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Microsoft Word, I Hate You.


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Microsoft Word, I Hate You.
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-03, 07:06

All I want to do is modify the 'normal' template. That's it. I want it so that when I press apple-n I get a blank document with double spacing.

According to the Help page you can do this. But it doesn't go on to tell you how.

And nowhere else on the web or on the so-called 'support' pages at Mactopia will it tell you how to do this either.

I've been shuffling templates from folder to folder and relaunching like a madperson and it doesn't seem possible that it could be as complicated as I'm making it.

But then. Microsoft Word, ladies and gentlemen. Microsoft Word.

Anyway. Help.

gibberish
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Anonymous Coward
Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-03-03, 07:39

I think you make whatever changes you want, then go into "Page setup" in the "File" menu, go to "Microsoft Word" settings, make more changes (if applicable), then select "Default".
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-03, 07:45

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward
I think you make whatever changes you want, then go into "Page setup" in the "File" menu, go to "Microsoft Word" settings, make more changes (if applicable), then select "Default".
No, that's not it.

But thanks anyway.
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_Ω_
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2005-03-03, 08:10

Do you know how to make a template which has these attributes?
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BrandonAllan
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-03-03, 08:27

The "Normal" template resides in the "Microsoft User Data" folder in "Documents". Double click it and modify it to what you want and then save it. New Documents should reflect your changes.

I'm not here. This isn't happening.
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_Ω_
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2005-03-03, 08:42

I tried but it did not seem to work.

This is how I got it:
  • Open a new document
  • Change it to be double spaced
  • Choose Save As
  • From the drop down box make it a template
  • Give it a name such as double to reside in my templates
  • Save it
  • Quit Word
  • Go to where the templates reside
  • trash normal and delete it
  • move double to its place
  • rename double to be normal

Hopefully this works.....

If not I have a copy of a double normal template I can email to you

Angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-03, 10:34

Thanks. I'd created another 'normal' template the way you had, but it didn't seem to work. I'm going to try that renaming thing. It's counter-intuitive enough to work. Thanks again.

gibberish
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-03, 11:01

Well, I finally got it to work.

Three things: why the blue buggering blazes is the 'Normal' template in Documents in a folder called 'Microsoft User Data' while all the other templates are in the Office folder in Applications?

Why, when you make your own Normal template, do you actually have to manually get rid of the template extension .dot in order to prevent Word from making another 'template' with the exact same name only, of course, and unlike all the other templates, without the .dot extension?

If I, having used Word and OS X since day one, and having used Word enough to make 120,000 words-long documents, had to go to an Apple forum to ask advice because I couldn't work this out, how the fuck is anyone who just bought the software for their new Mac supposed to work this out?

gibberish
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torifile
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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2005-03-03, 11:33

The thing that drives me crazy is that even when I change my font to arial in the normal template and my new docs start with the font arial, 11pt, the way I want them, for some strange reason times new roman makes its way in if I backspace at the beginning of a paragraph. It's like that font IS Word and it only lets you think you have control. I hate Word and it's crappy behavior sometimes....
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SonOfSylvanus
Fro Productions(tm)
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
 
2005-03-03, 14:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by torifile
The thing that drives me crazy is that even when I change my font to arial in the normal template and my new docs start with the font arial, 11pt, the way I want them, for some strange reason times new roman makes its way in if I backspace at the beginning of a paragraph. It's like that font IS Word and it only lets you think you have control. I hate Word and it's crappy behavior sometimes....
Lordy! I know what you mean. As well as Paragraph styles, Pages does Paste and Match Style very well. Combined, these two have resolved my Styles woes.
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-04, 16:16

Microsoft Word I Hate You Update.

You can alter the 'Normal' template, but you should be warned that if you use AutoCorrect as a way of dropping in specific graphics that you use a lot as, say, paragraph breaks, your instructions will be deleted and it is apparently impossible for you to re-enter them at all.

Microsoft Word, I hate you.

gibberish
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torifile
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2005-03-04, 16:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Microsoft Word I Hate You Update.

You can alter the 'Normal' template, but you should be warned that if you use AutoCorrect as a way of dropping in specific graphics that you use a lot as, say, paragraph breaks, your instructions will be deleted and it is apparently impossible for you to re-enter them at all.

Microsoft Word, I hate you.
Here's another: the absolutely INexplicable lag when scrolling using a mouse (the scrollbutton or the trackpad on a new powerbook). Fucking ridiculous. I'll scroll. Wait. Wait. Click someplace to make sure it's not frozen. And THEN it'll continue scrolling, after I've stopped trying. Just stupid.
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Hassan i Sabbah
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: london and københavn
 
2005-03-04, 16:38

Ah, the classic. I hate you, Microsoft Word.

That's very similar to the other classic (fixed in this new version) where you'd click the cursor somewhere you wanted to type a word and nothing would happen. And you'd wait. You'd wait and then you'd have to move the cursor and click it somewhere else before you could enter text.

Oh, and sometimes it would just be a slow bugger, rather than slow and full of bugs, and you'd have tapped irritatedly at the keyboard in order to 'make it work' (the pressing the elevator button a dozen times to get the lift to come quicker principle) and then all of a sudden you'd get jjjjjjjjj in the middle of your text.

Altogether now...

gibberish
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2005-03-04, 17:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Microsoft Word, I hate you.
"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee"
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_Ω_
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2005-03-06, 08:03

While on the topic of MS hate, why is Excel poo?

Why can I not have more than 8 if statements in a formula? The formula works perfectly with 7. Add another which is almost a replicant of a previous IF statement and it shits itself.

Angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress
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Mac+
9" monochrome
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2005-03-06, 08:34

Actually that one bugged the hell out of me too!

In fairness, though, Excel is the app I use the most out of the Office suite and that is my main gripe with it. However, if Apple were to do a "Tables" (or *insert cool app name here*) program to go with "Pages" and "Keynote", I'd switch in a second.
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fstop
 
 
2005-03-06, 20:56

For all you Microsoft Word (Office) haters, you might want to check out something called NeoOffice/J. It's free (part of the Open Office concept), and so far, after using it for a week, I have no complaints. I can open any Word doc or Excel spreadsheet (including headers with graphics!), save them likewise, and even with complex spreadsheets, NeoOffice/J picks up every single formula perfectly. You can download NeoOffice/J at http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php
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flail
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
 
2005-03-06, 21:28

And how do I get rid of that DANG Adobe Acrobat Toolbar in Word. It comes back EVERY TIME I OPEN A NEW DOCUMENT!!! (I am using the Mac 2004 version) Thank you.
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scratt
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2005-03-06, 21:34

Also Excel has maths errors in simple equations which to me just seems outrageous!
Has anyone noticed that certain equations seem to round results so badly as they are calculated that the answer is just plain wrong!?!?

'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take'
Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt
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_Ω_
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2005-03-06, 21:49

Which equations? Are you sure you are not just hiding decimal places and not rounding them?
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Chinney
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Ottawa, ON
 
2005-03-06, 21:49

Quote:
Originally Posted by scratt
Also Excel has maths errors in simple equations which to me just seems outrageous!
Has anyone noticed that certain equations seem to round results so badly as they are calculated that the answer is just plain wrong!?!?

I had it do a sum of a column of whole numbers and come up with a number x.999999999999. Why?
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scratt
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2005-03-06, 22:00

It is a re-creatable error... I actually had to find a work around in a spread sheet I used to break money down into ¢s, and coins for a payroll.

You basically put the amount a person was paid into a left hand column and it split out the pennies, then the two-pennies and then the 5ps etc. etc. up to ¢20 and ¢50 notes.

So some of the equations were quite long and had a lot of nested brackets.. But they were legal equations. I will dig it out and post it somewhere if you are interested. But the spread sheet I have at the moment obviously works and I will have to go back through and remember what actually didn't work. It should be easy as if I remember correctly the work around involved adding 0.1 to the end of the equation as it was basically getting an answer of x.99999999 and when I was asking for an integer, instead of rounding up it was rounding down!!!

Let me know if you are interested or if that explanation is enough...

'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take'
Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt
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Chinney
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Join Date: May 2004
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2005-03-06, 22:37

Thanks, but I just corrected it manually. I just entered the corrected number at the end of the column as a data entry and continued. If I start doing things more complex, however, that sort of thing could cause problems. I would have to sift through calculations and see where things started to go wrong. My point is: Why does it happen at all?

When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray.
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_Ω_
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2005-03-06, 23:16

DANGER: Do not be asking questions you do not want the answer for!

Some computer science guru will no doubt come through and tell you about floating points, double or some other mumbo jumbo. I failed my proframming papers miserabley so don't look at me for an explanantion.


Angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress
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_Ω_
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2005-03-06, 23:20

Also did you try the roundup function?

=ROUNDUP(cell, # of dp's you want)
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curiousuburb
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Join Date: May 2004
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2005-03-06, 23:33

The original Apple II allowed basic math operations from the "command line" in BASIC.

7*7 (7 times 7) would always give the correct answer of 49
7^2 (7 squared) would always give 49.000001

One of my first confirmations that computers weren't omnipotent or magically more correct than humans. (Post HAL)

If you can find an old running Apple II, you can demonstrate this quirk to this day.

And don't even get started on the Pentium's math challenges.
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