I’m old enough to remember Microsoft Works.
I miss the simplicity of those days…
I member Corel Word-perfect…
I remember WordPerfect when it was still a DOS program. The simplicity of “this format code affects all text after it” was elegant.
And then we got Word foisted on us, with “this format code (which you have no way of viewing) affects the block of text before it” so if you accidentally delete or move that format code then you screw up a seemingly random bunch of text. And here we are.
Apple‘s office suite is the closest thing to it we have today I think.
I dunno, having two different word processors was kind of confusing
Three. Wordpad also existed.
It’s basically an abysmal text editor combined with the worst page layout software the world has ever seen. Creating documents with it very much resembles masturbating with a blender.
This comment section is like a hivemind. Can’t go a day without a circlejerk.
Want to see them lose their minds? Tell them you installed Word on linux.
It’s almost like a lot of people think that MS Word sucks
I have no idea where they got that from. Maybe it’s something related to Office 365 or they are forced to use Word instead of something else they believe is superior. I’ve been using Word for over two decated and simply can’t understand the hate it gets.
I recently tried to customise the indentation of a numbered list and I kind of understand the hate it gets.
Documents where Word insists on appending an additional empty page that you can’t remove.
Or fighting with page breaks.
Yea I hate Word…
Can you give me a more detailed description of what identation bug you ecountered? The options to set indentation seem straight forward. Were you using multiple nested lists? Were you working on someone else’s document?
As fore pagebreak and empty pages, you kinda have to enable “Show paragraph marks” and see if there is something like an invisible paragraph that is inserted before the pagebreak symbol. It’s stupid, but nothing unmanagable.
Autosave requires the file be saved on onedrive.
I was going to say that the only way to make it worse is if it showed ads while it autosaved, but autosave itself is literally an ad for onedrive.
If you try any of the other decent options, some of them free, you might come to understand the contempt people have for word, because there’s nothing special about it that the others can’t do, and you have to put up with design decisions made because they have market dominance and can use that to push people towards other shit that makes them money.
I am on Office 2019 and autosave just saves the file where you created it. There is an option to go to OneDrive, but nothing is forced. Is your problem related to Office 365?
I believe that is the version my work has us use.
I mean you may not realize it but if you’ve been routinely using it for that long, at this point you pretty likely have well-established workarounds for the annoying bits that barely register for you as workarounds or annoying by now.
Not too different from the phenomenon where the average subject matter expert over time grows unable to relate to or communicate effectively with people having substantially less expertise. Just cuz so much foundational stuff (lacked by novices) is just implicitly baked in, to the point it becomes invisible - water to the proverbial fish or whatever.
It’s true, but you have to learn a piece of software and how it works to be able to use it effectively. I hated Linux for all its quirks and how stuff works differently from Windows. After putting work into it and learning stuff, I am no longer bitching about it as much. It seems to me that this is the same situation with Word and mostly because Microsoft are the way they are.
That’s fair and certainly a real phenomena, no argument there. I’ve prolly been guilty of it myself lol
Want to edit the header just on page 6? Or feel like being sexy and having a single page in landscape or a different size?
Easy! Just make a bunch of separate documents, export them as PDFs, and merge them in Adobe Acrobat.
I agree lots of things about word sucks. But FYI single page landscape is achieved by using two section breaks. It’s not ideal, but its somewhat understandable given how styles are prioritized. I’ve tried others that work well, but they also suffer on things that word does well that we take for granted.
The way it should be handled is to just let me rotate a single fucking page. It’s 2025 and there is zero excuse for that bullshit.
Like I said, I agree it sucks. I’ve had the exact same thought many times.
Microsoft Word is just fine. I assume most of the hate is for Microsoft because Word works just fine for most people’s use cases.
All the issues mentioned in the OP are longstanding issues with word. It’s not “just fine”. It’s really annoying.
PDF is not meant to be edited, it’s meant to be a digital representation of physical paper.
The other problems are just people who don’t actually learn to use Microsoft Word, you certainly can add more words to spellcheck and you can change how images and text interact, the only thing I can think of that caused issues is at one point they changed the default, too many people never learned how to change the layout and keep expecting the old behavior after the change.
Intended or not, millions of people have to edit millions of pdfs every day.
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These people don’t want to hear it. They’re obsessed with the cult of hating Microsoft. If they said, software should be libre/open source and LibreOffice is superior in that regard, I could take them seriously.
For me, it isn’t that it doesn’t work, it works fine enough most of the time. It’s that it’s so heavy! My work PC is just an office special and it can chug with all the bloat from the office suite. Especially Outlook. God I hate Outlook.
Carving animals on the wall of the cave is just fine. I assume most of the hate is for caves because carving animals on the wall works just fine for most ungabungas’ use cases.
I’m not sure which is worse, the fact that you thought this was clever and relevant or the fact that other people upvoted it and helped to validate your unbounded idiocy.
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I don’t deal with that kind of file much but when I do usually Typora
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I’m not sure about charts but code snippets and blocks are handled the same as standard markdown:
function myFunc(arg1, arg2) { const test = 'This is a string'; return null; }It also supports exporting to a variety of formats, although I can’t speak to the accuracy when reading them in other applications as it’s not a feature I’ve used.
Who knew being a monopoly and anti competitive would be so profitable.
So many open source options out there that if you think MS word is the only options out there then you’re not looking hard enough.
Do you really think the multi billion dollar company I work for is going to switch?
You ain’t paying. Why do you care?
The real miracle isn’t Word’s features, it’s how it’s still the default after decades of collective pain.
Same reason Windows is still the default on desktop: EEE and vendor-lock.
If you don’t use \LaTeX, that’s on you.
Never understood the attraction. It sucks.
My favourite feature is the insanely counter-intuitive indenting and bullet points.
This why LibreOffice called out Microsoft for using “complex” file formats to lock in Office users
You using complex file formats for vendor lock in
Me using complex file formats because my code base is shite.
We are not the same
I switched to onlyoffice not looking back
I expected Lemmy to be less repost-obsessed than Reddit yet here we are.
I felt so happy to remember this >20 year old image when I saw the title of this post. I remember finding it very funny back then. Anyway, what’s the appraisal? Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.
would you send that to my mom please?
I think I have used word, like, twice in my life
Lucky you.
