Constant Content

Sorry. I'm giving up. I just can't seem to get the hang of my Word program. We just got this new Dell computer, and the program was in it when it arrived. It's doing all kinds of bizarre things...automatically changing my title font and location, refusing to save changes in my document and other things I can't understand. I made changes, saved them, closed the document, brought it back up and the old text was there! OMG! That can be awful when you've completely re-arranged words and fixed up whole paragraphs. I'm so very fed up. I'll be back when I can get this straightened out...maybe in a week or so....maybe a few days. If anyone out there has the newest edition of Word and knows where on EARTH the help button is, please let me know. The &$%^&&^*^%$ program will do everything but my dishes, but I can't figure out HOW to make it do what I want it to. thanks for letting me rant.

The help button is that little teensy tiny question mark in a blue circle located in the upper right corner of the screen just under the X symbol that closes the program. It took me forever to find it myself! The old file menus are definitely missed by this longtime Word user though I finally have the hang of it.

Also, remember if you saved multiple versions, ie one in .docx and the other in .doc, you may be accidentally opening the wrong file. When opening, don't use the shortcut, instead go to Office button, Open, and make sure that File Types says "All Files." Word 2007 is a major change from the old versions of Word and takes a ton of getting used to.

Re: "automatically changing my title font and location" - Word's "Styles" under the Home tab do change the text if your mouse accidentally hovers over them (temporarily). In addition, I believe there's a setting where Word will automatically apply "styles" based on what it interprets to be headings and other elements. I don't believe this is on by default but you can check by going into the Word button,choosing Word Options, choosing Proofing, clicking AutoFormat as You Type, and then removing the check mark by "built-in heading styles." Sheesh, and they say that Word 2007 is "intuitive."

Also, Word's tracking features sometimes cause confusion (though I don't think this is the case unless you purposely enabled tracking). If you go to the Review tab and find the Tracking area, you will see that you can change the view from Original to Original Showing Markup, Final, and Final Showing Markup. If the view is set to Original, you'll see your original document - before any edits were made! Switch it to Final, and you'll see the Final version. View either with "showing markup" selected and you'll see the edits that you made. I doubt this was the case but thought I'd point it out just in case you were playing around in this area and overlooked changing the view to Final.