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Editorium Update 2007/01/25: Microsoft Word 2008
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The Editorium
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Jan 25, 2007 12:50 PST
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EDITORIUM UPDATE
Tips for Publishing Professionals Using Microsoft Word
January 25, 2007
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CONTENTS
Feature Article: Microsoft Word 2008
Readers Write: Ribbon interface
Resources: ReferenceChecker
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MICROSOFT WORD 2008
By Jack M. Lyon
Word 2008, for Macintosh, isn't out yet but will be later this year:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-09MacworldPR.mspx
Like Word 2007 for Windows, it will feature the Ribbon interface, with
all of the drawbacks I discussed in the previous newsletter:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1720752173
But there's one more drawback that will be utterly devastating: No more
recording, programming, or even running of macros. In other words,
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) will *not* be part of Word 2008.
Here's the explanation given by one of the developers:
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
Since I make a living writing Word add-ins, I'm unhappy about this, and
I'm not alone:
http://www.macworld.com/2006/12/opinion/microsoft/
Power users--editors, typesetters, indexers, and other publishing
professionals--are just out of luck on this one.
Solutions?
NeoOffice 2.1 is slated to support VBA:
http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=116
And VBA support is being developed for OpenOffice.org Writer--a very big
deal:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA
http://www.openoffice.org/
You could also do what I'm going to do: Stick with Word 2004.
If you have other solutions, I'd love to hear about them:
mailto:edi-@editorium.com
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READERS WRITE
After reading the last newsletter, India Amos
(http://indiamos.wordpress.com/) wrote:
Thank you so much for writing this review. As soon as I saw Walter
Mossberg's article, I was worried that the new version of Word would
break ETK+.
So, it makes sense to me that integrated *programs* such as FileCleaner,
NoteStripper, and QuarkConverter would continue to work with Word 2007
(phew!), but what will happen to all the specialized toolbars, if the
new Word has no toolbars? I rely heavily on the FileCleaner buttons.
Will I finally have to learn the keyboard shortcuts if I upgrade, or
will there be still some buttony interface?
I responded:
They'll still be there, but only in the "Add-ins" section of the ribbon.
And they can't be moved around, either. So you'll still be able to use
the buttons, but you won't be able to move the toolbars anywhere else.
You'll find some screenshots of the Ribbon interface here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101679411033.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100898951033.aspx
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Rohn from Winnipeg wrote:
I feel your pain/pane with the "New & Improved" Office 2007 Ribbon UI. I
haven't had a chance to try it myself, but what I've seen in
demonstrations etc, doesn't impress me. I just came across this blog:
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/10/09/58
It has a few dozen links (literally!) detailing the design of the UI by
someone who worked on it.
The few links I've read so far have been interesting and informative.
One of them describes why they limited customization, only approximately
1% of all users do any significant amount of customization (and he
mentioned that it represents something like 130 million individuals!)
Another "interesting" site is some more M$ propaganda in Comic form
promoting the Ribbon UI:
http://www.enchantedoffice.com/default.asp
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Susan Daffron (http://www.logicalexpressions.com) wrote:
At the risk of sounding like a "me too," I completely agreed with your
analysis of what's wrong with the tack Microsoft is taking with Word.
| | | | This combination of making the interface more and more generic and
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customization more and more difficult has, in my opinion, finally
resulted in a version of Word (2007) that is unfit for any but two sets
of users: the most basic, and the most advanced (programmers).<<
In fact, I'd venture to say that they are making this mistake with
almost ALL their products.
Our company develops software and my husband is a programmer.
Microsoft's development tools on the one hand have all these "ease of
use" features built in now, yet have become SO complicated that trying
to build a simple application is no longer simple.
In my case, like you I've been writing about Word for a long time now
(although at a much lower level; my articles are generally for
frustrated newbies). But I'm at the point where I want to completely
stop. My favorite version of Word is 2000. (I almost never even open
2003 if I can help it.) The Task Pane was awful enough; I want to get
off the bus.
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Expert word-whacker Hilary Powers is writing--and will, in a few months,
be publishing--a book on editing in Microsoft Word. The title? "Making
Word Work for You: An Editor's Intro to the Tool of the Trade."
Personally, I can hardly wait. I'll announce the book's publication with
great gusto as soon as it becomes available, so stay tuned.
Hilary Powers (http://www.powersedit.com) wrote:
If you still have Word 2003 available, you can make Word 2007 give you
most of the old interface. Here's a sneak preview from "Making Word Work
for You: An Editor's Intro to the Tool of the Trade," due out soon from
the Editorial Freelancers Association:
The next PC release, Word 2007, has--what joy--a completely different
interface, sans menus, with (as of this writing) no company plan to make
the old display available. To get around this, Cindy Meister, a
Microsoft MVP, suggests taking the time in your pre-2007 copy of Word to
create a menu template. . . . What you do is go to Tools, Customize and
create a new toolbar, saving it in this template. Press Ctrl and drag
each Word menu (File, Edit, Insert, and the rest, including any custom
menus you've created) into the toolbar and save it. When the dread day
comes, copy the menu template to your Word 2007 machine and list it with
the add-ins, using whatever procedure that system turns out to require.
All your Word menus, more or less as you know them now, should appear.
Cindy adds, "Of course, no guarantees that all of them will work just
like what you're used to. As of beta 2: Some things do map to the new
interface; some don't have any effect at all. But most appear to
continue to access current (Word 2003) interfaces." It's not a disaster;
comments from beta testers indicate that most macros and add-ins
continue to work properly in the new environment, and the new user
interface has much to recommend it. Me, I'll probably upgrade
eventually--but I'll give it at least a year or two to settle down
first.
Many thanks to India, Rohn, Susan, and Hilary. If you have questions,
hints, or comments you'd like to share, please send an email message
here:
mailto:edi-@editorium.com
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RESOURCES
ReferenceChecker checks numerical (Vancouver) and name+date-style
(Harvard and APA) references in Word files. The website contains a
download section where users can obtain a free, fully functional trial
version:
http://www.goodcitations.com
If you'd like to tell us about a resource that others might find useful,
please email us here: mailto:resou-@editorium.com
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HELP WANTED
If you need help with Word, there are actually lots of places to go.
Some of the best include:
The Word-PC List:
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/word-pc.html
The McEdit list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/McEdit/
Microsoft's Word discussion groups:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/FlyoutOverview.mspx#13
(Look in the lower right of the page.)
The Word MVP site:
http://word.mvps.org/
Woody's Lounge:
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/postlist.pl?Cat=&Board=wrd
But if you can't find what you need in those places, send your question
here:
mailto:he-@editorium.com
I'll put your question in the newsletter to see if some astute reader
knows the answer.
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Editorium Update (ISSN 1534-1283) is published by:
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