MS Word is a nuisance

[hendorog]

BTW I'm kind of amazed how editing text hasn't really been made easier since the days of Wordperfect.

I'm amazed how much slower it is. There used to be people who were genuinely rapid on Wordperfect and Lotus 123 - and on the old Autocad 2d come to mention it.

On a 286 in 1990 you could hit /fr on lotus to load a file, type part of the filename and hit enter to load it. The screen would refresh as fast as you could hit the keys. You could operate the computer as fast as you could think.

On my i7 SSD laptop the same keystrokes actually still work in Excel. But Excel cannot keep up and I have to wait, then be careful to react to the list of files which appear on the screen to select the correct file. It isn't possible to be fast with these applications, they just don't support that muscle memory mode of operation.

[Mr. Scram]

Use Frontpage or InDesign. Both are intended for designing page layouts. The right tool for the right job.

[tpowell1830]

I've been helping with documentation by creating DXFs of PCB layers that are imported into Visio, and then imported into Word. This is to create ECO procedures, etc.

Needless to say, Word is a huge pain. Stuff suddenly moves all over the place, you try to save and you "a file error has occurred" and you lose hours of work, etc...

What do you use under Windows to create 10-20 page documents that are simply one or two drawings and two or three lines of text per page?

Go from Visio to pdf, it's easy.

[IanB]

Needless to say, Word is a huge pain. Stuff suddenly moves all over the place, you try to save and you "a file error has occurred" and you lose hours of work, etc...

What do you use under Windows to create 10-20 page documents that are simply one or two drawings and two or three lines of text per page?

I use Word. It's fine.

However...

You do have to know how to use the layout features. For drawings and pictures you need to set the text wrapping and the anchor options the way you want them. You may also want to resize the pictures (shrink them a bit). Otherwise things will "jump around". It's behaving as designed.

I've never seen a file error with saving. That may actually be a problem with your computer or disk or network or something?

[Messtechniker]

I use Word. It's fine.

However...

A further workaround against jumping pics or several pics stacking
on the the top of a page, is to copy each pic in a one box table.

By the way:
The tables function in Word is known to be reliable.
Many footnotes on many pages is highly unreliable. The footnotes do not always stick
to the corresponding page but some tend to move to the next page.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Whatever the reason was for everything jiggling around when I paste in converted DXFs from Visio, it can be fixed by reapplying the "normal" style and everything flows back into place.

Very very odd. 

[BrianHG]

Whatever the reason was for everything jiggling around when I paste in converted DXFs from Visio, it can be fixed by reapplying the "normal" style and everything flows back into place.

Very very odd. 

When pasting, like I said, use Shift-CTRL-V instead of paste or CTRL-V.  Then choose the method of importing the paste like I explained in my earlier post.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Thanks, but it's random. I started using the clip organizer to import the drawings as clip art, it's much faster. Most of the time I slap in the clip and the page stays the same. Once in a while everything goes weird again and I reapply the normal style and it fixes itself.

[tooki]

I've been helping with documentation by creating DXFs of PCB layers that are imported into Visio, and then imported into Word. This is to create ECO procedures, etc.

Needless to say, Word is a huge pain. Stuff suddenly moves all over the place, you try to save and you "a file error has occurred" and you lose hours of work, etc...

What do you use under Windows to create 10-20 page documents that are simply one or two drawings and two or three lines of text per page?

Have you tried making PDFs of the graphics and then placing those on the page?