Microsoft Word is worse than Hitler

[Alidar Jarok]

Apologies for the hyperbolic thread title. I used to think Microsoft Word and I had a good relationship. I had mostly figured it out and it did basically what I expected it to do. However, recently, it stopped responding the way I was used to. I have two specific examples. I was wondering if anyone knew how to change it back so it would start doing these things.

Normally, when I hit enter on an indented paragraph, the next paragraph would start with an indent. That is fine with me. However, I used to be able to hit backspace to remove the indent. Now it deletes the return space entirely. I have to go over to the paragraph tab and manual remove the indent.

I also used to be able to do bullet points and then nest another bullet point inside by hitting tab or going back to the next level out by hitting shift-tab (I know I didn't explain that very well). It stopped doing that too.

Anyone know what caused this or how to fix it?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

What version of Word are you using?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Office Professional Plus 2010
Version 14.0.6129.5000 (I don't think I needed to go that far, but there you go).

 

[Bisz]

Are you wearing mustard coloured pants and an armband? I hear Word likes that...

Seriously. Thread title is not any cooler than saying something is "gay" because you don't like it or that someone is a "Jew" because you won't buy you lunch.

My panties aren't in a bunch, I don't care all that much, it doesn't offend me. But that usage of "Hitler" should die out.

 

[STR]

Whenever Word starts doing something weird to me, I just copy my whole document and paste it into a new file. Helps with weird things like what you're talking about and documents that get bogged down because I was working one it with 3 different versions of Office plus OfficeSuite Pro for Android.

Having said that, they way Word deals with 1) paragraphs 2) Sections 3) page count fields has been pissing my off for the last month. On the plus side, 2013's integration with Skydrive has been a lifesaver.

 

[Trekky0623]

At the top where the margin ruler is, the blue markers represent the text margins and indentions. Slide the top back to change the first line indent.

 

[Sector 7]

Are you wearing mustard coloured pants and an armband? I hear Word likes that...

Seriously. Thread title is not any cooler than saying something is "gay" because you don't like it or that someone is a "Jew" because you won't buy you lunch.

My panties aren't in a bunch, I don't care all that much, it doesn't offend me. But that usage of "Hitler" should die out.

Being of Jewish descent, I do find it offensive that the term "Hitler" is so commonly used for trivial matters. Being a gay male, I also think the word "gay" used in the same manner is offensive. At the very least, it just shows insensitivity to do so.

 

[Dukhat]

So saying "Microsoft Word sucks," or "I need help with Microsoft Word" wouldn't have gotten your point across?

 

[scotpens]

How about, "Microsoft Word is worse than the Spanish Inquisition"?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

At the top where the margin ruler is, the blue markers represent the text margins and indentions. Slide the top back to change the first line indent.

My point is I used to be able to do this with a simple backspace. Now I have to manually do it.

I did apologize for the hyperbolic title. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. It's a joke my friend uses to deliberately get attention. I figured it would come off as so ridiculous that no one would take me seriously enough to be offended.

 

[Silvercrest]

How about, "Microsoft Word is worse than the Spanish Inquisition"?

That's a title you wouldn't expect.

 

[Venardhi]

At the top where the margin ruler is, the blue markers represent the text margins and indentions. Slide the top back to change the first line indent.

My point is I used to be able to do this with a simple backspace. Now I have to manually do it.

I did apologize for the hyperbolic title. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. It's a joke my friend uses to deliberately get attention. I figured it would come off as so ridiculous that no one would take me seriously enough to be offended.

Finding things to be offended about on the internet is serious business.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

To answer the OP's question, try the instructions listed here. I think they are about your particular problem (that is, behavior of tab/backspace.) Let me know if not.

 

[Gary7]

Obviously the OP is "tongue in cheek" about the infamous dictator reference, but yeah... I would've picked a different expression.

Microsoft Word is very capable, but if there's one thing I have to say about it, it's not user friendly. There are SO MANY different places where settings are tucked away, and NOT in an intuitive manner. Word tries to "anticipate" certain formatting intentions and sometimes gets mixed up. Worst comes to worse, you can switch everything back to default. But yeah... giving how I've used Word for well over 12 years, I'm NOT at all impressed with how it has evolved. The most confounding change for me was from Office 2003 to Office 2007. The UI was SIGNIFICANTLY changed... and NOT for the better. It's like a new project manager was put in place and decided to redesign everything to suit their own preferences.

Frankly, given the ridiculous cost of the MS Office Suite, I'd just assume go with Open Office. It's a very competent FREE word processing and spreadsheet productivity suite that has pretty much everything you need, including reasonably decent compatibility with older Office versions.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I've been using Word since waaaaaaaaaaay back and I actually really like the Ribbon interface. Someone at Microsoft finally realized that giving the same level of precedence to all functionality, despite 90% of it never being used by 90% of users, was really stupid. So, they figured out what functions were used most commonly and put them in the Ribbon. And since you can customize the Ribbon, if you don't like how it works by default, you can change it to suit your needs.

Frankly, I find the Ribbon a far better approach than the glut of tiny icons that word processors picked up in the '90s.

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is still good, but I'd like a Ribbon-ish interface on those, too, at least as an option.

 

[Santaman]

Switch to DOS Edit...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Switch to DOS Edit...

Don't even joke, I still use that sometimes.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

To answer the OP's question, try the instructions listed here. I think they are about your particular problem (that is, behavior of tab/backspace.) Let me know if not.

Thank you so much. That seemed to do the trick. I can't get paragraphs to start automatically tabbed right now, but screw it, close enough

I'm usually pretty good with Word. That's what made this so shocking. I haven't had serious trouble figuring things out before. I wonder why that box got unchecked.

 

[Gary7]

Switch to DOS Edit...

Don't even joke, I still use that sometimes.

I use Text Edit. Great having a Windows app for typing text that works extremely fast--no lag, no bloat. You get in all of your content then paste it into Word to do all of your formatting and post editing.

 

[Santaman]

I still use notepad on Windows machines... leafpad and other notepad/dos edit like stuff on Linux..