Hi
although I've been using Word2003 at home for a while, the office finally
caught up and I snapped. Admittedly there are several improvements, but I
think some things have been refined so much that they are now past their peak
of useability, and are becoming less and less generally useable as features
are added to solve minority issues. Can I suggest that Microsoft gets a panel
of end users to review specifically this? I'm sure you do anyway, but maybe
focus gets lost sometimes.
Some examples:
1) tracking was easy to understand and flexible in Word2000. It's much
harder to manage in 2003 - although I love the printed output format - a vast
improvement.
2) amending a style format used to be simple - menu format, style; then
change. Now an unwanted help window leaps out, displays a load of stuff I
don't want or need, and takes up 1/3 of the screen. I have to click on a
dropdown to find the modify button.
3) before 2000, we could have text boxes with rounded corners. We lost that
in 2000, but otherwise it was fine. Now when I click on text box, a huge
picture frame springs out and shifts my text all over the place. I had
already clicked where I wanted the text box anchored, so I don't want this. I
have to click outside the boundaries (a tiny space in the margin) to make it
go away - but then I have to relocate and resize the text box. This seems
pretty tedious!
On the other hand, my colleague says mail merge is much more difficult. I
think it's much better.