Microsoft Word

[Topher Lydon]

Why do I need to be online, have a subscription, have my work saved to a cloud or other new fangled AWEFUL life subscription services.

I want a good, old fashioned word processor on my PC that words like Microsoft word used to before bells whistles, and rockets on my Granny's wagon.

Ugggh open office is frustratingly broken in so many ways that it is getting unworkable (What you want to change ^p for ^p^p ? No chance, no page formatting for you, silly antique writer) and let's not get into my STILL broken dictionary function and spell checker.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr it's like they want it to be needlessly hard.

 

[Topher Lydon]

Nope just tried office 365 and NOPE not happening, uh uh... it's gross and smells like a dumpster fire of misery caked in sadness.

[Ron]

Why not just buy the standalone version of word and be done with it. You are not required to save your work to an ambiguous server somewhere called ‘the cloud’ — save to wherever you want.

Or are you just feeling difficult today? That’s an option available to all of us. 🤨

[Myr]

You can use office locally and not use Onedrive if you want. 

Personally I love Onedrive since I might yse anyone if 4 pcs depending on which office I use. Ut keeps all my files on hand no matter which pc I use

[northie]

I use the free version of WPS Office (a Word clone). Depends what you need as to whether something like that would be useful. I don't use their cloud storage, instead I rely on Google Drive to automatically back up my work in case of accidents. I only ever use my laptop to continue working. Microsoft does indeed have all their users over a barrel in so many ways. 

[Mike Carss]

Another free and open-source option to consider is LibreOffice.

[Topher Lydon]

I tried Openlibre today, it's like the extension uptodate version of Openoffice, I think... Intimidating Voodoo to make it replace paragraph breaks, but I wrestled it into doing what I want... and not eating the cat.

[Myr]

Just now, Topher Lydon said:

I tried Openlibre today, it's like the extension uptodate version of Openoffice, I think... Intimidating Voodoo to make it replace paragraph breaks, but I wrestled it into doing what I want... and not eating the cat.

It might paste straight into the editor okay without the change to pargraph spacing.  I've never tried.

[wildone]

Krista and others use Google Drive (Docs). It is a very basic word processor with still some bells and whistles. 

As for the paragraph breaks, you can just go to the editor for your chapter, and right click and paste in plain text. You also have the option to scrub the formatting. 

Hope it gets easier  

[Myr]

4 minutes ago, wildone said:

As for the paragraph breaks, you can just go to the editor for your chapter, and right click and paste in plain text. You also have the option to scrub the formatting. 

this works if you don't use italics or bold for anything.

[Talo Segura]

8 hours ago, northie said:

I use the free version of WPS Office 

Me too! Been using it for years, the original, old version was best, no ads, but if you can ignore the publicity and calls to buy extensions you don't need, then it works fine. Needs double line spacing to paste easily into GA stories, but that's workable, and it's free, with spell check (US) and everything else you need, almost.

[Topher Lydon]

6 hours ago, Myr said:

this works if you don't use italics or bold for anything.

Yeah, but what I needed was to change single spacing into double spacing between paragraphs for a 142 page document, so I needed the find replace tool. Used to be so easy, Find: ^p Replace ^p^p

Now it's sacrifice my cat to the great Something something Expressions god, perform a black magic ritual, and then make a faustian deal with the wordprocessor devil (involving a monthly subscription) just to get 1/2 of them to change, and the other half, stubbornly, to refuse to do anything. (til I figured out I have a habit of shift returning instead of straight carriage returning that is borne out of too many lessons on typewriters under the watchful ruler rapping of a demented typing teachers in school)

[Myr]

3 hours ago, Topher Lydon said:

figured out I have a habit of shift returning

There is a similar code for that… need to look it up, but perhaps ^n instead of p

[Topher Lydon]

I think it ended up being One cat, my eternal soul and:   Find: $ Replace: \n\n

[Jeff Burton]

On 7/17/2025 at 6:24 PM, wildone said:

Krista and others use Google Drive (Docs). It is a very basic word processor with still some bells and whistles. 

As for the paragraph breaks, you can just go to the editor for your chapter, and right click and paste in plain text. You also have the option to scrub the formatting. 

Hope it gets easier  

I use Google Drive (Docs)\whatever as well, because I'm lazy and don't want extra features.  Generally when  I'm posting to GA, I copy from the doc file, put it into notepad so it strips all the formatting out, then I fix whatever crazy spacing issues that might be left, before putting it into the GA editor and doing whatever italicizing I may need.

Plus I generally want the .txt version I end up with in notepad because that's the version that gets sent to Nifty, if I'm cross posting there. Or it stays with me as a plain text version of the chapter I can keep.

It would be great if I could go back to using Office, won't happen during this online-everything-needs-a-subscription-service we find ourselves in though. 

[ReaderPaul]

On 7/18/2025 at 4:06 AM, Topher Lydon said:

I think it ended up being One cat, my eternal soul and:   Find: $ Replace: \n\n

Lately it doesn't seem that simple.  Word has, lately sometimes signed me out two or three times a day.

[ReaderPaul]

3 minutes ago, ReaderPaul said:

Lately it doesn't seem that simple.  Word has, lately sometimes signed me out two or three times a day.

And I don't even sign in.  I have to re-initislize Word 2 or 3 times a day.