The Argument against Word, Reason #513
Here’s what’s happening with Microsoft Word 2008 on Mac. Note that I am not looking for help. I am merely venting.
1. Redefined heading2 so that it begins with an auto number.
2. Now when I select Normal paragraphs and apply the “number me” button to them, they all turn into heading2′s.
3. Create a new element called Normal-List, defined as beginning with an auto-number.
4. After the fourth instance of heading2, begin my fourth set of Normal-List items.
5. That fourth set continues the numbering from the third set. Select the first item and choose “Restart numbering.” It is a no-op.
6. Try every thing you can think of. Nothing works.
7. Re-open it in LibreOffice (nee Open Office) and fix the goddamn autonumbers.
Q: How many years will it take for Microsoft to get auto-numbering right?
A: How many years are there?
This is especially frustrating since the software company I worked at from 1986-1994, Interleaf, got this right about twenty years ago. AAAaaarrrrrgggggghhhhh.
this numbering nightmare is not any different on the native WinTel platform .. and this is not the only problem … Office 2007 is harder to use than 2003, and all the tricks I learned to be efficient in Office 2003 are gone and have to be reformulated for 2007. In some case an efficiency trick no longer exists (eg. keyboard shortcuts) OR takes 1 to three more mouse clicks than before…
Interleaf … wow blast from the past .. my employer at the time invested in a lot of these http://bogpeople.com/mycomputers/SPARCstationSLC.jpg and nobody used them … WYSIWYG was too far ahead of it’s time …
Well, my version of WordStar has worked, at least with basic functionality, on all my computers since the mid 80′s, except my Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit), if that will help with the numbering problem. The printer driver may need updating.