Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 6. Make It Stop! Cures and Treatments for Word's Top Annoyances

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Eliminating the dreaded drawing canvas

• Overcoming editing annoyances

• Making view annoyances vanish

• Teaching Word to look for Help locally

• Conquering the activation blues

• Learning where all those automatic things are coming from

When it comes to word processing, many of us agree that Microsoft Word really is the only game in town. Oh, sure, there's WordPerfect and a few others, but for most of us, jobs and other organizations require that we spend a fair amount of time using and getting used to Microsoft Word.

It's like air. We don't choose to breathe it. We breathe it because we have to. And, like air, it sometimes smells bad. So, sometimes, we hold our breath. But, what if you could get rid of some of the bad smells?

Okay. I'm going to stop right there. Some analogies deserve to be headed off at the pass, and this is one of them.

This chapter details a number of annoying things that prevent many users from using and enjoying Word the way it was intended. Some are defaults; some are accidentally turned on. Some involve digging a little deeper to find out what makes Word tick. What the annoyances covered in this chapter have in common, however, is that they can be tamed or turned off. If some things about Word are giving you a headache, this chapter is your analgesic. If they don't solve your particular illness, perhaps they can inspire you to determine whether a palliative exists.

In this chapter, we'll ...