Microsoft Office – Jaye Em Edgecliff

I don’t ever have to use Microsoft Word again. The reasons for doing so can be accomplished in Apple’s Pages. It’s even done the way I’d long suspected: with Sections. It just never worked for me before.

I can’t take the credit for learning this, though. My lovely and talented editor figured it out. She’s even more loathe to touch Office than I am — which is to say she steadfastly will not load it for any reason whatsoever.

In other news I’ve finished my proofread. I’ll be spending tonight and tomorrow getting the files generated and uploaded.

I’m calling the release date the 29th, though Smashwords will have it the 28th because of their insistence on putting the file up as available the moment it’s uploaded instead of — like everyone else — after you’ve had the chance to make sure everything is correct and waiting for a final, blanket SUBMIT button to be pressed. Oy.

Continue reading “Happiness and excitement” →

I am determined to meet my release date goal — though I’m realistic enough to know that I could end up as much as a day or even a week off.

Why?

Microsoft Word 2010.

I’ve used Word in the past, and hated it. I hated it most when I could save a file in it, come back to the same machine and install and open the file that machine and install had created and the file opened … but things weren’t as I’d saved them (formatting and such were lost), but I could open the same file in something else — Star Office being a preference at the time — and most of the previous formatting was there. I didn’t use Word for ages. Back then it was Word ’97 and 2000, if I recall correctly.

Now I use Word at work. And I’ve been typing my stories in it when I can’t use iWork‘s Pages instead. Yesterday it decided to be quite cruel. I went to open Love or Lust to do that days editing … and the file self-destructed. 1.2Mb suddenly was 128kb. And the last backup of my changes was 2 days prior! Ugh.

I never have had a problem like this with WordPerfect, Lotus Works, Star Office, LibreOffice, Open Office, AbiWord, Pages, Claris Works, and easily a dozen others whose names I’ve long since forgotten. Only Microsoft could mange to, in over a decade of development, make a problem worse rather than better (if less frequent).

I’m not happy. I’m glad I do not have to pay money to use this garbage. I will be trying to work double time to make up for the set back and then do so beyond to give myself headway in case something else goes wrong.