I have it at work and absolutely despised it for the first three months or so. You get used to some of its quirks after a while, though. (And, in a truly scary development, it appears to be getting used to some of MY quirks. Software should not learn. I'm not ready for that.)
i have it at my office and it has sent me to tears a few times because i couldn't figure out the "edit, undo" command (CTRL-Z, but i found out too late0 and other stupid, non-intuitive shit, always when i need to hand the syllabi out or turn the grant application in, in an HOUR.
I promise you that tech support people are dreading the roll out. It will happen, but most IT folks are dragging their feet until user training is provided.
There will be a time when we have to do it though......
Word will make whatever kind of file you want. When you hit save you can choose from a ton of formats in the dropdown below filename, and there are add-ins to allow it to create more formats. You can create PDF, RTF, XPS, doc, docx, and lots more. There are also compatability tools to allow you to open docx in non-Word2007 tools.
OpenOffice is a decent free tool though, just want you to know what some easily available work arounds are if you must use our dreaded tools :)
Of course Word can produce many different file types. The complaint was that Word 2007 sucks as a word processor, which is true. OpenOffice 2.4 "feels" more like Office XP than Word 2007 does, so it seemed relevant. I mention the .docx compatibility because most users of any office suite aren't going to take the time to learn how to change a file type, much less bother to do so if they know how.
I mean, this is nothing unique to Microsoft's office suite. OpenOffice sucks too, it just sucks a little less. An office suite shouldn't be that big - the eye candy and auto-formatting stuff is really getting out of hand. MS is just ahead of the curve on adding unnecessary crap.
Hard to be objective since I work for Microsoft, but I have been using Word since 1995 and it always seemed fairly intuiive to me as a PC/Windows user. Mac users tend to hate it, but then again I hate the Mac OS and its idea of what is intuitive. Maybe it is what you are used to.
For instance, I can't think of a single program I have ever used that did not use ctrl+z for undo (kind of responding to a below comment). I honestly did not know where the icon is since I am always typing and rarely want to take my hands of the keys to use the mouse. Not sure if you guys knew, but if you had hit F1 you get very good context sensitive help (and not that damned Clippy thing). I typed undo in the help box it SHOWED me right where it was and also shows the keyboard shortcut for it too.
It did take me a while to get used to the context sensitive ribbon toolbar, because I got used to having to search endlessly for things. Now that I got tha hang of it I love it. And I live in Microsoft Office.
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There will be a time when we have to do it though......
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OpenOffice is a decent free tool though, just want you to know what some easily available work arounds are if you must use our dreaded tools :)
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I mean, this is nothing unique to Microsoft's office suite. OpenOffice sucks too, it just sucks a little less. An office suite shouldn't be that big - the eye candy and auto-formatting stuff is really getting out of hand. MS is just ahead of the curve on adding unnecessary crap.
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For instance, I can't think of a single program I have ever used that did not use ctrl+z for undo (kind of responding to a below comment). I honestly did not know where the icon is since I am always typing and rarely want to take my hands of the keys to use the mouse. Not sure if you guys knew, but if you had hit F1 you get very good context sensitive help (and not that damned Clippy thing). I typed undo in the help box it SHOWED me right where it was and also shows the keyboard shortcut for it too.
It did take me a while to get used to the context sensitive ribbon toolbar, because I got used to having to search endlessly for things. Now that I got tha hang of it I love it. And I live in Microsoft Office.
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