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I’m sorry if I don’t understand the problem but here is what I do on a regular basis to copy an image/picture from some source into Word 2010. This is cumbersome but it works for me. I do a Ctrl > c on the original image OR a right click > Copy on the image then paste it into a blank Word Perfect document which almost always accepts it. Then do the reverse (copy from Word Perfect) and past the image into a Word doc which then will recognize the image and show it in Word. I don’t know why this works but when Word won’t accept an image, WP usually will, then Word will accept the image from Word Perfect. So much for the strange behaviors of Word.

kevmeist 2015-02-27, 07:02 – Sorry, I have never heard of “Word Lite” so can’t help with this program. The first question I would ask regarding teaching a “Computer Basics” course is what are the objectives that you expect from your students regarding the outcome of this course? Second, what do your students need in their future profession in the venue of word processing? As much as I hate to admit it the professional world has forced me from WordPerfect to MS Word, I had no choice. Therefore, I learned Word (still struggle with it at times). Even at age 78 and retired, I retain connections with colleagues who need letters of recommendation for job interviews and former students who ask for advice and editing in order to submit scholarly research proposals for symposia and papers for publication in refereed publications. All of these are required to be submitted in Word. What is one to do? As many have stated in this thread, we don’t need all the bells and whistles that Word provides but you’ve got to understand some of these in order to produce a scholarly document that is formatted according to professional standards.

Kevmeist – Because university graduate schools in universities across the nation require slightly different formats and regulations. Students can’t fully depend on Google, Yahoo, Word, etc. in order to achieve scholarly standardization because most universities publish a style sheet that is not universal. Style and mechanical formatting are usually dictated by specifying “your dissertation must conform to APA or Turabian standards.” Further, universities often insert some individual quirks that require special formatting such as where the page number appears. Yes, you can do searches and find APA or Turabian formats; however, this won’t account for the special formatting requirements of various universities. Obviously you haven’t labored through the final semester of finishing a PhD dissertation and experienced submitting the final copy to the Graduate School or Graduate College and having it rejected several days before the deadline because of a “glitch” in the formatting that doesn’t comply. I don’t know that this is “rocket science” but the formatting regulations (somewhat difficult in Word) certainly are required if a student is approved for graduation. Further, a list of figures and a list of tables usually require a slightly different format than a TOC. Try doing footnotes and a bibliography with specified spacing and required listing format of authors, dates, volumes, and issues ! ! !. I’ve advised over 70 PhD dissertations and am confident in my statements (now age 78 and still editing). Incidentally, I payed a professional typist to produce my PhD dissertation on a typewriter in 1973 and gave her my university’s dissertation guidebook to study before handing her my prepared manuscript as I typed the draft on my typewriter.

To gsmith-plm, your reply of 2015-02-26, 07:39 is brilliant and I believe your opinions couldn’t be stated more accurately and to the point of this thread. Your thoughts and expressions represent my views exactly–I don’t need to elaborate–thank you for a pragmatic and very reasonable view of this issue. Just out of curiosity, did you start your computer work as I did by slaving hours and days at an IBM 029 Keypunch? I started this in the late 1960s. People now can’t even comprehend what we’re talking about regarding the labor and frustrations that went into this procedure in order to get results which were mostly statistical analysis, not word processing. Even in the past decade I’ve had students bring their dissertation Table of Contents to my office showing great pride in achieving spaced/aligned periods from chapter and section headings leading to the page numbers in each line. When asked how they did this I often find that they manually inserted dozens of spaced tabs at the top of the page so the required placement of periods could manually be inserted and aligned, well that is until they crossed a section or some irregularity when the periods then shifted and they didn’t know what to do. Of course I’m referencing Microsoft Word and until I created a template and specific instructions for creating a TOC using Word which I issued to every graduate student starting a dissertation, did we eliminate the spaced/aligned periods problem, other than creating the TOC in WordPerfect. I like Word but not its complexities, many of which are not used even by professional clerical people. Without repeating gsmith-plm’s well-stated points I see no justification for all the bells, whistles, and hidden ways to produce a simple and well-formatted scholarly document to achieve a PhD when struggling with Word and its complexities. In the final semester of a doctoral degree program I have documentation showing that these mature and intelligent students frequently waste more time with formatting and standardization of “mechanics” than presenting their research content. Incidentally even today, I wouldn’t recommend attempting to produce a highly refereed PhD dissertation by using a tablet ;). Try doing a Bibliography according to APA (American Psychological Association) specifications by using Word (even WordPerfect) versus a tablet. Granted there are programs and a feature in Word that will product a fairly accurate Bib. although still work intensive.

In my opinion this is the best and most practical thread I’ve seen in the Forum since joining many years ago. Excellent thinking, comments, and intelligent suggestions that apply to what might be termed “normal usage” of Word and WordPerfect. I particularly want to compliment “gsmith-plm” who makes a lot of sense in many areas–nice job, and “partner” with very sensible thinking/posting–right on target! I’d go back to WordPerfect in an instant if it hadn’t become overcome by Word. To be clear, I like certain features of Word; however, the complexity that MS has built into this program is totally overwhelming and unnecessary. Has anyone used the statistical program SPSS? They provide options of purchasing modules that can be plugged into the basic program, i.e., if you want to do only descriptive statistics, just go with the basic program but if multiple regression or if multivariate analysis of variance or other sophisticated analysis is needed, you only purchase the module that is appropriate. Why can’t Microsoft produce specific modules like this instead of forcing customers to purchase the whole package? Granted both MS and Corel make provisions for the installation of desired programs in their package offerings, the user mostly is stuck with spending big $$$ on a single combined conglomeration of various programs vs. offering a program like SPSS with individually selected modules that meet specific needs–not covering world needs. University graduate schools throughout the nation have very stringent requirements when formatting a PhD dissertation. I’ll state only one example here dealing with formatting a Table of Contents (TOC). Just to name only one area that is somewhat of a universal requirement focusing on margins, vertical alignment, indentations, justification of the beginning and ending of lines, chapter/page number placement wherein periods are vertically aligned, and dot leaders that are double spaced and vertically aligned, and other technicalities that I’ll not mention here. I don’t teach word processing in my doctoral classes but often am forced to provide private lessons, especially on formatting in Word. You should see the doctoral students’ eyes pop open when they’ve spent a day or more attempting to create an accurate TOC in Word and when asking for help come to my office and I zap the unformatted TOC into WordPerfect and produce a “perfect” TOC in five to ten minutes vs. the many day’s work the student has spent when attempting to struggle with Word. Well ‘nuf of this rambling, but my main point here, hopefully in closing down this thread, is that we need these companies who produce software to recognize specific needs and provide units or packages that meet specific work area needs.

Thanks “Partner.” I started my computer work in the late 1960s by working for hours/days at an IBM 029 keypunch and have been in computers ever since through all the generations. Yes, in my earlier years I was a devoted fan of WordPerfect–you could reveal codes exactly as written and edit in that small code window at the bottom. Now that Word has taken over the business/academic world and I’m forced to depart from WP except for special needs. I must write that I use Word about 98% of my working hours for writing scholarly documents and editing doctoral dissertations, for obvious reasons; however, I’d go back to WP in an instant if possible. Granted I’m one who doesn’t frequently plow through the Help options mainly because many of them don’t completely answer my questions/frustrations. Then at the end, MS has the gall to ask me if their answers were helpful–ha. When hard at work advising/editing a PhD dissertation do they expect me to take more time to tell them why their Help wasn’t helpful? I’ve worked with Word for so many years in graduate academia that I’m mostly comfortable with its idiosyncrasies and complexities that I do ok with it most of the time. However, a couple of things that drive me nuts and I think could be simplified are: (1) Structuring outline procedures with easily set and consistent indents plus standardizing and clearly explaining their hierarchies and line spacing when moving from separate documents or crossing sections in a single document. I like Word’s bubble/comment feature; however, it also can be irritating when you can’t control colors and must go through a “procedure” in order to gain standardized font settings and bubble response settings from students. Actually, my main complaints with MS Word deal with ease and consistency of formatting and the complexities of their “normal template” so that I can depend on the same document structure appearing every time I open a new or freshly-written document sent to me by a student. I expect that most professional secretaries use only about 20% of Word’s power—do most of us really need all of the sophisticated “stuff” MS has packed into Word? On the other hand, I appreciate Outlook although they have also made it extra complicated and fragile. Excel and PowerPoint are my favorites and I have very few complaints with these programs. I’d just as soon they would trash Access as it could be much easier to work with. OneNote is excellent but if you have ever screwed it up, expect to spend several weeks in getting it back in shape. The remainder of MS Office is mostly useless to me. I’m a professor and PhD in a major university using Windows 7 Pro on a 64-bit machine and MS Office 2010 wherein I’ll continue to use for a considerable number of years. MS, please stop your frequent shoving of new versions of Windows, etc. at me for big $$$.

This may be deviating from the thread but it’s a compliment to Kathleen Atkins. We need more of this lighter material; however, WS posted it so the topic must be somewhat worthwhile. To my point, isn’t it about time to do a major purge on the Lounge postings? I can’t believe we’ve still got questions on old software and old, old problems. Yes, I’m a Kansan and have worked on farms–“Home on the Range.” Incidentally, if you haven’t heard about the fun of going out at night and “tipping cows,” you’re out of the loop. Now would someone please tell me how to get my images to appear again in Outlook?

Paul T – Your reply is courteous and probably appropriate. However, I found that the information mrjimphelps provided was informative, useful, and not necessarily opinionated, only facts as he/she experienced them. This kind of information helps me make decisions.

Woody, thanks for your piece on phony tech support calls–you are right on target with your five statements about what to or not to do. However, I suggest you missed one of the main actions when receiving these calls, i.e., just hang up when you hear an accent that is not spoken in pure English. Don’t even try to talk with them. Record the phone number and report it to the FTC, for all the good it will do. You can block the number with *77 or whatever your carrier uses but these crooks keep changing their numbers. Incidentally, these thugs usually don’t specifically state they are from Microsoft, rather they state something vague like “I’m calling from Windows,” or “I’m calling about your Microsoft account.” I’ve never heard them say that they are a technician employed by Microsoft. I’ve sometimes played along with them saying silly stuff like “oh, is my computer putting out harmful messages?” However, if you want to play with them just say “oh, my computer is a Mac” and they immediately hang up. (No putdown intended.) What I’m really angry with is these durn credit card calls often identified with something like “I’m Rachel from Credit Card Services, your account is safe now but if you need to consolidate your payments press 1 now to speak to a live representative . . .” Woody, please stay on this case because someone must stop this scam. Thank you.

No putdown, but seems like a pretty simple solution. Right click on the Quick Access Toolbar then left click on “Customize Quick Access Toolbar.” Be sure “All Commands” is selected in the drop down menu at the top of the left column. Scroll down this column until you find “Bookmark” (flag). Add it to the right column which installs this icon in the Quick Access Toolbar. Click OK. Now go back to your Word document, do “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” and drag the flag icon to a convenient location on the bar. Now when you want to add a bookmark, place your cursor at your return location, click on the flag icon, a little window opens, and name your bookmark. If you are using only a “go back to” bookmark, I usually label it “go.” Then when you want to return to a previous location just click on the flag icon, the little window opens showing “go,” click on “Go To” and you’re there. When editing doctoral dissertation chapters I’ve used 20 or so bookmarks, each with a unique short name such as “ho” (hypothesis), “rq” (research questions), and “sop” (statement of purpose). This is handy and quick. Be creative but not complex with “go to” abbreviations. The Quick Access Toolbar can be your best friend.

Thanks guys, maybe I’m making too much of this but the strange appearance of “Jremetrics” was sort of a shock–In all these years I never heard of this word. Here are the details. Yes, I ran Macecraft jv16 Power Tools 2014. Jremetrics did not show in the Control Panel Uninstall or change a program. Nor did it show in Tuneup Utilities 2014 “Uninstall.” So I went back to jv16 Power Tools and uninstalled as much of Jremetrics as it would do & manually deleted the empty folders in WE. Now a WE global search of C: reveals this:
cc_20101009_122357.reg
cc_20101009_122357.reg
cc_20101026_192954.reg
cc_20101026_192954.reg
I went back to jv16 & running a search on the word “Jremetrics” I find it reveals the following:
HKEY_LOCAL)MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeJavaSoftJava UpdatePolicy PostStatusdUrl
https://sjremetrics.java.com/b/ss//6
[and]
HKEY_LOCAL)MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeJreMetrics {KEY}
I’m afraid to try to delete these as I don’t like to mess with the registry. If I’m making too much of this experience please feel free to tell me. Thanks.

JoeP517, I like what you write. You make sense and cut right to the chase. Granted, I’m compulsive and this probably is one of the reasons why the constant bombardment of something new, something fixed drives me nuts, or better [in your words] “Apple and Google are tinkering, changing, and fixing all the time too.” “Disingenuous to criticize Microsoft for updates and fixes as though they are the only vendor who does this”? — Very true, maybe my brain needs an upgrade, I didn’t word that properly. As you say, if Microsoft would establish a “base” OS, give it a permanent name and sequential numbering system, then provide specific but limited branches for clearly identified populations of users, everyone would be better off. No more rambling through rubric such as XP, SP-2, ME (gasp), Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 9 dangling as a carrot in front of a rabbit’s nose. If Microsoft hasn’t figured out how to balance consumer and business needs by now, something is wrong. Thanks, I appreciate your well informed contributions. Competition is vicious which fuels development, innovation, and something newer and fancier. I’m afraid at the current speed of development/advancement that the industry is going to eventually strangle itself.

My graduate students tell me that I am “wordy,” which obviously is true. However, I must add to my previous post. I now have an iPhone and was in the Apple store yesterday in KC and it was packed with technicians and customers needing advice and attention. I easily and quickly got my iPhone fixed and reprogrammed without cost. When answering JoeP517 regarding “What specifically would you have had Microsoft do?” I say to Microsoft wake up, tune up, and get up-to-date. Be sensitive to customer needs. As MRCS states, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” To Microsoft, stop tampering with your umpteen updates and “fixes” until you have something of substance, quality, and permanence to offer. Wake up and work to please and service your customers in a considerate, logical, and sequential manner. After many years of faithful trust in Microsoft, I must say that I’m getting very annoyed with your constant bombardment of updates, notifications of problems, and continual annoying announcements of mistakes and support variations. Granted that the world of computing is changing rapidly, there are a large number of users in the world who depend on your products to do our work. I have, since starting my computer work in the late 1960s, NEVER, played a game on a computer or used a computer for trivial purposes. Well, this is my main problem with Apple although the music/game emphasis there is easy to avoid. To Microsoft, please get your house in order, fix your problems before they smack us in the face, and get smart. To JoeP517, thank you for this opportunity to vent. We need to hear more.

Hey good thoughts JoeP517. Further, of more importance to me, is Woody’s latest piece titled “Win8.1 Update becomes the new patch ‘baseline'” which includes excellent analyses of the Microsoft saga. Okay, what is the difference between an update, upgrade, SP, patch, or a new version and supposedly profound, excellent, and milestone OS invention? I grew up in my Dad’s automotive dealership following WW II when new models were modestly introduced every year. As a kid in the 1950s and ’60s, I could look at a snapshot of most any car’s taillight or front fender and name the brand and model. Now, there are so many little motorized “bugs” buzzing the streets, at age 77, I can’t name any of them, not to mention the many quirks and names that the automotive industry applies to these hundreds of “tin cans” that now are convoluting our streets and highways. I see a strong correlation between the continued and far too frequent production of computer operating systems and the weird vehicles cramping our streets. Why does Microsoft need to keep changing names and versions of so-called improvements vs. continuing enhancements that are justified with a sequential and sensible identification system that makes sense and consumers can logically and empirically evaluate, then economically move up to the point when the benefits achieve positive evaluation, professional testing, and merit? When looking at and evaluating the sequence of so-called improvements we’ve seen starting with the approximate date of 9 December 1987 Windows 2.0 x86–16-bit, 27 May 1988 Windows 2.10 x86–16-bit, 13 March 1989 Windows 2.11 x86–16-bit, 22 May 1990 Windows 3.0 x86–16-bit, 6 April 1992 Windows 3.1 x86–16-bit, 27 October 1992 Windows for work groups 3.1 x86–16-bit, 27 July 1993 Windows NT 3.1, DEC Alpha, MIPS, 8 November 1993 Windows for Work groups 3.11 x86–16-bit, 21 September 1994 Windows NT 3.5, DEC Alpha, MIPS, 30 May 1995 Windows NT 3.51, DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, 24 August 1995, Windows 95, 24 August 1996 Windows NT 4.0, DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, 25 June 1998 Windows 98, 5 May 1999 Windows 98, 17 February 2000 Windows 2000, 14 September 2000 Windows ME, 25 October 2001 Windows XP, 25 October 2001 Windows XP 64-Bit Edition (v2002) Itanium, 31 October 2002 Windows XP Media Center Edition, 28 March 2003 Windows XP 64-Bit Edition (v2003) Itanium, 24 April 2003 Windows Server 2003, x64, Itanium, 30 September 2003 Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, 12 October 2004 Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, 25 April 2005 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition x64, 6 December 2005 Windows Server 2003 x64, Itanium, 8 July 2006 Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, 8 November 2006 Windows Vista for Business use, x64, 30 January 2007 Windows Vista for Home use, 7 November 2007 Windows Home Server, 27 February 2008 Windows Server 2008, 22 July 2009 Windows 7, 22 October 2009 Windows Server 2008 R2, x64, 6 April 2011 Windows Home Server 2011, x64, 4 September 2012 Windows Server 2012 x64, 26 October 2012 Windows 8 IA-32, x64, 26 October 2012, Windows RT ARM, and 18 October 2013, Windows 8.1 (please excuse any mistakes I’ve made above, but I’m taxing my memory). Now we’re faced with Windows 9 lurking around the corner. Granted that cars currently have weird names that continue to emerge, I don’t understand why, especially Microsoft seems to feel the need to continue with a nonsensical name/numbering system as they supposedly make intermediate (updates) improvements in their operating systems. To Microsoft–please discontinue your crude meaningless names and continue your improvements with a logical and sensible improvement plan while omitting all of your patchwork and insane numbered updates that people (at least I won’t purchase). Are you only looking at fools who, incidentally, will spend their money if a new name or larger version number attracts your attention? Incidentally, I’m still a Microsoft fan.

I hope the Gods are smiling on this thread because it obviously has slightly deviated from the original question. However, regarding my question about staying with W7 or going to 8, 8.1, etc., or waiting until W9, your excellent advice has convinced me to stay with W7 Pro now and see what happens with 9. Considering XP and its impressive duration, the Microsoft saga of moving through W3.0, W98, Millennium Edition, Vista, and other versions, causes me to think this is little more than a continuing game just to make money. Question: Unless people have pockets bulging with $$$, why would anyone even consider moving to 8 or 8.1 when 9 is peeking around the corner? I’m not putting down anyone who wrote something like “8 and 8.1 are okay, go with them.” But this continual “improvement” updating doesn’t make sense to me. So, it’s W7 for me until Microsoft proves that I can make a giant leap by going to W9. Incidental related (I hope) comments: I was highly interested in hearing from jwitalka saying the card punch reader was probably a Univac 1040–I found a pic of the IBM-029 keypunch that just about grounded me and my PhD studies at a major Midwestern university. See: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/029.html. This baby was a demon although the university didn’t do well with maintenance. The feeder would jam, the drum typically was broken and worthless, and I’m convinced that these machines had an internal memory built in that quickly established a “hate factor” against the user–remember most students in the early ’70s didn’t have good keyboard skills. Before hunting for an available keypunch, you’d better attend to your physical needs because even if you left all your materials with a “don’t touch” sign if you had to leave the keypunch to go pee, when returning you’d find the next person standing in line behind you would have dumped all your stuff on the floor and taken over the keypunch. Also to Prescott: You had the same system that worked for me, i.e., leave the campus and come back again the next day, identify any mistakes, correct them, and resubmit. Unfortunately, I lived 32 miles from campus. Considering operating systems, in the ’70s I made a presentation on creating simple music tunes and compositions to a special section of a national professional conference covering the capabilities of the Commodore PET, Apple II, and TRS-80s. A guy in the audience said “you don’t have enough capacity to produce music on a computer.” To my embarrassment, I had no answer for him. Little did we know at that time that Megabytes, Gigabytes, and Terabytes were not far in the future. My first “real” computer was a DEC Rainbow without a hard drive. When I graduated to installing a 5-MB hard drive in this computer I thought technology had reached the top of the world. Thanks for an interesting thread.