I HATE MICROSOFT WORD...any help !?!?

[bort]

Select all the text.
Right click
In the menu that pops up, in the Spacing section, change Before and After both to 0 pt.

I forget how to change the default template so that it's *always* 0 pt, but you can probably Google for that. I think that's called changing the Normal.dot template. It's pretty straightforward once you get the right set of directions...

[Donn]

I don't have Word to try this, but saw some assertions on-line that OpenOffice can save in the Word .doc format. I'm sure Microsoft would do what they could to make this not work, so who knows. They have made a lot of money off their office suite over the years, thanks to all those people who can't work with you unless you use Word too.

I try to get people to not send any type of application document format to me, whether it's ISO standard or Microsoft's. Assuming you don't want to edit their document, just want to read it, print it, etc., you want the final result, as PDF or something. In one case I got RTF "rich text", which works fine for simple text formatting and is widely understood. In any case, the exported result is bound to be smaller and more robust, compared to the "work in progress" application document.

[Ricko]

Not too fond of that feature either...

Highlight the text, then look for the 'styles' on the toolbar and choose 'no spacing' (mine is on the default 'home' toolbar). If you don't have that toolbar, search for styles and choose 'no spacing'.

Why they chose that abnormal normal I don't know. I think that part sucks too.

Ricko

[The Jackson]

Saving OpenOffice Writer documents as .doc

1/ File > Save As
2/ Under "Save As Type", choose the "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)" option


Correcting line-space issue in MS Word 2010 (This is just one way of a handful)

1/ Highlight text that needs correction
2/ Right-click > Paragraph
3/ Under "Line spacing", select "Single"
4/ Check the box "Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style"

If you desire any further tweaking of the spacing, this is where you can do it.

[Donn]

your chosen method (the infinitesimally small market share "Linux geek" method that next to no one uses despite being FREE for many years now) of doing things?

Before bloke gets too swell headed about his membership in this ultra elite category ... from what I can tell, OpenOffice adoption rates are a little more than "infinitesimal". Maybe 1 in 10 in the US, twice that in Europe. (Have no idea how many OpenOffice users are on Linux, that would be an interesting statistic.)

You'd think this would be an astonishing feat, in the face of the kind of herd pressure suggested above - it's your method or ours, and we're the majority - but actually (as also mentioned above) OpenOffice reportedly manages pretty well with its competition's proprietary formats. In fact some time back, it was touted to me as the only way to deal with certain obsolete format revisions that even Word couldn't successfully open.

[iiipopes]

In fact some time back, it was touted to me as the only way to deal with certain obsolete format revisions that even Word couldn't successfully open.

Yes, it works well, so long as the original word processor stuck pretty closely to ASCII character definitions. WordPerfect is notorious for changing around the ASCII codes so they don't line up to the usual corresponding letters; it's so bad you can't do a Windows word search trying to find a document with particular text.

[scottw]

Saving OpenOffice Writer documents as .doc

1/ File > Save As
2/ Under "Save As Type", choose the "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)" option

I have used Open Office for a number of years and am able to easily convert everything to Word [several versions] or to maybe 2 dozen other formats, including pdf's. It's just a matter of HOW you save things: when you get to "save as", go to the drop-down at the very bottom, "ODF Text Document" [.odt], click the down arrow and select which format you wish to save it as. When you have saved it, a box will pop up: click "keep current format" and you are good to go. After that is done, you can send it as a pdf if you choose.
If it is that easy [once I figured it out!] that I can do it, anyone has a chance!

[Kevin Hendrick]

I've been using OpenOffice on Vista for a couple of years -- it works well, and you can't beat the price! The only thing that's frustrating is that they replicated the AutoCorrupt misfeature ... oh well, I can live with that ... "if I have to ... I guess."

Overall, "good stuff, Maynard!"

[big_blue_tubist]

Saving OpenOffice Writer documents as .doc

1/ File > Save As
2/ Under "Save As Type", choose the "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)" option

I have used Open Office for a number of years and am able to easily convert everything to Word [several versions] or to maybe 2 dozen other formats, including pdf's. It's just a matter of HOW you save things: when you get to "save as", go to the drop-down at the very bottom, "ODF Text Document" [.odt], click the down arrow and select which format you wish to save it as. When you have saved it, a box will pop up: click "keep current format" and you are good to go. After that is done, you can send it as a pdf if you choose.
If it is that easy [once I figured it out!] that I can do it, anyone has a chance!

+1

[bisontuba]

Joe-
Forget PC's--they are cheaper, but always have problems--go Mac, and never look back...
mark

[scottw]

As someone who likes to get right down to business rather than being forced to click around and find things prior to typing the first line of type, I don't understand why WORD's default line spacing is screwy. OpenOffice default line spacing is ..."normal".

So------------don't use it! Open Office is free, easy and defaults the spacing just right. I obviously don't have it and don't miss it at all, but I can export it with a couple clicks from OOffice.

[scottw]

As someone who likes to get right down to business rather than being forced to click around and find things prior to typing the first line of type, I don't understand why WORD's default line spacing is screwy. OpenOffice default line spacing is ..."normal".

So------------don't use it! Open Office is free, easy and defaults the spacing just right. I obviously don't have it and don't miss it at all, but I can export it with a couple clicks from OOffice.

[ghmerrill]

I am a long-time user of both Microsoft Word and Open Office. Just so that folks won't get the wrong impression of what I'm about to say I'll point out that I have used both extensively and also used both Windows (in most of its incarnations) and Linux (and most *NIX systems) extensively. For decades.

Word is terrible. It is a blight on the landscape. We all know this. Large chunks of it were poorly designed originally and in fact some significant chunks were written by summer interns long ago. They keep changing the user interface, but the underlying design and code is hopelessly muddled. Any professional who needs to use Word (and most do because of its ubiquity in industry) knows this. It drives my wife (who has been a technical writer, editor, and later a user interface designer for decades) to complete frothing-at-the-mouth rants when she needs to use it.

It is difficult to believe that anything is much worse -- but Open Office manages to be. Open Office attempts to implement the functionality of Word, but it does it in such an inept and incomplete manner that it is even more frustrating to use. And writing anything other than the most simplistic document in Open Office and hoping it will convert to Word in a reasonable way is folly indeed. I tell you this based on my recent experience of two years where I adopted Linux (Ubuntu) as my primary operating system, and attempted to use Open Office as my primary (small) document creation tool. Hopeless. I found that more and more I was bringing up Windows in the Virtual Box so I could use Word. What a pain. Going from one disaster to another. But the degree of pain was relative. I finally abandoned my experiment with Linux (my third over a period of about 20 years), wiped the system, installed Windows 7, and am living with it.

So what are the alternatives? There is the Mac. Mac users LOVE the Mac. I believe they have reason to. I do not have one for two reasons. One is to retain full and straightforward compatibility with Windows systems (which I need to do to some degree). The other is the expense of the system and expense of the software on it. But it is a good and reasonable alternative.

Another alternative (available on Windows, on Linux, or on the Mac -- in fact, on virtually any OS) is LaTeX. This is what I use for any "serious" document work (papers for journals, books, technical reports, etc.). And certainly for anything with graphics in it. I just won't attempt to put a graphic in a Word document any longer. There is a "learning curve" with LaTeX, and it can be a bit steep. LaTeX is fundamentally a "tagged typesetting language" (based on TeX which was invented by Donald Knuth). So you can't have a true WYSIWYG interface to it. But there are some very good "quasi-WYSIWYB" interfaces. There are some reasonable free ones. But the best in my experience is WinEdt (http://www.winedt.com/" target="_blank). It's not free, but it's really cheap. And LaTeX itself is free. The best version of it (I think) is MikTeX (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiKTeX" target="_blank for some details. It downloads and installs straightforwardly (but the whole package takes quite a bit of space). Basically, WinEdt "sits on top of" MikTeX and provides a reasonable user interface to it. But it is VERY different from the look/feel of Word or Open Office. However, you have SUPREME control over your document and its display. It will NOT produce files compatible with Word (e.g., .doc, .docx, etc.). But it WILL easily produce PDF files. (It is the ONLY reasonable alternative for mathematical typesetting and the creation of documents using significant mathematical notation.) There are some very good books on LaTeX -- just look for them on Amazon. It is, I think, the final "reasonable" alternative to Word and Open Office for "normal" people, but it does require effort to adopt and learn it. The other alternatives are things like FrameMaker, which are significantly expensive.

Just my two cents. But if you get frustrated enough, you might try LaTeX. If you do, it might be useful to develop a relationship with a good LaTeX user (universities are full of them, especially in the math and stats departments). Otherwise, get a couple of books, grab some examples online, and go for it.

[Donn]

By the way, in my opinion, this exemplifies the Real Geek Path. Anyone can install Linux or use free software.

Computer software user interfaces for the last couple of decades have tried to promise "easy", "intuitive", "friendly", and that's exactly what you want, if you're a casual user. Microsoft Word is a complex system, though, with a lot of things going on, and it isn't so obvious how to make all those features accessible to the user, and still be intuitive and friendly. Meanwhile, something like LaTex is of course dreadfully difficult to start with - you can't write word one without referring to a manual.

But it's much easier to document, right? Because it's strictly textual, instead of a context-dependent heirarchy of menu options and key/mouse combinations. And the things you learn are right there - you know exactly what you did, because it's in your last document. And they're probably more stable, because LaTex next version isn't going to do a thing to change them.

You don't have to be a genius, just a geek. Whether it's worth it depends how far up the "learning curve" you're headed.

[bisontuba]

Chinese tubas...American computers...

SOMEONE has their priorities all screwed up.

Joe-
Hate to tell you, but Apple Macs, iPads, iPhones, etc. are produced in China {designed by Apple in California, assembled in China}--just like all other computers....but the Apple products work better--that is the bottom line...
mark

[ghmerrill]

By the way, in my opinion, this exemplifies the Real Geek Path. Anyone can install Linux or use free software.

You don't have to be a genius, just a geek. Whether it's worth it depends how far up the "learning curve" you're headed.

Pretty much true on all counts. But the problem with MS Word isn't any complexity inherent in a desktop publishing system, but the fact that it was originally designed solely to produce one-page simply-formatted letters. Then "feature creep" took over without the benefit of coherent product design. It was "designed" by the coders, and not by UI designers. It's like the one-room house you build -- great for the getaway cabin, at least for a while, but then you find yourself married, and then with one kid, and then an elderly parent moves in and ... and each time you just add on "one more room". (Plus, MS doesn't make much off Word nowadays. So there's virtually no motivation to totally redesign and reimplement -- which its user base would rebel at anyway!)

I'll plead guilty to being a geek. I suppose I can't escape it with my work history. But I also don't like spending a lot of time learning a new (and fairly complicated) system for something like just creating a document. LaTeX was worth it to me, and in fact the way I got up to speed on it was by finding some good introductory material, starting with some simple example documents I found with it or on line, and then modifying those and experimenting. I would not have done it without WinEdt. LaTeX is itself complex in various ways. But it has a singular advantage over Word: it is eminently rational and predictable. (In addition, it actually does a lot of things correctly -- like placing pictures and graphics, alignment, tables and lists, indexing, etc., etc.)

If I had unlimited funds, I would use something like FrameMaker (and have in the past). But that's a full-blown professional system, out of reach for most. The problem with learning LaTeX is finding that "good introductory material", in part because there is so much introductory material out there for it. Alas, most of it is written by geeks who make tacit assumptions that you are not likely to understand or even sense that they are being made.

A pretty good (though somewhat geeky) approach is the "Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e" (http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf" target="_blank" target="_blank"). The problem is that this is an introduction to LaTeX itself -- which is to say that it is an introduction to LaTeX used by means of some "text editor" (like a Linux one or MS Notepad), and then the command line approach necessary to generate your finished document from the LaTeX-tagged text file. Yuck! You need to know the stuff in it about how to use the various LaTeX tags, how to set up the document in terms of the LaTeX "commands" in it, and how to put your text in it, but you DON'T need to use the command-line interface. Something like WinEdt handles all that. But -- and here comes the hilarious geek irony -- the documentation for WinEdt assumes you know about LaTeX itself and only describes how to use WinEdt!!!! So unfortunately you have to (a) download and install MikTeX (other versions of LaTeX will work too, but MikTeX is smoothest), (b) get and install WinEdt (it will see your MikTeX installation), and then (c) use WinEdt to learn how to use LaTeX from LaTeX introductions. So that's a bit of a hassle, and I can't recommend that path for everyone. Various glitches can be encountered by novices along the way in terms of installation and configuration -- and getting past some of those tacit assumptions about what you already know. But if you do persevere, you will have a system that is rational, predictable, and that produces wonderful looking documents. However, if all you care about is creating quite short documents (letters, four or five pages mostly of text with maybe some simple tables and lists, etc.), then I would say you should bite the bullet and tolerate the insanity-inducing behavior of Word -- or buy a Mac.

[Rev Rob]

I have been a fan of WordPerfect from the very beginning when IBM compatible computers were being offered. I used it on a Texas Instruments which had the best keyboard I have ever used. However we are now in a world dominated by software giants. I still use WordPerfect a lot. I can adjust line spacing to the nearest .1 of a line. This came in handy when I was in seminary and the professors wanted papers a certain length in pages but not word count. With the right font and adjustment of spacing I could produce papers of the correct page length.

Bloke, if you are using Word 2003 version, check your format for your given text. Fully expand the pull down menu, that drops down when you engage the 'format' button. Your computer default may be putting an extra line between texts at each 'carriage return'. When you engage the Styles and Formatting button on the expanded format drop down you will see a drop down menu on the right that has all sorts of formats listed. Click on 'clear format' and see if your text is able to go to single line.

Micrrosoft Word is the best reason I know of why you should not have loaded shot guns in the same room you have your computer. Bill Gates dares not show his face in my presence. He will get an ear full.
My $.02 worth.

Intensive computer user, but not at the 'Geek' level yet.

[Rev Rob]

By the way, with Open Office word processor, when you select save as, do you have the option of saving the file as an RTF file? RTF files are compatible with Microsoft Word and MS Word can open them.

My $.01 worth.

[Kevin Hendrick]

By the way, with Open Office word processor, when you select save as, do you have the option of saving the file as an RTF file? RTF files are compatible with Microsoft Word and MS Word can open them.

My $.01 worth.

That is one of the available save formats.

[iiipopes]

By the way, with Open Office word processor, when you select save as, do you have the option of saving the file as an RTF file? RTF files are compatible with Microsoft Word and MS Word can open them.

My $.01 worth.

That is one of the available save formats.

Along with .doc files that are compatable with MS Word.