Word X: Microsoft Word The Idiot
Posted by Pierre Igot in: MacintoshFebruary 19th, 2003 • 10:44 pm
Nothing is more annoying than having to use a software tool that is not able to provide the basic functionality that it claims to provide.
Case in point: MS Word, of course. Almost every other time I select a block of text and drag it to a different location in the same document in order to move it there, the drag-and-drop process fails and the text “bounces” back to its original location, for absolutely no reason. Not only that, but after having bounced back, Word deselects the text and effectively forces me to select it again. (It doesn’t deselect it if I drag the text to another window and the drag-and-drop fails. It just bounces back.)
I would understand it if there were any ambiguity about the destination of the drag-and-drop that I indicate with my cursor, but there isn’t: during this process, MS Word does display the “I”-beam cursor properly in the intended location, so it “knows” where the text is supposed to go. Yet it still fails. I try it again a second time, and then it works.
Why, oh why? This bug has been around for ages — basically for as long as text dragging-and-dropping has been supported in MS Word. I’ve reported it several times to MS Word through the usual (and apparently useless) channels. I’ve changed machines, OS versions, and Word versions several times over the years. I am now using Word X in Jaguar. Nothing’s changed. The bug is still there, and it’s still annoying me on a daily, make that hourly… — make that all the time. Unbelievable. Shame on Microsoft.