Description
Word 97 contains hundreds of annoying idiosyncrasies that can be either eliminated or worked around. Whether it's the Find Fast feature that takes over your machine every once in awhile, or the way Word automatically selects an entire word as you struggle to highlight only a portion of it, Word 97 Annoyances will show you how to solve these and many other problems.
Full Description
First, the good news: Microsoft Word is magnificently malleable. If you don't like the way a certain part of Word works, nine times out of ten all it takes is a little gumption and a bit of reading, and you can probably change things around so they work the way you want them to. Word is one of the most complex, most sophisticated, and most useful pieces of software ever created. It's there for you to mold to your way of working. You don't have to settle for the built-in stuff.
Now the bad news: There's a lot of built-in stuff, and a lot of it is annoying. Part of the problem is that everyone works differently, and expects their word processor to work differently also; one user's favorite feature is another's annoyance. But there are other reasons that Word can be annoying: a difficulty (both for users and for the software developers who created Word) to make the transition from the typewriter to the computer; compatibility and the legacy of previous versions; and out-and-out poor design, to name just a few.
You may be annoyed that something (it's called Find Fast) takes over your machine every so often to scan and index your files. Or that it's so difficult to select a block of text that begins in the middle of a word. Or that, when you want to select a new style for some text, a visually attractive drop-down list takes forever to appear. But whatever the immediate cause of the annoyance, what's most annoying is that it's taking you longer than you think it should to perform simple tasks.
Word 97 Annoyances takes a look at many of these annoyances and shows you how to get rid of them so that you can get your work done more easily and efficiently. For instance, the book will show you how to:
- Customize the toolbar so it works the way you want it to. You can create toolbars that reflect the way you work, instead of catering to the needs of Microsoft's marketing staff.
- Reduce your stress level by taking an in-depth look at what makes Word tick. By understanding how Word defines sections or formats paragraphs, you can begin to understand and accept some apparent annoyances that are built into Word.
- Write simple VBA programs to eliminate your own personal annoyances. For example, short VBA programs show how to disable the "Float over text" box that is always checked whenever you try to insert an image into your document.
And while making Word a more productive and easier tool to use, you'll also be enjoying a well-written, extremely humorous computer book.
Colophon
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Word 97 Annoyances is an opossum. There are 76 species of opossum, living throughout South America and much of North America. Opossums are marsupials, but unlike all other marsupials in several ways. First, they are the only marsupials who live outside of Australia and the surrounding islands. Second, opossums typically give birth to large litters-8-24 young, of which only 1/2 live to adulthood. (Other marsupials generally have very small litters.) Some species of opossum are even pouchless. In these species, the mother carries the young between her legs or on her back until they fully develop. Like other marsupials, opos sums are not fully developed when they are born. They resemble worms more than mammals, and weigh as little as 1/8 of a gram.
Ecologically, the biggest difference between opossums and Australian marsupials is that, while koala, kangaroo, and wallabee populations are decreasing, opossums are growing in number and extending their range. One possible reason for this is that opossums have few natural enemies. Opossum meat apparently tastes unappealing to other animals, although it is used in traditional dishes in some parts of the American South. ... Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.
The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker 5.0 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 5.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.
