Not the perfect combination!
I recently had a computer crash, as we all know, that's a nightmare. So I now have a new computer running Windows 8, another nightmare. I have Win 8 working reasonably well, but Word 2013 with Win 8
works completely different to earlier versions. Does anyone here use Word 2013 and can share some advice? I have to transfer my stories to my laptop to upload here, as the formatting of the text in W2013 means I would get a rejection because of incorrect spacing. Hard to explain. Just interested if anyone else is using Word 2013, and how they are finding it?
My last Lush story (Frustration and Relief) was done in 2013 and I copied and pasted it as usual. The feature in Lush's editor that adapts Word text seemed to handle it okay (the reviewer who okay'd it didn't say anything about any formatting problems at least). That said, I do no formatting in Word, just do it all in Normal Style and then if I want to do any fancy formatting, I do it on Lush to make sure it's done correctly.
Overall, I like Office 2013 as a whole save for the new look, which I find kind of washed out and hard on the eyes if I don't tweaks things a bit. There are some new features in how Excel does autofills and things like that that I quite like and the new Outlook is the best yet, IMHO. All that said, if I didn't use it for work, I'd drop MS Office in favour of something free and more basic (e.g. Libre Office) at the drop of a hat.
As for 8, I have no idea. I have largely avoided it and will continue to do so until I see whether 8.1 deals with some of my issues adequately.
Thanks seeker4. I have a new computer after my last one crashed recently. It came with Win 8, and I had Word 2013 I was going to load on my old computer, but it died before I got the chance, so when my new baby arrived, I of course uploaded it. Win 8 is not all that bad, but in basic layout and finding your way around, a whole new ball game. MS really need to include a manual where they are making major changes to their OS. A friend loaned me his Win 8 for dummies, which I have found completely useless. I purchased a mag from the local newsagent, "Essential Guide to Windows 8", 114 pages, which I've found a lot more help than 416 pages of "Dummies". I guess what it comes down to is, the more you use it, the more you find out and the better you get. Thanks for your comments.
I have an older version of Word that is acting up on Me so I went to buy Word 2013 at the computer store the other day. I installed it and took a look - Holy Crap! I couldn't make heads or tails out of it! I took it back off of My computer and right now I use WordPad for My writing. I will be getting a Word 2013 book and try it again. But for now WordPad does what I want for the most part.
An excellent alterntaive to Word on Windows computers is RoughDraft (). It is freeware/donationware designed for writers and is easy to use and uncluttered. Its native format is rtf.
"It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.” Raymond Chandler
Hmm. Must check that one out, visioneer. Thank for the tip. How well-maintained is it? A lot of free/donationware seems to hit a 1.1 or 1.2 release and then stagnates.
I have win 8 but prefer Word 2010, I save my stories in RTF and they render perfectly into Lush. The only thing to watch for is a space gets deleted in the first sentence for some reason.
My last turned into a major headache. Copy and paste from Word 2013 got royally mangled. Spaces removed in some spots, and spaces added between the quotation marks and the quoted text. Ended up saving the Word file to plain text and copying and pasting from Notepad.
It was a big adjustment to like Windows 8 but now that I have been using it since Christmas I do like it. I actually have 8.1.
I also use Word 2013 and really love it. If you hit no spacing that should fix the problem you are having.
My new laptop has Windows 8. I hated it. I spent half the day deleting preloaded crap. It had more apps than I knew what to do with. I missed the old start menu, so downloaded classic shell to feel more at home. I do like some of the features, but some... grrr. I thought I'd like the speech recognition feature, but found myself yelling.... I didn't say that!
I used Office 2013 while I had the free trial, but went back to 2010. Once again I felt more comfortable with that version. I guess it's what one gets used to.
I use 7 and I find it user friendly...as a sometime writer, I have yet to test Office.