I wrote the information below based on my experience with Word 2004 for the Mac. I do not intend to purchase Word 2008.

Word Processors: Microsoft Word

[I first posted the information on this page to my computer blog, On My Mac, on 9/2/2007.]

Which word processor should you use? I know many people who use Microsoft Word and never think about the alternatives. If you are happy and productive in Word, good for you, but I have run into enough problems with it over the years to make me look around for other options. I will discuss these alternatives in future posts, but let me begin this series with Word. After all, it occupies a prominent position in in the academic world, not least because Microsoft sells its Office suite to students and educators at a substantially reduced price.

The current version for the Mac is Word 2004. My problem with this and other versions of Word is that it has too many features and sometimes it crashes under its own weight. I have customized my menus, set the myriad preferences to my liking, and then watched Word crash. The only thing that helped me to get it going again was to throw away the preference files and start over. Not fun.

Nonetheless, sometimes I use Word for article-length manuscripts, because it can count characters in both the text and footnotes. If a publisher gives a character limit, I need to consider both, but most of the word processors I have only count characters in the body of the text.

Some people use Word because that is the standard format in which they must submit their document. For me this is a non-reason, because any word processor worth its salt can save or export documents into RTF (rich text format), which Word can understand. One caveat: The more complicated your formatting, the more trouble you are likely to run into. If you know you are going to be exporting your document to RTF for someone with a different word processor, keep it simple.

Recently, Microsoft has introduced a new format for its documents in Windows applications. Unlike earlier documents, which end in .doc, these have a suffix .docx. The current Mac version of Word cannot open these, although Microsoft offers a beta translator for this format. Still, the introduction of this format undercuts one of Word's more positive features, at least for now: compatibility of Word documents on different versions of Windows and Apple operating systems.

To be fair, there is much more to Word than meets the eye. Perhaps you depend on some of its advanced features? If so, which ones? Or do you just use Word because that is what you are used to?