---------------------------------------- A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 ---------------------------------------- By: Bob Zimmerman The Mainframe BBS P.O. Box 1387 Arlington Heights, IL 60005 Data: (312) 364-0425 300/1200/2400 8N1 CompuServ 72371,1700 Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 2 by Bob Zimmerman Reprinting any of this review ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You may reprint this review in its entirety only. I have seen too many reviews get chopped up and a total mis-representation occurs. If you would like to print only excerpts of this review, you must contact the author and obtain written permission! You may upload this review in its entirety to any BBS and it may be distributed in printed form as well (again in its entirety). Background ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Briefly, I have been using Microsoft Word 4.0 for a bit over a year. I really like the product and feel that it is an overall better product then its competition. I use it to write letters and status reports for work, put together documentation and procedures for work, create manuals for software I write and sell, as well as shareware. I also use it for miscellaneous letters for my personal use. I run it on a Toshiba 3200 Laptop PC and use an HP Deskjet Plus printer. Preview ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a short review of the product. The rest of the document describes the pros and cons in much more detail. Word 5.0 is a winner. Microsoft has implemented their changes in a user friendly and bug free manner. I am sure that there are those that will disagree with this review and are having all sorts of troubles with the product. I would encourage them to write a review describing these issues so all of us can benefit. Again, I believe Word 5.0 is a winner. It works well, is very friendly, has consistency within the product (e.g. F1 working to select from lists and directories), and has kept up with the competition. I don't believe that any other product has as short a Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 3 by Bob Zimmerman learning curve as Word does. If you already know one of the other products, then you may disagree, but remember, you already know those other products. Think of the learning curve as a beginner... The major fault with the product, as with all of Microsoft products, is the quality and response of their Product Support line. After dealing with them on Quick Basic, Quick C, Windows, Excel and Word, I have found them to be the worst product support available today. I will explain in detail why I make this decision. I will also explain the good side of their support. Overall, it really isn't worth my long distance phone call to contact them, unless I really can't find any alternatives to a problem. Warning! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to emphasize that this review is only one persons view. You may dislike some of what I like, and you may find adequate (or love) some of what I find unacceptable. If you hold a very different opinion, I would hope you put together a quick review, such as this one, and upload it to my BBS (listed on the front cover). I will be sure to send a review to Microsoft (via Compuserv) to make sure they see this as well. Running the SETUP program ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Starting at the beginning, I installed the product using 3 1/2 inch diskettes using the SETUP program that is supplied. The setup went very smoothly and I was extremely happy with the results. They actually improved their setup routine. First, I am able to select all the printers I want to install, without having to swap disks after each printer. I simply select all the printers and font cartridges I want to support, and it keeps the list in memory until I say install the print drivers, it then does the work. Also, the installation of the tutorial and help programs now allow you to install, both, the keyboard and mouse versions. I liked that very much. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 4 by Bob Zimmerman It asked what type of monitor and PC you were running so it could configure the keyboard and video adapter correctly. I was impressed with the list of options. Even my Toshiba 3200 laptop was listed. All in all, the setup went smooth and it seemed to be able to handle any configuration you may have in a smooth manner. Documentation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Any software product can be a winner. But no one will know it, if their documentation and on-line help is lousy. In Word 4.0, both were excellent, especially the ability to have quick help and the tutorial level help on-line. Word 5.0 seems to have taken one small step backward. The manuals are split up now and I had some difficultly trying to determine what was documented in which manual. Also, with the paper back style (no 3 ring binder), it was a bit difficult to use next to the PC, trying to keep it open etc... This is minor, but is worth noting. The on-line help, also, took one step backward. When I am on a Menu Option or trying to get past a prompt, and I pressed ALT-H, there were several times that the help presented did not have anything to do with the topic I wanted help on. Or if it did, I had to go through the whole tutorial (using the full tutorial help) to finally get my quick question answered. All the help is there, it just is not as easily obtained when doing documents. I should note, that their help is still far superior to that of their competitors, I just preferred the way it was organized. It seemed easier. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 5 by Bob Zimmerman Starting up Word 5.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- There were two or three items in Word 5.0 press release, that I couldn't wait to try out. The new Spell Checker, the Print Preview and the support of importing HGPL graphic files. The first thing I did when installing word, was to take all of my Word 4.0 stuff and create a ZIP file, so that it was non-existent to my system. I then wanted to test compatibility and some of the new features. I had a document that was 50 pages long, and included a Table of Contents. It had a Format Division Marker inserted in several places. I assumed this document would be the toughest as far as compatibility goes. I started up Word and used Transfer Load. Using the F1 feature, I was able to enter the directory name, press F1 and get a list of docs in that directory (great!) and I loaded the test document. The Transfer Load/Save F1 feature is one of the most time saving features in Word 5.0. They really did a great job here (applause). I then proceeded to the Print Menu, selected Options and pressed F1. I then selected my printer. Finally, I printed the file. It was exact. Every page and detail printed correctly. At this point, a smile crossed my face and I was very happy. Now it was time to test some of the new features. Print Preview ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Print Preview is the ability to press Control F9 (or preView from the Print menu) and see your document laid out EXACTLY as it will print. I took the large test document I was using above and started previewing it. It works great. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of allowing you to "blow up the page" to larger sizes. In other words, you can only see a full page of text, well enough to see the layout of every paragraph, but not every individual letter. At first, I wanted to be able to blow up the preview picture, but as I have been using Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 6 by Bob Zimmerman this for over 2 weeks now, I can tell you that I would never use that blow up feature. I use the preview every time I want to print, to verify the changes to a document haven't messed up its layout. It works great. From the preview screen, you can press E to exit back to Word (with or without press ESC to get to the menu). You can use the Jump feature to preview a specific page of a large document (or bookmark - more on this later), or you can select Print to get a small Print Menu. This really was implemented well. Great job guys. Graphics - Linking, Previewing and Printing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I use Harvard Graphics, and have created a few logos with that product. I went into HG and selected one of my favorite logos. I then exported it in HPGL format. I was sure to choose HIGH quality (300 DPI). I then went into Word and chose Library Link Graphics. Using F1, I pointed to my HPGL document. I told Word where to print it, what size to print it (how much room on the piece of paper to take up), and that it was an HPGL file (for some reason Word couldn't figure this out, and it is suppose to). It inserted some hidden text showing me where the graphic should be inserted. I then tried previewing the page with Print Preview and it painted the graphic on the page. It was GREAT. When I printed this to my Deskjet Plus, I was impressed. I ran to get my wife, who thought I was nuts for getting so excited. It worked, and it worked well. In fact, I had to try the next new feature called Format Position. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 7 by Bob Zimmerman Format Position ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The pOsition option of the Format menu is new. You select any paragraph(s) and choose Format pOsition. You can then specify whether these paragraph(s) are to placed in a fixed position on the page, whether text should wrap around the paragraphs or not etc... This feature let me include the logo I generated above, and put it right to the side of the company address information. It was really nifty. And Print Preview previewed all of this correctly! The next step I did was to place a box around the text next to this logo, and I was met with another surprise... Boxes and shading ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Word 5.0 has enhanced the way you can "box" text. First, you choose Format Border, as you did in the prior release. You can still choose box type of Box or Lines. When you go to choose what type of lines to use, single, double or bold, there is no list of options. When you get to this option, press F1 to get a list of supported line styles. They have added a new style to Normal, Double and Bold. They now support Thick lines, which really add a nice touch to some documents! When I noticed this difference, I investigated the option further and found on the bottom of this menu the option to "shade" text. This is really nice for making professional looking documents. Pressing F1 will show you the list of shading you can choose, but you can actually specify any percentage you would like (10 to 100 percent). It is great. As usual, the box I created extended from the left margin to the right. So now I started testing the new paragraph style of Alt-Q (Quote) which indents both sides of a paragraph. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 8 by Bob Zimmerman Paragraph Styles (Alt Q and Alt Z) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Alt Q indents both sides of a paragraph. It works really nice. For example, if you have centered a title and you want a box around it, but you don't want the box to be from one edge of the paper to the other, you want it centered around the text, simply press Alt-Q several times until the box surrounds the text with the dimensions you want. This is a small feature, but really comes in handy. Also, in one of the README.DOC files, there was an explanation of ALT-Z, which is the same as Alt-Spacebar (reset the characters to standard), except it will not reset which print font and size you are using. Only attributes such as Bold and Italics. I found this to be very helpful. A problem with the PLAIN.PRD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- After playing with this document. I went to save it and found the new save options. You are able to save the file as a Word file, ASCII with no CR/LF, ASCII with CR/LF, RTF etc... This was great. I went to edit a file I distribute with some shareware. This file has some ASCII codes in it to form fancy boxes etc.. When I saved it as ASCII CR/LF, these codes were translated to pluses and dashes. I read the manual and it says that it should save it as if you print the doc with Word 4.0's PLAIN.PRD. PLAIN.PRD from Word 4.0 did not translate these characters. So I tried printing the document with the new PLAIN.PRD supplied with Word 5.0. OUCH! - The output was different. These characters were translated. After using the MakePrd program supplied, I was able to get the Word 5.0 print driver to act the same as Word 4.0. I then verified that the Word 4.0 print driver (PLAIN) on the Word 4.0 distribution diskettes were different from Word 5.0. It was different (to the best I could tell). This was a small problem. When I called the hot-line for a work around, they were reading me the manual over the phone. I had already read the manual and was confused. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 9 by Bob Zimmerman They were no help. I explained what I had the confusion about and they agreed, they were confused also. After playing with MakePrd myself, I was able to get it working. This was only a small issue with their Product Support lines. I will talk in more detail in a bit. This was the only problem I had with the Print Drivers. It was OK otherwise. A bit more about Transfer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The TRANSFER Options screen has been redone. You can now specify a directory that will always be used, regardless of where you are when you start up Word, or you can specify that where you are when you start Word is where Word looks for Style and Doc files. They have cleaned up this option significantly. It really works well. There still remains one problem. I would like all my Style sheets to remain in the Word 5.0 directory, and my Doc files spread all over. This allows all my Doc files to share Style sheets. The problem is that I can't go into gallery and set a permanent directory for Style Sheets, and keep the regular Transfer Options not maintain a permanent directory. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 10 by Bob Zimmerman Screen Graphics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Running on a Toshiba 3200, I really am running in a black and white mode. They have totally revamped the way you can select colors. It's pretty nice. Since I am running a gas plasma screen, I really can't judge what type of job they have done, or how the new colors impact you. The entire Option Menu has been redone. At first, it was a bit confusing, trying to find where everything was. But once I played with it a bit, I was very happy. They also have two new options, Show Layout and Show Line Breaks. This replaces the old Printer Display switch. Show Layout is really powerful. It will hide hidden text, and without using preview, will show you the layout of how the text will print, including identifying where the graphics will print. Very nice implementation. Bookmarks and Revision Marks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Revision marks were in Version 4.0 of Word. They have cleaned up the menu to make a little more sense (even their manual says that was the intent) and I actually started using it and liked to use it from now on! Basically, if you have a document you are making changes to, you are able to turn revision mode on and all your changes will be recorded. Any words deleted will simply have a line drawn through them. Any words added to the document will either be underlined, bold or left normal. In either case, a change or revision bar will be drawn to the side of the text. All of this is optional, except for the drawing a line through deleted text. In revision mode, this always occurs. Once you are completed, you can accept revision, which "applies" them to the document. You can also reject the revisions which "removes" them from the document. Bookmarks and Annotations are two new facilities available with Word 5.0 which are really nice. Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 11 by Bob Zimmerman Bookmarks allow you to put a marker anywhere in the document. These don't print. They simply are a place holder. Bookmarks can be used for several different things, including jumping, paging and printing. The best feature of bookmarks is using it in the glossary. What I mean is, if I have a section of the manual called ABC, I can create a bookmark for it. After completing that bookmark, I can then use the built in glossary "page:ABC" (and press F3) to generate the page number. For example, I might say: To see more on topic ABC, go to page (page:ABC) When printing, the (page:ABC) would be translated to the actual page number of the bookmark! Very nice! Printed June 23, 1989 A Review of Microsoft Word 5.0 Page 12 by Bob Zimmerman Summary (and the only downer). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to end on a positive note. Word 5.0 is great and was worth the wait. This document was, of course, created with Word. I had found one problem. I use Transfer Merge to merge in program listings into some Program documentation Doc files. When I do the merge, I sometimes find I need to edit the program and re-merge it in. I run Library Run (or use a Window in Windows or OS2) to edit the program using my editor. When I re-Transfer Merge, the old version of the file gets merged in. Not the new. I must clear the windows (all of them) before I get the merge file again. I reported this as a minor bug, and I was told it was not a bug but a feature. I asked them to describe me the feature. I explained why I felt it was a bug. They told me they had no explanation, but it was not a bug. It was the way the product was designed. This is the short of the story. Their attitude and support has been lacking over and over in every product. Their Product Support lines have failed to help me more times then not. This is true of Quick Basic, Quick C, Excel and Word. It seems they have been trained to deny any bugs exist in their product. If the product doesn't work, it was designed not to work. I tried bringing this issue to their managements attention, and told them I was calling in another problem, It did not help. I can say this was handled worst then any of the other calls I have made to Microsoft. I am not going to get into specifics. I am not writing this to attack an individual or the company. I am simply sharing with you some of my experiences. I want to emphasize, that this dilemma has occurred over and over. Whenever I have called in a bug with any of their products, it seems these bugs are features. I probably will only call their support lines when I am truly up against a wall and need to work around a problem (or a feature, as they would call it). I want to emphasize, the product is a 10. It really is great and I have had only positive experiences with Microsoft Customer Service (not to be confused with Product Support). So if your looking for a word processor, you really can't go wrong with Word 5.0. But don't plan on getting to much support over the phones - and with Word 5.0 you probably won't need it anyway! Printed June 23, 1989