Pissed off at Microsoft

I had to take a break. I've just spent about an hour in total frustration and irritation. I can't stand it anymore or I'll destroy something.

So the next best thing to blowing something (or someone up) is to vent here on a blog.

Ok, I had my day all planned and was ready to make a few quick edits on a document I've been working on. In this document are screenshots. The document was in great shape and I just had a few minor textual changes to clean up.

You may not have run into this before but in case you ever get to thinking about using Microsoft word to create a document with pictures in it, DON'T!!!! Save your self and use something like Adobe Indesign. If you do, you will never know how much anxiety you saved yourself. If you'd like to learn more, read on.

Well, I've been using word for well over 10 years and it has never been great at picture placement. However, I've usually been able to make due with enough futzing around. Even now, I'm about half way through my document and have wrestled it into doing what I want. If you are thinking wrestled is a strong word, believe me, I have plenty stronger that would be even more appropriate but less desirable for polite company.

What happened? Because of the brain damaged way Word thinks of pictures combined with it's insipid desire to make changes to things it really should just leave alone, when adding text, it caused some paragraphs to wrap. This in turn caused Microsoft Word to take it upon itself to implement some internal rule - presumably to 'fix' something for me. You know, make it better - automatically. So I should have been praising it for such initiative.

What it did is it squished all my screenshots into a single line. So you only see the bottom bit of the screen shot, the rest is hidden by the text above it.

Ok, no problem. I'll just readjust the pictures so that the text is around the pictures. I won't go into the details but it actually became funny for a time what random things Word did with my pictures! It was like one of those gopher games you see at arcades where you hit the gopher on the head and it pops down only to find another gopher popped it's head up in some other, random place.

Really, there are lots of options for pictures in word. You'd think I could have found one that worked for me. You have position options, layout options, alignment options and text wrapping options (to name a few). Of course, no where is there an option to "randomly place the picture in the document so you have to hunt around for it". Or perhaps that should be the label for all of them, I'm not really sure.

Literally, I would scoot a picture up a little at a time and it would seem to be cooperating with me and then one more scoot and BANG, the picture disappears and everything changed. In most cases I would find it quivering at the bottom of the page. Sometimes overlapping other things, sometimes hiding underneath other pictures. I'm sure I don't know what I did to cause this behavior. Couldn't have been the expletives emanating from my mouth...

No problem, with a product this popular from a company as prosperous as Microsoft, I'll just pop online and get some help! Yea right. You go through three or four screens only to find out that they actually want you to pay for support? When did this idea become popular? Really, it can only happen if you are the only game in town - right?

Ok, how about Bing; heard it was good. Nothing but crap.

Ok, so maybe I'll use Google to see if anyone else is having this problem. Hang on, we're in luck! The first item on the page is a friendly article on support.microsoft.com (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312799) Never mind. Doesn't tell me anything I already don't know. Typical of today's support options. They seem to be meant for nubes or idiots. Like "how do I turn it on?" type stuff. Funny but I would have sworn that I was in the majority of folks who have used word more than a few times before. Anyway, after an hour of wasting my time fighting the tool, I'm not up for fighting my way through thousands of web sites in hopes of gleaning a solution.

Instead, I'll reflect for a moment - that won't irritate me. I can imagine the developers and product managers for Word saying "You know, we need to make this more playful; more game-like to try to attract the new generation of users. Screw the old farts."

Maybe today's workers need some randomness in their otherwise boring life? Certainly Microsoft disenfranchised generations of word users who were familiar, comfortable and efficient with the old menu system by creating the Ribbon which bears no (near zero) semblance to every prior version of word since the beginning. Never before have I seen a company so completely shoot themselves in the foot. And they are unabashed by it. You will not find any regrets on their website, nor will you find any indication that they intend to create a "classic" mode for the millions of users who's fingers were used to the previous version. Amazing. Seriously, I've never seen anything like this. Well, maybe, have you heard of the Ford Edsel?

You know that somewhere in the bowls of Microsoft they had a conversation where they said "look, we really don't have any competition so we can do whatever the hell we want." Why they wanted to do this is still a bit of a mystery.

Ok, back to work! Well, what are my options? I could try to import the whole thing into Adobe. Not sure there are too many other choices out there.

Nah, I'm too tired and frustrated. I need to do something that provides a quick fix of accomplishment. Fill my tank up a little before I brave this problem again.

Think I'll go pet the dog.

Good luck and God Bless!