Have been using WORD 2007 for quite some time without any trouble but suddenly I find that every word I type is followed by a dot separating it from the next word.

How to rectify this, please, and return to normal typing?

Thank you.

Joe Busuttil

Hi Joe

I am an MS Word user but, I must admit, I still use MS Word 97 and, to tell the truth, I see no reason to change it because all the features I use I would still use no matter what the version of Word was available.

That said, it seems that your copy of Word has possibly become corrupt. If it has then I would suggest the following:

1) Copy all your Word documents etc. to another location on your HD, preferably a new directory.

NB: Insure that you also have a copy your MS Word registration number because you will need this when you start the re-installation process.

2) Uninstall Word from your PC and delete any directory and files that have been left behind by the uninstallation process.

The idea behind the above instructions is to remove any and all corruption that has attached itself to your application and to insure that it does not reoccur.

3) Reinstall MS Word from your application disk.

And finally, copy your documents from your new directory back to where MS Word expects to find them.

And that should be that.


UK Bob

Many thks for your kind reply.

If nothing else works, I shall certainly follow your advice.

Thks again for your kindness.

Joe

Joe,

You may have accidently turned on Show Hidden Characters. I don't know where to find it in Word (haven't used it in years). The characters shouldn't show up in printing (try a print preview). It should be easy to find the switch to turn it off.

Many thks. I solved the problem by looking up slowly and repeatedly my large accumulation of personal notes about computing that I have been writing and collecting for a number of years.

Since I am a slowcoach at age 74 I have to be extra patient with myself and my deficiencies.

Trouble is sometimes I overlook the solutions I have filed even though I go to some pains to index them.

Anyway, you may wish to note the following solution to my problem, in case you or someone else might wish to use it:-

1. Open WORD
2. Click the button that looks like a sheet of paper with a magnifying glass superimposed on it.
3. OPTIONS where the word DISPLAY should be highlighted.
4. Check SPACES and hit OK.
Renewed thks from Joe

Thanks for sharing. We are not all programmers. While I' not sure is this was your issue, there is a show/hide code options in word What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean?

While I see myself as quite advanced in computers, I still run into similar problems once in a while, since my programming skills are zero.

Hi Guys

You know the trouble I find with a programme like MS Word is that there are too many versions in circulation and, in the latest versions, there are too many irrelevant features.

Now I must admit, even before I joined this forum, I still used Word 97, simply because it gives me what I want while working in a home environment.

However, I might think slightly differently if I was still in work but the simple truth is that most people only use the few regular facilities they have always used, no matter what the version on offer. In fact, I have only ever seen one office that networked Word (XP/2002) so that members of that office could collaborate on documents.

Other than that, all the extra (new and exciting) facilities MS cram into Word only serves to slow it down and force companies to buy more powerful PCs with faster CPUs and more HD space.

Finally, in all my years of using MS Word 97 there are only two non-native facilities I have added that my requirements have grown to encompass, they are:

1) The ability to save or convert my Word documents to PDF documents.

2) Very occasionally, save or convert received PDF documents into Word documents.

For 1), I use a free utility called "Cute PDF", and for 2) I use a very cheap utility called "PDF to Word".

Apart from that, I have no reason (that I can see) to debilitate my PC by getting another (more up to date) version of Word crammed with facilities that I will never ever use.


UK Bob

I would have to agree with you full-heartedly. MS-Word is now a very old program that's been around for almost 30 years. To be frank, I do not believe the program itself has improved much at all. And yes, the program has become bloated with support files that most people never use. I've used the earliest of both Windows and Mac versions of MS-Word and much later versions.

I see absolutely no difference between the Mac version MS-Word 2008 and 2011 which are currently on my Mac computer. MS-Word's memory abilities seem slow and old-fashioned for general functioning and carrying out processing on super large documents. MS-Word's clip-board memory is very slow and clunky when copying to or from Word to another document. Let's make a comparison. It can take 20-40 seconds or more to copy 30,000 lines of text to Word or from Word to another program's document. Apple's TextEdit takes 1-2 seconds to either copy the equivalent amount of text or paste to another apple document. TextEdit can easily edit and process a half million line document and do it within a couple of seconds. MS-Word cannot cope with such a large document. Anything larger than 50,000 lines and MS-Word simply crashes. So if you are writing a novel, MS-Word is not the program to use. I end up having to process large documents in parts at a time to stop MS-Word crashing.

I find MS-Word's auto-backup feature slow and unnecessary. I also find its auto-re-paginating tool extremely slow on very large documents. I mean waiting 10-15 minutes for it to re-paginate is totally ridiculous in today's computer world. Other processing of portions of a very large document also takes many minutes.

My Mac is a dual 3.2 GHz quad-core processors with 16 GB RAM and 4 x 1 TB drives. Why would a text processing program behave like it is running on a computer made 10-15 years ago? My first Mac was the 2002 Macintosh Classic II and I had MS-Word running on it for ages to do college work (that was either v5 or 6.) ( BTW I preferred WordPerfect on Windows.)

I can process 3D video rendering faster than MS-Word can process simple words of the English language lol.

I have tried OpenOffice but it lacks an important tool I use in MS-Word for processing an entire document.

Hi LOTR

You know, when I used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, way back when, I always thought it was a clean, elegantly designed word processor. And although it did not have a wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) with a little practice you could print out excellent looking documents. In fact, I used WP5.1 to write and format computer instruction manuals for my non-technical colleagues.

When you check into WP's history, you will see that it was first produced in a university, i.e. designed for lengthy writing, while MS Word was primarily pushed out to win market share.

See: WordPerfect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, since retirement, I no longer need to write long documents, i.e. nothing longer than two A4 pages. So MS Word's shortcomings don't really affect me other than that silly one where it freezes from anything from one to four minutes for no apparent reason (I understand that this problem affects all versions). But there is a work-around, instead of starting a new document get an old one, use "Save As" to save it with another name and amend this document accordingly, problem solved.

Although I started out liking WP (for DOS) when the windows version came out (and got passed MS's sabotaging tactics) it required a powerful PC to get the best from it, I guess because WP for windows incorporated "Desk Top Publishing" facilities. And because back then memory, cpu chips and HDs were relatively expensive so I never got back to using WP ever again.

That said, MS Word does have a security flaw and that is if you send a Word file to a recipient that file can reveal how many times it has been amended, all the registration details on your PC, file location, etc. And the file's recipient does not need anything special to see this info either, some email clients will reveal this info as part of their normal function.

All in all, most people, like myself, use MS Word and most other MS applications by default rather than by our own design.



UK Bob

I got my first PC in '85. It came with WordStar (no WYSIWYG, no on-screen menu, confusing control codes from its days on older mainframes; a real PITA). After memorizing many of the WS control codes I was given a copy of EasyWriter (similiar limitations, but the codes made sense) so I never used WS. Without WYSIWYG, I had to count characters on-screen and then subtract the number of control codes (such as the characters used to start/stop bold, italics, etc.) in order to figure out where things would end up on the printed page. The results I got were good enough to create forms that were used in our Superior Courts.

Later my office, the Behavorial Sciences section of our local Health Dept., had to buy PCs. The idiot Director ignored my advice and bought 20 MacPlus because his friend, who works for NASA, said, "That's what we use". I offered that his friend's job probably did not involve word processing or intense number-crunching, and then I asked, "Ever hear of the Challenger?" He countered with Apple's claims re ease of use.

About six-weeks later I learned that a consultant was hired to teach everyone how to use the Macs (so much for "ease of use"). Meanwhile, the agencies that were using the nine (cheaper) IBM clones that I had purchased said that they needed no assistance, even though some of them had never used any computer. Soon I was hearing complaints among the Mac users that they were going blind while trying to read lengthy documents displayed in grey type on a light blue background.

I managed to stop the Dept from purchasing WP when I heard the Director say, "It's the most popular". I showed him a cartoon from a Mac magazine that read, "Word Perfect for PC and Werd Pirfekt for Mac are ready to ship". I also informed him that when I sold televisions Admiral advertised that theirs was, "The most expensive television in America and darn well worth it". In truth, theirs was not the most expensive (I called it "Cadillac advertising").

I began using Word in '87 and soon discovered its powerful (for a document processor) macro programming. I was able to write a macro that would read an address and then look up and type into the document the correct ZIP code for any address in San Francisco, in less than three seconds (on a 12 mHz PC with 1 MB of RAM).

I was not aware of Word's exif-like hidden info. That could be as troublesome as when a televised PC "expert" posted her cropped image on the program's website. She had forgotten that a thumbnail of the original image (in which she was topless) was still present in the exif. She immediately lost her well-paying job.

I currently use Open Office. And I admit to missing the days of DOS and elegant coding to save precious disk space and RAM. Nowadays coding is sloppy and almost every software program is bloated as it tries to be the only program you'll ever use. I've thought of writing to M$ to advise them that we don't buy PCs in order to play with OS bells and whistles. I did tell Bill G, regarding Windows, if I had wanted an Apple I would have bought one.

I also actually liked BASICs line numbers. For you youngsters, sequential programming is like
100 WHILE horse=ready
110 DO connect buggy
120