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More wrangling Word 2003/2007
Nov. 21st, 2009 04:28 pmThe biggest hassle about abandoning Word X (Mac) so I can do most of my editing in Word 2003 is having to retrain my fingers to learn the new keyboard shortcuts. After spending nearly 10 years memorizing all those nifty keyboard shortcuts I created, those shortcuts are wired into my fingers nearly on a genetic level. Unfortunately, the Mac keystrokes don't work so well in Windows.
The problem is that I'd hoped to keep editing on the Mac, and had therefore never planned my customizations to transfer seamlessly to Windows. But unfortunately, Word X is simply too unstable to run under OS X, Word 2004 is a botch job that still isn't ready for prime time, and Word 2008 lacks macro capabilities, so neither of the two newer versions will meet my needs. (I'll be installing Word 2008 over the Xmas break so I can play with it and see whether it's usable for just plain writing. The buzz on the street says "yes", but I'm from Missouri*.)
* Missouri, for various historical reasons, is commonly referred to as "the show me State". In short, they—and I—want proof, not buzz.
The solution, of course, was to recreate all those keyboard shortcuts in Word 2003—but here, I found that I'd outsmarted myself. On the Mac, the Control key isn't used for much of anything (we use the Command/Apple key instead), so I'd bound most of the commands to keystrokes based on some version of Control plus another key. Unfortunately, the Control key is heavily used in Windows, so most of those lovely shortcuts conflicted with my Mac shortcuts. Took a bit of doing (I won't tell you how long, he says, blushing), but I think I've finally come up with keystrokes that will work exactly the same way in both Mac and Windows Word, without mucking up any of Word's default keystrokes that I need to use.
Needless to say, I've made several backup copies of my now-heavily-revised Normal.dot (the template that stores all of these customizations). If you don't know where to find this file on your computer, open the Options (Windows) or Preferences (Mac) dialog box, select the File Locations tab, select "User Templates", and click the "Modify" button. In the file dialog box that now appears, you can now backtrack through the file system to find where that directory is hidden, and make a backup of any templates you've spent hours (or days or weeks) customizing. If you can't remember that location, choose a new one in this dialog box and use that instead.
The next problem came from my desire to install Word 2007 so that I'd have both that and Word 2003 available (which I'll need to do when I start revising my book). I'd recalled researching this some time ago and learning that this was easy enough, so long as you pay attention during the initial installation screens and choose the option that says "please, Microsoft, don't wipe out my old and well-loved copy of Word". So I blithely proceeded—only to learn that here, as in so many other places, Microsoft lied.
Sort of. It's fairer to say that they didn't tell the whole truth, and neglected to mention that there were a few things they'd forgotten about and couldn't be bothered fixing in later releases of the installer. When I launched Word 2003 to make sure it was still there, I discovered that installing Word 2007 had wiped out my old customizations. (Good thing I had a backup! Here endeth the sermon.) Restoring the custom Normal.dot didn't take long, but every time I launched Word 2003, Windows launched an installer program, and whether I cancelled that program or hunted down my installer disk and ran the installer Windows was asking for, Word 2003 insisted that it was broken and needed to be repaired. Ditto for Word 2007.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't want you running two versions of Word on the same compouter. You can do it, but they don't want you to. Fortunately, the solution is pretty easy—if you're comfortable editing your Windows registry. If not, you can get help from Microsoft on how to make a backup of your registry in case you muck things up. That shouldn't happen (after all, I managed it), but better safe than sorry, right?
To fix the installer problem, open the Windows Start menu, select Run, and type (better yet, copy and paste) the following text into the Run dialog box:
To fix Word 2003:
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
Press Enter, and a little terminal window appears that asks you whether you want to overwrite the existing entry. Press Y, hit Enter, and you're done.
To fix Word 2007:
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
Press Enter, and a little terminal window appears that asks you whether you want to overwrite the existing entry. Press Y, hit Enter, and you're done.
I've done both fixes, and now I'm a happy camper... at least until the next irresistable urge to tamper with a system that's working well strikes. I now have considerably more sympathy for Jerry Pournelle*, whose Chaos Manor column for Byte Magazine used to be filled with similar anecdotes of simple installations gone badly wrong, with much wackiness ensuing.
* I'm not linking to Pournelle because I don't much like what I know about the man or his politics. You can find him easily enough in a Web search if you disagree.
The problem is that I'd hoped to keep editing on the Mac, and had therefore never planned my customizations to transfer seamlessly to Windows. But unfortunately, Word X is simply too unstable to run under OS X, Word 2004 is a botch job that still isn't ready for prime time, and Word 2008 lacks macro capabilities, so neither of the two newer versions will meet my needs. (I'll be installing Word 2008 over the Xmas break so I can play with it and see whether it's usable for just plain writing. The buzz on the street says "yes", but I'm from Missouri*.)
* Missouri, for various historical reasons, is commonly referred to as "the show me State". In short, they—and I—want proof, not buzz.
The solution, of course, was to recreate all those keyboard shortcuts in Word 2003—but here, I found that I'd outsmarted myself. On the Mac, the Control key isn't used for much of anything (we use the Command/Apple key instead), so I'd bound most of the commands to keystrokes based on some version of Control plus another key. Unfortunately, the Control key is heavily used in Windows, so most of those lovely shortcuts conflicted with my Mac shortcuts. Took a bit of doing (I won't tell you how long, he says, blushing), but I think I've finally come up with keystrokes that will work exactly the same way in both Mac and Windows Word, without mucking up any of Word's default keystrokes that I need to use.
Needless to say, I've made several backup copies of my now-heavily-revised Normal.dot (the template that stores all of these customizations). If you don't know where to find this file on your computer, open the Options (Windows) or Preferences (Mac) dialog box, select the File Locations tab, select "User Templates", and click the "Modify" button. In the file dialog box that now appears, you can now backtrack through the file system to find where that directory is hidden, and make a backup of any templates you've spent hours (or days or weeks) customizing. If you can't remember that location, choose a new one in this dialog box and use that instead.
The next problem came from my desire to install Word 2007 so that I'd have both that and Word 2003 available (which I'll need to do when I start revising my book). I'd recalled researching this some time ago and learning that this was easy enough, so long as you pay attention during the initial installation screens and choose the option that says "please, Microsoft, don't wipe out my old and well-loved copy of Word". So I blithely proceeded—only to learn that here, as in so many other places, Microsoft lied.
Sort of. It's fairer to say that they didn't tell the whole truth, and neglected to mention that there were a few things they'd forgotten about and couldn't be bothered fixing in later releases of the installer. When I launched Word 2003 to make sure it was still there, I discovered that installing Word 2007 had wiped out my old customizations. (Good thing I had a backup! Here endeth the sermon.) Restoring the custom Normal.dot didn't take long, but every time I launched Word 2003, Windows launched an installer program, and whether I cancelled that program or hunted down my installer disk and ran the installer Windows was asking for, Word 2003 insisted that it was broken and needed to be repaired. Ditto for Word 2007.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't want you running two versions of Word on the same compouter. You can do it, but they don't want you to. Fortunately, the solution is pretty easy—if you're comfortable editing your Windows registry. If not, you can get help from Microsoft on how to make a backup of your registry in case you muck things up. That shouldn't happen (after all, I managed it), but better safe than sorry, right?
To fix the installer problem, open the Windows Start menu, select Run, and type (better yet, copy and paste) the following text into the Run dialog box:
To fix Word 2003:
To fix Word 2007:
I've done both fixes, and now I'm a happy camper... at least until the next irresistable urge to tamper with a system that's working well strikes. I now have considerably more sympathy for Jerry Pournelle*, whose Chaos Manor column for Byte Magazine used to be filled with similar anecdotes of simple installations gone badly wrong, with much wackiness ensuing.
* I'm not linking to Pournelle because I don't much like what I know about the man or his politics. You can find him easily enough in a Web search if you disagree.