Tear off (floating) windows (not)

For a number of features Word used to have tear off windows that would leave options such as "Shapes" on the screen for quick access. These floating windows are no longer available, why not, are floating windows no longer possible with Windows? (Actually the Clipboard and Styles windows float so I guess Word is simply annoying.)

Dialog button (not)

A number of the Word ribbon areas have a small "button" that opens a dialog box with additional options. These "buttons" are small and not very obvious. Why not either make them bigger and brighter or simply make the entire label of that ribbon area a button?

First line indent madness

Some folks may think Word's first line indent is perfectly sensible but we do not. If you adjust the first line and/or left indents with the tools on the ruler it is simple and visually direct.

If you try to adjust these indents using the Paragraph dialog box confusion ensues. Word considers the indents relative to which indent is furthest to the left (first line or body). The indent shown in the first figure is .5" left and .5" first line in the dialog box. Why not just specify the first line as 1" and be done with it. The "Special" label is also odd and does not help users unfamiliar with this option.

When a hanging indent is specified, the options seem even more confusing. Note in the figure that the hanging indent is .5" and the left is .5". In this case the first line should be simply .5" and the left indent should be 1".

In fact on the Page Layout ribbon in Word the left indent is shown as 1". Even Word is not consistent in what it thinks the left indent is.

Word should just have a left indent, a right indent, and a first line indent. I think everyone would understand these options.

Footnote Options Annoyance

After you insert a footnote, you may want to adjust the "Note options..." By right clicking on the footnote you get a pop up menu where you can select the Note options. If the entire footnote is selected however (see example) the Note options menu is disabled. This is a small annoyance but why even put the item in the menu if it is disabled. It is not unreasonable a person would select the footnote before right clicking.

Paragraph Group on Two Tabs

The Home tab AND the Page Layout both have Paragraph command groups. Both allow control over indentations and before/after paragraph spacing, but the commands on the Page Layout tab allow greater control. Why?

I think they could easily have all of the commands for paragraph controls within the Paragraph command group on the Home tab. Leave the Page Layout tab for things that are more obviously page formatting operations. I mean really...the Styles command group gets about 5.5 inches of real estate on the ribbon and the paragraph command group gets only 3.25 inches (1280 resolution - maxed window).

Alignment Tabs

Word has finally addressed a long time problem with tabs in Headers/Footers by adding "alignment tabs." The problem occurred when you changed margins after setting your tabs in the header/footer, the tabs would not change and your header/footer would align incorrectly.

With alignment tabs, the alignment adjusts automatically when the margins adjust. We applaud this improvement but Word needs to go a bit further with this. If you use the feature there is nothing to indicate that you have used an alignment tab. There is nothing shown on the ruler. Word should add tab marks, possibly a different color, to the ruler.

On a final note, alignment tabs may be used anywhere in your document but unless you are in the header or footer the ribbon option is not available. You can add it to the quick access tool bar but this feature should be integrated into the normal Tab dialog box or ruler interface.

Page Numbers

I actually believe Word tried to make page numbers easier in Word 07 but they may have missed the mark. It is easy to double click in the footer to begin inserting text. Once you have typed some text you want to add a page number. If you use any of the footer templates your typed text is replaced with the template (and the template adds an extra paragraph mark?).

Now maybe we are wrong but we teach our students to use the Page Number / Current Position option and avoid all the "fancy" Word templates. It would be nice if Word made this option a little easier to access.