Marshmellow Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Word is completely terrible for anything other than single column text Anything else and it just annoys me so much, especially large documents with photos, graphs, tables, and double column Does anyone have any better alternatives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Use a ghost writer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19 year mortgage 8itch Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Apple Pages Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bossybabe Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Apple Pages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sPinwheel Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Notepad.exe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frozen_out Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Word is completely terrible for anything other than single column text Anything else and it just annoys me so much, especially large documents with photos, graphs, tables, and double column Does anyone have any better alternatives Word is actually pretty awesome, its just that most people don't take the time to learn it and understand why some of the stuff they're doing is going wrong. Word Tables are very powerful when you know what you're doing.My advice (having written a number of lengthy docs in word) don't worry about replacing it and find an online tutorial that shows you how to use it properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bendy Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 No idea TBH as I hate word processing stuff - have a look at Libre/Open Office though, could be worth a shot being open source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FallingAwake Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I use LibreOffice. Then, when I need to share a doc with someone, I copy and paste it into a Google Docs document. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InlikeFlynn Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I moved over to Libre Office and Open Office from Microsoft word last year because, on buying a new computer, I begrudged microsoft the money for yet another copy of MS orifice. The combination of thunderbird and libre office does well enough, but even as a freeware fan I have to admit that Word is a more powerful and better documented program than its freeware equivalents. As frozen_out has said, If yiou already have MS Word I'd get a book or google some web tutorials to improve your Word skills rather than retraining on another less powerful program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinker Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Kingston Office is pretty similar. Word, once you know it is, very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I moved over to Libre Office and Open Office from Microsoft word last year because, on buying a new computer, I begrudged microsoft the money for yet another copy of MS orifice. The combination of thunderbird and libre office does well enough, but even as a freeware fan I have to admit that Word is a more powerful and better documented program than its freeware equivalents. As frozen_out has said, If yiou already have MS Word I'd get a book or google some web tutorials to improve your Word skills rather than retraining on another less powerful program. I have used Libre. When you open a .doc or .docx, it puts the formatting all over the shop...you've then got to go back and reformat the document. Now mainly use Google Docs with my Chromebook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porca misèria Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Here's a useful upgrade from either Microsoft or Libreoffice: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SarahBell Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Quark express? Publisher? Felt tips? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Quark express? Publisher? Felt tips? Yes, it sounds like the OP is wanting something more akin to Pagemaker than a text editing tool? I would go for Open Office or Libre Office over Word - and only buy a 12 month Word subscription for under £50. I see Apple are going after Word by incorporating Pages in new ipads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Habeas Domus Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Word is completely terrible for anything other than single column text Anything else and it just annoys me so much, especially large documents with photos, graphs, tables, and double column Does anyone have any better alternatives What exactly are you finding so terrible? "documents with a mix of photos, graphs, tables, and double columns" are exactly the use case where Word tends to excel compared with the alternatives. One thing I do find makes a big difference is your choice of printer, or more specifically printer driver. Word works by placing its layout onto a grid driven by the paper size and margins of the printer. Many times I have found that buggy behaviour goes away as soon as you set the default printer to something different (and using default Microsoft drivers). To really learn Word properly would need about 4 or 5 days of full time training rather than the 10 minutes which most people get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The XYY Man Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 XYY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Hovis Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Echoing the comments above: most people don't like Word because most people don't know how to use Word. Excel is fairly intuitive so you can pick it up a bit of a time; learn graphs when you need to use graphs. With Word however most people don't get beyond the typewriter stage because it is hard to pick up individual things when all you want it to do is just look right. Modesty aside I am superb at Excel but I am merely adequate when it comes to Word. I am however regarded as just very good at Excel because most people are pretty good but an absolute genius at Word because most people's ability with Word is on the floor. Go on an Intermediate Word course and you too could become an absolute genius! Don't bother with Advanced Word unless you have a desire to do a mailmerge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blobloblob Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Libre Office for me but with a nod to the previous comment about formatting. .doc and.xls are mostly fine - it's just tables in Word that seem to go wrong. .xlsx and .docx though, just don't bother - ask the person who created them to File->Save As Type->Older format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshmellow Posted September 29, 2014 Author Share Posted September 29, 2014 It is more that the layout goes wrong When your document is 60 pages and you replace 1 figure and then you have to check every other page incase its ****** it up I have read that LaTeX is good, and in fact a course was advertised saying that Word is obsolete for scientific reports and it was reading this advertisement that made me consider whether there are easier alternatives than word I.E in word I spend most of my time trying to get the format right - I just want to write and have all the format neatly done for me or at least with minimal fuss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Echoing the comments above: most people don't like Word because most people don't know how to use Word. Excel is fairly intuitive so you can pick it up a bit of a time; learn graphs when you need to use graphs. With Word however most people don't get beyond the typewriter stage because it is hard to pick up individual things when all you want it to do is just look right. Modesty aside I am superb at Excel but I am merely adequate when it comes to Word. I am however regarded as just very good at Excel because most people are pretty good but an absolute genius at Word because most people's ability with Word is on the floor. Go on an Intermediate Word course and you too could become an absolute genius! Don't bother with Advanced Word unless you have a desire to do a mailmerge. I did the ECDL (Electronic Computer Driving Licence) a few years ago...I got into mail merge, margins, etc. It took about 6 months to complete at my local college. Prob better on Word than I am than Excel. http://www.ecdl.org/programmes/index.jsp?p=108&n=2929 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshmellow Posted September 29, 2014 Author Share Posted September 29, 2014 What exactly are you finding so terrible? "documents with a mix of photos, graphs, tables, and double columns" are exactly the use case where Word tends to excel compared with the alternatives. One thing I do find makes a big difference is your choice of printer, or more specifically printer driver. Word works by placing its layout onto a grid driven by the paper size and margins of the printer. Many times I have found that buggy behaviour goes away as soon as you set the default printer to something different (and using default Microsoft drivers). To really learn Word properly would need about 4 or 5 days of full time training rather than the 10 minutes which most people get. And this actually I have many times printed something to PDF and a title go missing and I haven't noticed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Eagle Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I use LibreOffice. Then, when I need to share a doc with someone, I copy and paste it into a Google Docs document. Great idea, that way you can be sure that it will be safely backed up in the NSA data warehouse too. Should you lose the document you could then ask the NSA to provide you a copy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Habeas Domus Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 It is more that the layout goes wrong When your document is 60 pages and you replace 1 figure and then you have to check every other page incase its ****** it up How many sections do you have?, for a 60 page document you want to have plenty of page breaks and section breaks so that changes to one page don't affect very many others. My bugbear with word processing is that so often people spend a lot of time formatting things to fit into A4 pages, and then they never get printed - just emailed around and read on screen. So why are you bothering? Instead of scrolling down through 60 paper sized pages you could have tabs within each document like web browser tabs and sections of text which expand and collapse at the click of a button. A much faster & easier way to work. This already exists, and is called an outliner but hardly anyone uses them because we are still so wedded to the idea of printing documents on paper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshmellow Posted September 29, 2014 Author Share Posted September 29, 2014 For stuff like that I just use power point Are u talking about the 'outline' view option in word? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TheBlueCat Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.