GAH!!! MS Word! (???)

I think I'm gonna' have to SCREAM...or break sumthin'!!

MS Word drives me CRAAAZ-ZEEY!!!

This happens to me every...single...time! I'm trying to edit a numbered list (like a legal document) with multiple indents, and the formatting gets all screwed up. Then when I try to fix one thing it jacks something else up...and it just keeps doing that forever! It's like MS Word is trying to be smarter than me and fix something, but it's making it WORSE!!

Why can't I just insert some text, number and indent it properly and then have the other following text just adjust to the new text? Why does it completely jack up all the rest of the following formatting? Is there any easy way to do this, because it is just a ROYAL PITA to fix and a HUGE time waste! If it wasn't so damn important, I'd just throw my whole computer out the dang window and be done with it.

/rant

So, my question is...is there any way to insert text into a heavily numbered list without screwing up all the rest of the formatting?

Does anyone else have this issue when using MS Word???

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I had to smile at your predicament. I have been there many times. Can't help you with the solution but I switched to OpenOffice/LibreOffice and it seemed easier.

Probably not the answer you want to hear but maybe other more knowledgable members can help. Good luck and deep breath...

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

Practically everyone I talk to has the same issue with lists and MS Word. Why does it have to be so incredibly difficult?

In the research that I've done I can see it has to do with 'Styles' (the pre-formatted ones), among other things. I'm pretty computer savvy and use word all the time, but this problem is just something I cannot ever seem to learn my way over.

I can remember when MS Word first came out; I loved it. The alternative was Word Perfect which drove me nuts because it required you to remember 10,000 function keys, everything had to be manually formatted. MS Word didn't do that. However, over time they've tried to make Word so 'smart' that only idiots can use it now apparently. Any person with half a brain trying to edit a relatively complex format in a document is in for a nightmare with Word trying to outsmart you at every step along the way.

It makes me crazy.

It's like I want to be able to just highlight a bunch of text and say ..."make it like this" . But to my knowledge there is no such function. In reality, the actual function is..."please, completely F# up my entire document for me!" I don't want that function, and I'd like to know how to delete it!

No pity for you. i have not owned or used a MS product in years.

LibreOffice or Google Drive tools does me.

Probably not the answer you want, but removing the formatting, changing the text and applying the formatting again will probably work.

I use Word at work, and the only thing that gives me problems is the automatic formatting.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Why can't I just insert some text, number and indent it properly and then have the other following text just adjust to the new text? Why does it completely jack up all the rest of the following formatting? Is there any easy way to do this

When you go to Right click > Paste theirs a thing called Paste Options and under that is a button with a clipboard + Letter 'A'.
Click the clipboard and it will paste as text.

So, right click -> Paste Options -> Click clipboard with letter 'A' on it.

Alternative instructions: Open notepad, paste in their, then copy from notepad and paste in Word.

Agree on notepad - it is my go-to for removing formatting prior to pasting into something else.

Word is a pita though - it used to be a support horror. Often someone make a change that would try to permanently change the normal.dot - the primary template all new documents use. It would spread like a sad little MS virus in an office, until a bunch of people had mangled templates, because when it said "Hey.. you want to save the changes to that normal.dot?" - people would click "Sure, why not!" So we had to make a "safe" version of the normal.dot to redistribute.

WP was soo much better than Word. Being able to see all formatting at all times was amazingly useful. When WYSIWYG came along, it made it much worse. The law firm I worked for at the time, when transitioning from WP to Word was a nightmare of epic proportions - all the admin staff probably cried themselves to sleep each night.