Some mornings, I just want to kill my computer

Doogs · Sep 6, 2007

What dark sorcery powers Mircosoft Word?

This morning I powered up the laptop, opened my revision file, and discovered that, for whatever reason, Word had decided to double-tab EVERY SINGLE ONE of my paragraphs for three consecutive chapters.

WTF?

Kentuk · Sep 6, 2007

Have you been getting interesting emails with MSWord attachments?

mscelina · Sep 6, 2007

Yeah, I wanted to kill my computer too...and DID. Thank the gods it's still under warranty.

And yeah...there are LOTS of interesting email viruses going around right now.

Doogs · Sep 6, 2007

Kentuk said:
Have you been getting interesting emails with MSWord attachments?

Nope. The laptop I use for writing spends most of its time offline, and when it is online the only e-mail getting checked is GMail.

The computer has been stripped down to run lean and mean(ish). No viruses of any kind.

Just Word being Word...

NicoleMD · Sep 6, 2007

I don't know what I clicked on yesterday, but suddenly all of my chapter headings were left justified, not bolded, and in the wrong font. I didn't notice right away, or I would have quit and reopened it, but I'd done a good bit of editing before I noticed. So I had to fix them all by hand. Pain.

Nicole

ZannaPerry · Sep 6, 2007

I feel like that too sometimes. At least I did when my computer was infected with a virus...Now it's clean!

And I love turning my computer on in the mornings.

Azraelsbane · Sep 6, 2007

I hate Word. I hate it! I need to find something better. Any suggestions?

I hate how it takes my paragraphs and randomly separates them out 1.5 space...when I don't push anything, and when I try to backspace it changes fonts and the crashing and the argh! :Soapbox:

heyjude · Sep 6, 2007

WordPerfect rocks. SO much better than Word. I've found it to be more intuitive.

ZannaPerry · Sep 6, 2007

I use the very simple Microsoft Word. I don't have office...anymore...and the word I have...which I think was the first edition works wonders.

Writer14 · Sep 6, 2007

Shhhh...you regret it when you kill your computer.

My friend once got so mad at his computer's 'dark sorcery' that he punched the moniter xD

It shattered...

Azraelsbane · Sep 6, 2007

Writer14 said:
Shhhh...you regret it when you kill your computer.

My friend once got so mad at his computer's 'dark sorcery' that he punched the moniter xD

It shattered...

I broke my first laptop by punching the screen. I was a very violent child, well, teen (14).

I once had a computer almost hit me on the head when someone threw theirs out of a 3rd floor dorm room. I was coming around the back to go up the fire escape ramp (since the front wasn't accessible, I had a key). The damn thing landed right behind me!

Writer14 · Sep 6, 2007

Azraelsbane said:
I broke my first laptop by punching the screen. I was a very violent child, well, teen (14).

I once had a computer almost hit me on the head when someone threw theirs out of a 3rd floor dorm room. I was coming around the back to go up the fire escape ramp (since the front wasn't accessible, I had a key). The damn thing landed right behind me!

Ah-ha! I must be mature! I'm 15 and have yet to break a computer!!! =]]]

ZannaPerry · Sep 6, 2007

Oh, believe me....we have a big two-story house and our first computer I wanted to chuck off the balacony and into the street below so cars can run over it. It was that bad.....besides, there were three people working it at the time, and thank God I have my own computer. Nobody can screw it up but myself.

Violent teen? I know....

Torgo · Sep 6, 2007

heyjude said:
WordPerfect rocks. SO much better than Word. I've found it to be more intuitive.

But publishers (in my experience) loathe it, because their offices tend to be tricked out with Micro$oft Office [This Year-5]. When you open a manuscript that's been saved in WP format in some horror like Word 97, it's like decrypting the Rosetta Stone. Can you save in RTF with WP? Beginning to think something really portable is the way to go.

My particular WP horror story is when we bought in a series of Australian novels from about 10 years ago. The Aussie publishers only had the manuscripts in WordPerfect format, and when I finally managed to get them opened up, I discovered that every single piece of punctuation had been stripped out. The IT dept. was no help, so I spent the next week with an old copy of the book, laboriously adding the punctuation back in...

Zara Ravenwood · Sep 6, 2007

Torgo said:
But publishers (in my experience) loathe it, because their offices tend to be tricked out with Micro$oft Office [This Year-5]. When you open a manuscript that's been saved in WP format in some horror like Word 97, it's like decrypting the Rosetta Stone. Can you save in RTF with WP? Beginning to think something really portable is the way to go.

EEK I've been using rtf files? Will I have to convert them all to MS?
Heres my story.

Frist my Destop gose so I use My roomate laptop for nanaowormo with then dies, then the *disk* I was using dies.. that winter I got my self a Jump Drive...

Ravenlocks · Sep 6, 2007

WordPerfect (at least the version I use) will save in Word or RTF format relatively well, except it sometimes strips out the headers. When I converted my novel from WP to Word, it also added in some footers I didn't want, and Word wouldn't get rid of them no matter what I did (and I'm good with Word!). I've recently just switched over to Word. I hate it, but pretty much everybody seems to use it, so I won't have to worry about conversions.

NicoleMD said:
I don't know what I clicked on yesterday, but suddenly all of my chapter headings were left justified, not bolded, and in the wrong font. I didn't notice right away, or I would have quit and reopened it, but I'd done a good bit of editing before I noticed. So I had to fix them all by hand. Pain.

Nicole

Word may have defined a style based on your formatting (not sure why it changed your font and formatting, but that's Word for ya). To fix it everywhere, you'd have to go into the style and modify it.

I always turn off the "define styles based on your formatting" option, since I like to be in control of what I'm doing instead of having the program try to take charge. That option is under Tools/AutoCorrect/AutoFormat As You Type.

Doogs · Sep 6, 2007

Azraelsbane said:
I hate Word. I hate it! I need to find something better. Any suggestions?

The new Pages in Apple's iWork isn't half bad. Got it installed on my MacBook. But that puppy's too new and shiny for me to tote around to write with. And Pages default saves in a proprietary format. You can export to Word, rtf and pdf formats...but that's exporting, which is a much more layered process than clicking the little disk icon.

Red Robin · Sep 6, 2007

I'm using Open Office. It works quite well, except that the thesaurus function does't always work. It saves in a whole range of different formats, and reads them very well. I suppose I will get MS Office when I am ready to send out manuscripts, just so I can be sure that the files are formatted well enough.

Torgo · Sep 6, 2007

Zara Ravenwood said:
EEK I've been using rtf files? Will I have to convert them all to MS?

Heavens no - RTF is lovely and portable. It's the .wps files that can be problematic, as WP doesn't have so much of the market. If you're having trouble with backups and things, you could also consider Google Docs, which is stored online, so that short of California falling into the sea, there's no way you can lose your work. It even backs you up every few minutes, just to be on the safe side. Only a good solution if you have broadband on tap, though.

wayndom · Sep 6, 2007

Torgo said:
But publishers (in my experience) loathe it, because their offices tend to be tricked out with Micro$oft Office [This Year-5]. When you open a manuscript that's been saved in WP format in some horror like Word 97, it's like decrypting the Rosetta Stone. Can you save in RTF with WP?

Any word processor can save in RTF format. That's the whole idea of RTF, that it's a format that can be read or written-to by any WP.

I'm a WordPerfect loyalist. It does all the same things Word does, but just seems easier and more intuitive in use.

As for computers, I HATE Windows Vista. It takes FOREVER to fire up, and if you don't wait for it to load every stinking little idiotic subroutine it has, and just go ahead and start your WP, you'll type a word, then wait ten seconds before it appears on the screen.

PLUS, all the anti-malware in Vista, intended to disallow rogue programs from messing with your 'puter, interfere with your programs' ability to save subtle changes.

When I installed WordPerfect, I forgot to put all my favorite shortcuts on the toolbar, so a few weeks later, I tried to add some. They added fine, but the next time I fired WP up, they were gone. I had to re-add them every time I used WordPerfect. Arrrrrrgh! I finally uninstalled it, wrote down a list of all the shortcuts I wanted, re-installed it and immediately added all the shortcuts. FINALLY, it's where I want it to be (never had this problem with Windows 95, 98se, or Windows 2000 Pro).

And just so I don't forget how slow it is starting up, it also takes about five minutes to shut down! THANK YOU BILL GATES.

amber_grosjean · Sep 6, 2007

I used to have a lot of problems with Word but a lot of that had to do with jumping from one computer to another. I even lost my whole disk once cause it had to be formatted and I didn't know what formatted even was. Luckliy, I had a back up disk so I didn't have to retype every chapter. Just the last five or so that I had worked on.

Now I have my own computer so I can just use one edition of Words. And I back up things on a cd so I don't have to use disks all the time, which I still use some but it's not as bad since I am using the same program all the time.

If something goes wrong with Words, I have the disk for it so I can wipe it out of my computer and redownload it. That always helps just in case. I've been lucky so far on that lol.

Amber

Xx|e|ph|e|me|r|al|xX · Sep 6, 2007

Open Office and Microsoft Works Word are the two I use. OO has a thesaurus, but no dictionary! So I use MW word's. Thank God they both have a recovery mode. :tongue

And OO saves automatically every 5 or so minutes and once it's saved, it makes saving it unavailable so you know that's it been saved. Then add so much as a dot, you can re save it. I still have XP. I've heard too much bad stuff about Vista.

But I do SO hate this thing sometimes. Especially when I'm, say, trying to play piano and time it right by playing it with the real piece and it turns off in the middle of it. Or when for no reason it shuts down of its own accord...gah.

It's good in between those things, at least. XD

Shadow_Ferret · Sep 7, 2007

Wow, I've never met so many whiners. :tongue

I've never had any problems with MS Word in regard to my personal stuff.

Now let me get to my job for about an hour and then see what my opinion of Word is.

Writer14 · Sep 7, 2007

Shadow_Ferret said:
Wow, I've never met so many whiners.

I've never had any problems with MS Word in regard to my personal stuff.

Now let me get to my job for about an hour and then see what my opinion of Word is.

Psh..I'm so not whining. I was just saying my friend broke their computer. xD

Dave.C.Robinson · Sep 7, 2007

I'm sure there are mornings my computer wants to kill me.

Some mornings, I just want to kill my computer

I want to write what I want to write

Teh doommobile, drivin' rite by you

Onomatopotamus

^ Just Me & a Sharpie

Agony is defeat

Making my own sunshine

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Christina.

Agony is defeat

Christina.

^ Just Me & a Sharpie

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

How novel.

Veni Vidi Scripsi

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

AW Addict

Bored Fanatic

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Christina.

... with the High Command