Greetings, Don't let the headings throw you, as a usability analyst and interface designer practicing here in NYC, I assure you they are understated. I have found myself for the past two months in a virtual "dream job," in every respect that is, except that I am forced to use MS Word 2003 for documentation. The company is finally about to replace this Gorgon with software that does not subject its users to "software terrorism," but it has been a harrowing time indeed. Perhaps I am ignorant of some secret trick for turning off all of the terror tactics which MS Word employs, though not for want of searching its so-called "Help." If so, please tell me how to stop ALL of MS Word's automatic "you don't know what you want so I'm going to slap your face and shove what I think you want down your throat" features. You see, I am creating multiple outlines with screen shots and text. And Word seems to have a perverse, sinister and sadistic mind of its own. I try to separate the end of an outline, and restart it as a new outline. Word then spends five minutes destroying every outline in the document, then will not allow an undo, destroying the document. What ever could its designers have been thinking? Was it ever even actually "designed" by anyone? If such criminally obtrusive and unusable software is indeed a creature of design, and the world's adoption of it as a word processing standard is slavish obeisance to OS monopoly, then truly, de profundis, I despair of humanity. I use the word "terror" advisedly. I make a change to one of eight or ten separate outlines, say increasing the indent to the next outline level, and whoa, the hour glass pointer appears and persists interminably while I wait helplessly to see whether the software will destroy all my work up to that moment, result in unacceptable delays, earn disfavor higher up, cost me my dream job, render me unable to make monthly payments, and culminate in financial ruin, homelessness, and death. Though by no means predictable, most often the result of one keystroke, like a tab in the outline, when Word finally does render its twisted idea of my idea, is to transform the entire 8 or 10 outlines into one demon outline with fff) at my tab insertion point instead of the a) I expected and deserved. When this occurs, many, many times a day, I am jerked and abused through a gauntlet of emotions ranging from fear, terror, disgust, rage, and speechless bewilderment. Again, and again, and again. Now, it will no longer allow an undo, "too many edits" it perversely advises, leaving the document destroyed. Having software yank one's emotional chain is grossly abusive and arguably criminal, holding you at pointer's gun point while you wait breathlessly in a paralysis of fear to know your fate is nothing short of terrorism. Native, all-American terrorism practiced by one of the country and the world's leading corporations: Microsoft. In its world-standard Word product. I discovered, quite by accident, that (in most cases), the Cntrl Z or the undo command will cause the software to reverse its fascistic zeal and un-destroy my document, occasionally leaving me with something akin to what I desired and expected. This is the terrorist saying, 'well, I didn't actually harm you after all, did I?' As if terror were not terror if there is no bodily harm. Now it has escalated to bodily harm, disallowing undo, and destroying the document permanently. What disturbs me at least as much is that outrage against this treatment is not ubiquitous, is in fact absent, though mass demonstrations in the street would be a most appropriate response to corporate adoption of this insidious corporate terror. I dispair of a humanity that could adopt such junkware as a de facto WP standard, that could allow it to exist at all. If anyone knows how I can completely disarm the terror this application is programmed to inflict, please do let me know. I would be delighted to manually create everything without its "helpful" destruction.
