{"id":15500,"date":"2009-08-04T09:41:54","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T15:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=15500"},"modified":"2009-08-04T09:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T15:42:00","slug":"whatever-happened-to-microsoft-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/04\/whatever-happened-to-microsoft-word.html","title":{"rendered":"Whatever happened to Microsoft Word?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This post inspired by this Ars Technica article<\/a>.)<\/small> <\/p>\n

I used to be a Word guru.<\/p>\n

Dating back to the old Word for DOS days, I used Word extensively and thoroughly. On a daily basis, I was in there cranking out documentation and memos, esp. memos. I was the office resource for Word; I provided training classes to execs, engineers, and admins. For years after moving to Colorado I would get calls from folks at the Corporate HQ in California asking for Word assistance.<\/p>\n

But something started happening over time. First off, memos went largely away — or, rather, morphed to email. Second, most documentation went online, onto web pages, wikis, etc. Creating things for printing out became less and less of an issue; most needs \/ opportunities for “desktop publishing” sort of … faded away. For my life, at least.<\/p>\n

I still use Word — but largely for cases where some sort of legacy document is needed, or for rare cases (at home) where something will need to be printed — our Twelfth Night invitation on our Christmas cards, a flier at church, etc. We still get folks at the office who do up memos and email them to everyone. Email is still seen in many quarters more as the envelope than the letter, but it clearly can (and does) serve as both. Most of my “content” I’m simply doing these days in the email client, where it’s easy to read and store and search for.<\/p>\n

So my own use of a dedicated, doc-file-producing word processor has dropped dramatically. And as for Word itself, I stopped needing its advanced features (“advanced” being a relative term, of course) long ago. I’ve had no compulsion to upgrade past my creaking 2003 installation (and could probably still be running 97 or XP with no pain). I installed Open Office on my new home computer, and have done the same on other computers I’ve set up in the past few years. No need to pay for something fancy. And now that I’m working in a more distributed world, I’m doing more with Google Apps.<\/p>\n

If Word vanished overnight, I don’t think I’d miss it all that much. If the concept of word processing software went away, I have plenty of other ways to produce what use to go into .DOC files.<\/p>\n

Now, if only we could do something about Excel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This post inspired by this Ars Technica article.)  I used to be a Word guru. Dating back to the old Word for DOS days, I used Word extensively and thoroughly. On a daily basis, I was in there cranking out documentation and memos, esp. memos. I was the office resource for Word; I provided training … Continue reading “Whatever happened to Microsoft Word?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-job-jollies","category-my-computer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9700,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/08\/keeping_track_o.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":0},"title":"Keeping track of changes","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 8-May-06 8:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Mr. Unsolicited Advice: I'm an executive in a large corporation, and I issue memos by the bushel, but I'm told that nobody reads them! How can I justify my...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2367,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/05\/warming_the_coc.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":1},"title":"Warming the cockles of my bureaucratic heart","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Jul-02 1:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Find yourself at a loss for words sometimes? Wish you could hide behind those marvelous bureaucratic sorts of memos and forms that make work such a mindless, soulless joy? Well,...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40502,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/08\/pay-no-attention-to-those-memos-behind-the-curtain.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":2},"title":"Pay no attention to those memos behind the curtain","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Jan-14 7:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oops.Reshared post from +Kee HinckleyNavy accidentally sends reporter an internal memo describing how to block his FOIA request.The apologized and tweeted (several times!) about how committed they are to free and open access. Uh huh.\ufeff Navy Apologizes After Mistakenly Sent Email U.S. Navy officials have issued an apology for their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11126,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/03\/one_for_the_archives.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":3},"title":"One for the archives","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 3-Apr-07 9:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the things I was doing today (though I got started late due to Tons o' E-mail I had to deal with) is doing last-minute archiving of old PST...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3751,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/02\/syncing_feeling.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":4},"title":"Syncing feeling","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Apr-03 9:04am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've noticed some discrepencies between my office Outlook calendar and the calendar on my Palm. Couldn't quite figure it out, or why some items didn't show up on both systems...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14456,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/04\/06\/despicable.html","url_meta":{"origin":15500,"position":5},"title":"Despicable","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Apr-09 9:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"I really, really don't want to believe this is so. And I really, really, do believe it is. (Emphasis mine.) Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}