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In Word, you mean, Bill? I have no idea.

Word is a program I rarely use by choice - I hate it because it will constantly try to second-guess what I want to do and it's almost never right! Every time it's updated I have to go through this process of getting at the defaults and changing them to something I can live with - and it doesn't happen often enough for me to remember what they all are until they drive me crazy.



Why it can't carry over such settings from one version to another as other programs do is entirely beyond me. Grrr.

Have now changed default language, font, type-size and paragraph spacing. I still have to get at things like auto-capitalisation, spell-check as you type, auto-lists and heaven knows what else that I don't want it to get "smart" about!


If I'm ever working on something I plan to copy into here, by the way, I use Notepad. That doesn't bring any daft html with it in the copying process.

Alternative word processors, Kit?

Within Windows there's Notepad, which is a simple plain text editor - you can't do any formatting, like bold or italic, in it. There's also WordPad, which does allow formatting but doesn't have any advanced options, like tables or spell-checking.

On the other hand, I just typed the above in WordPad and copied it over, and the only html that came with is is a pair of codes for font size. Both these programs usually live in "Accessories".

There's also OpenOffice:

the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

This was once recommended by Jane and is something I'd get if I couldn't afford Microsoft's overpriced, overblown, over-smart "Office" suite of programs. (OH has just realised he can get Office cheap from work which is why we're so up-to-date with it. A perk that for all these years we never knew we had! I wish this perk extended to programs I like to use!)

I confess - I did once try OpenOffice and got rid of it after a while - it invaded too many areas of my computer with things I wasn't used to and didn't want. But then I was just trying to use it as a matter of principle - I didn't actually need it. I seem to remember that Laurel tried it too, and was also driven to remove it. I have a memory of the phrase "prancing bully" being used in the context.

But all that was some time ago and you might want to give it a whirl.

And then again you may be perfectly happy with '97 - if it ain't broke, why fix it?

"Its day" being 5.1 (or thereabouts) for DOS. I rather agree - that was one truly excellent word processor. It didn't make the transition to Windows well, though - and every time they did a new version the macros from previous versions didn't work. That was what finally scuttled it for me - it took too long to re-master and set up the thing to be where you were before!

Of course these days word processors are no longer dedicated to processing words, which they do very well, but are angled towards doing desktop publishing, which they do very badly.

Not that I've used any macros or merge or any of the standard "office" stuff for years now. Just about the only thing I use Word for these days is handling tables. I have to have it, though, because everybody else does: any text text I get to work on invariably comes in .doc format.