… or whatever this annoying piece of software is called right now.
I never liked to use programmes associated with the Microsoft Office bundle. When I was a young and naive computer beginner, I started using Open Office. Because it was free. Because somebody said something about open source, which I did not understand, but using it was cool. That was a long time before I discovered the two big Ls (Linux and Latex).
During the last year I had to use Microsoft Word and its colleagues. Why? Because the company I worked for demanded it. So I used it. And because it was pretty close to Open Office I did not have many problems to grow accustomed to it. Most probably it is the other way round: Open Office has its look-and-feel from the pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Office.
So now on my new work pc at university there is this all shiny and glossy new office software. And what should I say? It can be as shine and glossy as it wants – I hate it. It sucks. It does not carry many reminders of its previous versions, besides still being a programme to write texts with.
The GUI has been rearranged completely. Nothing is, where it used to be. Why do people do that? I am by no means a Word-crack. But what about people, who have been using this programme for years? What about them, when even I am soooo pissed and it annoys me so much, I could bite my desk?
This is the thing, which annoyed me most (and which made me use very inappropriate language on my computer):
In Word one can display characters such as spaces and line ends and tabs. Well, once it was a button, which one clicked and everything went fine. It still is a button, but when you click it, it says “I can’t do that because macros have been disabled.” Then it offers help and such stuff. Hellohoooo? Who enables macros on a text document? So you try to find out how to enable macros, right? Right. There’s this nice ‘Help’ button in the message box. So why don’t we have a look there? Good idea, one might think. But obviously someone thought it was great to give a lecture on why macros are dangerous and how they can damage your system. Thank you.
So you start using the Microsoft help system. As long as you are working offline, there’s not much to be found. So you ask for online results – and using the internet explorer (worse than Word!) you have to confirm for every page of the Microsoft online help that you really requested it, because the internet explorer has marked these sites as non trusted! Nice to know, that not even Microsoft products trust their creators.
So for everybody thinking ‘well I don’t need to have tabs displayed – why should I care?’: Printing also requires macros to be switched on.
I’ll have some potatoes with my desk, please. And could somebody hand me some salt? Thanks.
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