More to the point – why does an IT journalist leave file-name extensions hidden? I was taught that making them visible was the first thing anyone should do to understand what they’re looking at… I know it may be visible in the type column, where it says “Microsoft …” Oops – what does it say in that screen shot? Bang goes that excuse!
Make the extensions visible please! (Hint #1 in Windows Annoyances – well, pretty close to #1)

I agree that 2.5cm is a big for margins. 2cm is more than adequate.
Calibri, however, is a very clear and modern looking font and one of the best available for on-screen and print. It is a very good compromise between clarity and compactness..
The extra space after a paragraph really increases readability. If you don’t have it you end up putting two carriage returns in instead which is what typewriters forced us to do because they didn’t know about paragraph breaks.
Word gives you great flexibility but, as with any tool, you have to learn a little about how it works to get the best out of it.
I’m glad you found it easy to modify the defaults to your taste.

Phil:
Excel doesn’t really have the same concept of a “default template” as Word does.
What about the default workbook do you want to change?
In Excel 2010, there are options for the font and number of empty sheets, etc to be used for a new workbook. File | Options | General | When creating new workbooks.
You can also create a new workbook from a template or from an existing workbook.

Thanks for the explanation.
When a user logs onto a machine for the first time, the normal template is copied into their personal templates folder. We have a large number of ‘pool’ machines and also have a company default font etc. Is it possible to find and modify this ‘default’ template so that when a user logs onto a PC for the first time they get it rather than the normal Word template?

Darren:
Word creates a standard Normal.dotm if one doesn’t exist when it starts (not when the user logs in). If you set up Word’s Workgroup Templates folder to point to a network folder of custom templates and/or put your own custom Normal.dotm into each user’s personal templates folder then you would have complete control.

David:
There’s loads of help available to get you up and running with the Office 2007 user interface. It does take a few hours to a couple of weeks to get used to it but once you are, most people find they are more productive, create better looking documents and enjoy using the applications more than they did before.
See
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/getstarted/FX101055081033.aspx
for lots of ideas including “where’s that command gone” tools, 10 minute “potted guide” videos and more.

^^Waiting until Office 2010 is up and running; Timely stuff.

The ribbon migration, nothing more than a sham designed to create a reason for new Office software sales, does nothing to assist the user, but really if a template annoyed me that much, I would have changed it beofre 24months.

I’m sure the sales of Office 2007 for Dummies et al have rocketed since the ribbon bar.

I’m with Steve.I manage a large network and have major requirements not to upgrade to 2007! In the end we’ll have to, 2010 I suppose, but 2000 and 2003 just work. I’m still looking for things on 2007 and it crashes more than 2003 ever did, especially during macro work.
Having to upgrade all the company templates won’t be fun though!

Oh, you lovely people, Steve Cassidy and Francis (March 19th and March 23rd): how cheering to know that I’m not alone with my shameful secret of still using Word 2000. I tried to change up to Word 2003, but I couldn’t take the appalling out-of-focus fuzzy buttons on the toolbars, and went back to Word 2000. Now, like it or not, I shall have to upgrade, as my customers (I’m a translator) are increasingly sending files in formats that I have difficulty in converting. So I’m doing it in two stages, which is always a good way when you’re making any sorts of changes to anything, so that if something goes wrong, you know exactly which change caused it. First change is therefore to upgrade to Windows 7, though straightaway I’ve broken my one-change-at-a-time rule by putting it on a new machine. (On the other hand, it means that I can keep working on my old Win XP machine until I’ve sorted out the teething troubles on the new machine with Win 7.) So I’m gradually getting Win 7 under control, although I haven’t yet found how to (or if it’s possible to) recreate the hierarchical display format of Windows Explorer as in XP, where the ability to display the names of sub-folders (i.e. down the left-hand part of the screen) is very helpful. Anyone know how to do that?

Getting Word 2000 to run on Win 7 will be the first stage of my upgrade. I’m guessing that Word 2010 will appear before the end of 2010, and so I shall then (hopefully) change up to that so that I can keep up with my customer’s file formats. (I’ve also read somewhere that you can make your own toolbar buttons in Word 2007, so if the dreadful fuzzies are still around in W 2010, I’ll replace them with ones that don’t turn my eyes inside out.)

After all that, we finally come to Word 2000. My Normal.dot global template contains various custom macros and Autocorrects (or does it access them, rather than contain them?) and a couple of own-drawn buttons etc. for use in or with Swedish, and it has been my habit to copy it over to successor machines as I’ve bought new ones. However, so far I haven’t been able to find where to put it in Win 7 so that Word finds it when it starts up. So, the question: does anyone know where Windows 7 stores Word’s global Normal.dot template?

Hallelujah! Now all my Word documents have sensible line spacing, margins, font etc.