July 7, 2005

Book Review: Word Annoyances
How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is great for typing but sometimes you just can't make it do what YOU want done. O'Reilly's new book offers a solution and writes:

At some point, says Guy Hart-Davis, it dawns on most Word users: "Word is trying to help you, and its help is making things worse. Life would be so much less annoying if only you could tell Word how to do things your way." Now, with his new "Word Annoyances" (Hart-Davis, O'Reilly, US $19.95), readers can practically eliminate frustration as they take control of their favorite word processor.

Hart-Davis has been using Word for more than fifteen years, during which
he has seen its capabilities increase steadily and its annoyances increase
exponentially. In this smart guide to outsmarting Word, he delivers fixes
or workarounds to every Word annoyance he (and anyone he knows) has
encountered, and shows readers how to tailor Word to their individual
needs and preferences.

Covering most versions of Word--including Word 2000, Word 2002/Word XP, and Word 2003--"Word Annoyances" provides solutions for hundreds of common and not-so-common editing, formatting, printing, faxing, and scanning problems. Users can say good riddance to Word's greatest annoyances, like the way it automatically creates the same blank document upon startup, continually prompts users to send error reports to Microsoft, offers "File in Use" messages even though no one else has the document open, creates hyperlinks users didn't ask for and don't want, insists on underlining words and sections with offensive and distracting red and green squiggles, forces bigger margins than necessary, adjusts table column widths without
user consent, and so on.

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