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Is there a wordsmith in the house?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by hyo silver, Apr 15, 2010.

  1. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Microsoft Word 2007 and I aren't getting along very well at the moment. I'm not sure which of us is more arrogant - me for insisting I know how to spell, or the program for insisting I don't. I don't mind it checking things over for me - I will admit to the occasional miscommunication between mind and machine - but the constant automatic "corrections" are driving me nuts. The issue is one of language. I have set and reset the default many times, and have even gone so far as to remove the offending language from the list. It seems alright with new documents, but opening an old one kindly reinstalls the language for me and sets it as the default. :target:

    I don't care what country a document thinks it's from, or where it thinks it's going, I want it to speak like a native. Is there a way to do this, permanently, for all documents? Or do I have to neuter and eviscerate spellcheck?
     
  2. airportkid

    airportkid Will Fly For Food

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    That Microsoft software developers' hubris that they know what the user wants better than the user, and that users only have 2 digit IQs, has been an ineradicable infestation of all Microsoft products going back to Bill Gate's diaper days. I think that gang up there in Redmond really believes they're saving us from ourselves and making the world better, but god help any one of them if a user ever finds one of them alone on the street and the user finds out he's just met a Microsoft software developer. Except for burning the place down, I don't think there's a cure.
     
  3. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    One of my least favorite applications is MS Word. I try to avoid it as much as possible, so I can't really help. I use a plain text editor (TextEdit) for most stuff.
     
  4. Boo

    Boo Boola Boola Member

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    Word beating out WordPerfect was worse than VHS beating out Betamax.

    All the capabilities I want from a word processor:

    1. Ability to insert, add, delete, move, copy and search text.
    2. Ability to manually run spell check.
    3. Headers and footers.
    4. Tables.

    Don't need auto-spell check, auto-paragraph numbering, auto-paragraph indentation ....
     
  5. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    If there is a way, we are not aware of it.

    When I say "we" I am referring to myself and my 465,000 coworkers in 190 countries, many of whom share documents with counterparts in other areas of the world. For example, almost every time I get a document from Canada, Germany, Switzerland, India or China, the language settings change. Sometimes the measurements change to metric. It would be borderline tolerable if this occurred only for the open document but these changed settings are really damned persistent. They persist into New documents. They persist when I close Word and reopen it. They get applied to documents I created and shared with no one.

    Yes. There are many aspects of Office that I sincerely do not like.
     
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  6. Author

    Author New Member

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    Switch to free OpenOffice on Linux; save and send docs in PDF, or any format. I also use Apple's OSX. Microsoft is frustration! Have not used any of it since 1998.
     
  7. Rae Vynn

    Rae Vynn Artist In Residence

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    Hey, Hyo... if I had Word on this laptop, I'd give you the walk through for how to fix it.
    Have you tried just right-clicking the offending word corrections, and then selecting "add to dictionary"? Tedious, yes, but you only have to do it once for each word, then it won't bother you again.
     
  8. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Somebody always beats me to it!

    However, I will add that if you are still using Windows, you can use OpenOffice (you don't have to be running Linux to use it), and if you are using OS X you can use NeoOffice, which is simply a port of OpenOffice to the Mac. Both programs are free and both are open source. And both include analogs of the entire MS Office suite.

    It is silly to allow Bill on your computer. I gave Bill the boot several years ago and will not permit anything from Microsoft onto my computer. It is all defective.
     
  9. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    Since WHEN has Office 2007 gotten along with ANYBODY?!

    I have an MSDN subscription, and I still refuse to use Office.

    Others have pointed out the solution - run OpenOffice and go back to leading a fairly normal life

    OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

    Sharp readers will notice that Oracle has the lead now for OpenOffice, not Sun
     
  10. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    Um, everybody is aware that Sun is now part of Oracle, right?
     
  11. Author

    Author New Member

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    Bravo and well put, Daniel. You shame me with your rides, though. My other car, a 2002 Miata MX-5, is my big failing.
     
  12. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    OpenOffice is my choice if I have to do those sort of tasks.

    AmiPro was a great word processor. It had all of the style and formatting anyone would need, a great user interface, and everything worked as a normal person would expect. Sadly it was purchased by Lotus, who then reworked it as Lotus WordPro, and it was eventually killed by competition from MS Word. I would still use it if it ran on the current operating systems.

    Tom
     
  13. Stev0

    Stev0 Honorary Hong Kong Cavalier

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    I agree 100%. Although I do run Windows because the computer has to run something, right? And I admit I have Office, because that's what clients I have work with. And I have Internet Explorer, obviously, because I'm using the Web.

    But other than that, there are no Microsoft products on my computer.
     
  14. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    :sick: :evil:
     
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  15. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    Some of us don't have a choice in the matter. Work drives the decisions.
    - We have exclusive partnerships with Dell.
    - We have exclusive partnerships with Microsoft.
    - We DO NOT support Mac.
    - IT/IS knows exactly what is installed where at any given time.
    - Files are shared continuously and MUST be 100% compatible.

    For some of us, "use a Mac" is not an option for nine hours each day, using anything other than what everyone else is using is not an option.
     
  16. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    In that situation, my only advice to clients is this:

    Heavy

    and

    Drinking

    that will be $5,878.42 please
     
  17. Author

    Author New Member

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    Microsoft = Hummer
    Mac = Prius
    Linux = full EV
     
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  18. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    If environmentalism is the criteria, we're all going to hell. But my Zap Xebra is one hell of a fun ride. :)

    :pound:

    Change jobs. :D
     
  19. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Thanks. I was afraid of that. Good thing I don't have to use it much. I toyed with the idea of using Apple's new Pages and Numbers, but orifice was on for such a good price, I thought I'd go with that. I use Excel all the time and it's at least liveable, for the most part, though it comes conjoined with its evil twin. I wouldn't use Windows at all, except that two programs essential to my work are written only for that OS. Fortunately, it all seems to run pretty well with Parallels on a mac. I felt badly desecrating such a lovely machine, but it's better than the alternative. Plus, it's about the only nod to big brother I have to tolerate. I swore off commutes and cube farms decades ago. :)

    So, good bye smellcheque. If I happen to type angoraphobia (fear of rabbits) instead of what I really mean, I'll just half to take that risque. ;)
     
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  20. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    I wonder if that is how the members of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS"]SS[/ame] felt about their leader?* :madgrin:













    * I'm invoking Godwin's Law. :madgrin: