So I just helped a friend get his dissertation formatted in Word 2007. After that fiasco, I’m horribly horribly glad that I’m using word 97 to write my stuff in.

The problem with 2007 is that they made everything so “user friendly” that they forgot that user’s have to be able to fix things too. And that’s a hassle and a half when nothing is set up to make any sense in 2007. They must assume that people using it just will never adjust margins on more than one page, or have to undo a section break put in yesterday. What a pain in the ass.

Word 97, on the other hand, has every command in a menu, and the menus make heierarchical sense. That’s the worst thing about 2007’s “ribbon”…none of the commands underneath the categories make any sense whatsoever..and it’s completely backwards on some of the stuff in order to fix it. There’s no “view hidden” or anything to take out the $#)(*7′n automatic indenting or any of the automatic formatting that word 2007 so dearly loves, so it’s a treasure hunt each time one of those things needs to be taken out.

Now I just hope my laptop makes it through next year…it ought to. It was made before gateway lost all self respect, and has held up fantastically so far. Windows 98 and Word 97: saving my sanity.