for attorneys. Payne’s books and their applications are or should be must-haves for attorneys and the people who graciously tolerate us as colleagues. Of particular interest should be their MetaData Assistant, which is brilliant in conception and execution. The link is to version 2 of the single-user version with which I have direct experience, but Payne also has a single user version 3, and Enterprise editions of versions 2 and 3 (v. 2 Enterprise edition - Metadata Assistant link here, and Metadata Assistant 3 (Ent.) v. 3 Enterprise Edition link here).
So – if you’re having trouble getting MS Word to do your bidding, or need an outstanding technical writer, check out Christine Kent; and since she’s based in Melbourne, be even more impressed because she’s doing all of this this amazing writing upside-down. (Although, given the state of Microsoft documentation, perhaps that goes some way to explain her virtuosity).
- For reasons not clear to me, I’ve found installing WordPerfect on any Windows XP machine led to many system crashes and freezes. Since I was able to replicate the problem one more than one machine, and make the problem go away, consistently, by uninstalling WordPerfect, I gave up. The inference of a causal relationship between WordPerfect installation and system difficulties did not escape me, but, life being short, one can tilt at only so many windmills, and my bought-and-paid-for boxed copy of the Corel Suite, which includes WordPerfect, now sits on a bookshelf not far from my boxed copy of the complete set of the first generations of Infocom games, including the much-beloved Zork. [↩]
- Notice that her name is not only alliterative,but that she shares not only initials, but also certain personal characteristics of one unassuming mild-mannered journalist on the staff of a well-known daily newspaper whose logo includes an image of the Planet Earth. Coincidence? You be the judge. [↩]
