> No need to apologize! If fact I should be
> thanking you for the tips on Word. By the
> way, what were your neagtive experiences
> with word, if you don not mind me asking?

When I began at my current company, I inherited a manual that was about 200 pages in length, done entirely in Word. Everytime we had to print it, we consistently under-estimated how long it would take -- we would always find new things wrong with the manual like the numbering or page-breaking -- and it would be a couple hours before it was finally ready to send to our printer.

Basically, the manual wasn't set up well -- it used a lot of direct, labor-intensive formatting and whenever you inserted or removed a portion of text, you had to check the whole thing page by page to ensure that it was still presentable (and usually it wasn't). It was awful.

The worst part was when we finally got around to cleaning it up -- it would have been less time consuming to start over.

Finally, our group switched to FrameMaker. After a little learning, we started moving the manual to the new software. It took awhile to get it in shape, but once it was set up, it was surprising how much time we had left over. Printing took five minutes max. The pages looked the same regardless of who's computer we used or what printer driver we had. You could put text in, take it out, make it dance on its head, and FrameMaker made sure everything was in it's proper place. It was downright boring (just what I wanted!).

There are all kinds of stories I could give, but, really, your experience may be different from mine. I don't know why, but the questions I'm asked from others who use Word are almost always unique. You might not believe me if told you some of the things I've seen; and you may never see them yourself. (But if you do have any funky trouble, head over to www.mvps.org right away!).

Best,
Phil