Book Review: Word Annoyances

If you’ve ever said — even under your breath — “I hate Word,” you’ll like this book.

The book has answers for dozens of the little aggravations that Word visits upon you. It solves things you thought you just had to live with (though you knew you’d never forgive the programmers at Microsoft who made them this way).

The author writes in an engaging question- (“The Annoyance” by you) and-answer (“The Fix” by him) style that’s friendly and yet precise. I would have liked it to be a bit less wordy, but it’s okay because the directions are very clear and even, in many cases, contain version-specific instructions for Word 2000, 2003, XP and so on. He also sprinkles the text with occasional helpful tips in little text boxes.

Lots of documents you open frequently? The author shows you how to add a Work menu that will keep up to 9 documents readily available (p. 16). Hate it when Word won’t let you put a .jpg or .gif in a document? You can change an option in the Office Setup Wizard. Want to unclutter your menus? Learn how to customize which commands show up.

Boy, this one really annoys me - how about you? Sometimes when I close Word, it asks me if I want to save the changes to Normal.dot. Now, I happen to know that Normal.dot is the default template for new documents. But I don’t remember making changes to it! Why is this happening?

To kill this seemingly random prompt, choose Tools -> Options, click Save tab and uncheck “Prompt to save Normal template” box (pp. 9, 14). But it might still happen to you for other reasons - the only solution they say is to quit Word and restart Windows. Sigh.

That #$%^&@# Task Pane

This one I was paying my tech guru to fix for me - but he couldn’t find the “next step.” I gave up worrying about it but continued wasting time (and putting extra stress on my mouse hand) having to manually close the “new document” task pane that pops up — and stays up — on my screen, hogging valuable screen space. We’d both found the place to supposedly turn this off (Tools -> Options, click the View tab, uncheck the Startup Task Pane box in the Show area, click OK) but, as the author says, it just wouldn’t obey! So I’m going to give you this whole fix in case that stupid pane annoys you, too.

If the task pane doesn’t obey on your first effort, close Word and create a system restore point. Don’t be afraid—this isn’t as scary as it sounds. Choose Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore, click the “Create a restore point” option, click the Next button and follow the prompts.

Next, choose Start -> Run, type regedit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Navigate to the following Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General (in some versions it may read “…\Office\10.0\...”). Then, right-click the DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane key, choose Delete from the shortcut menu and click OK to confirm. Choose File -> Exit to close the Registry Editor. Restart Word and you’re done.

This works like a charm, and I’m thoroughly delighted.

Article Author: Barbara Payne

Barbara Payne is a business writer/journalist/marketing professional with 20 years experience helping executives, entrepreneurs and independent professionals translate their strengths and their passions into their True Voice. …

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