I just bought a new computer yesterday and have almost everything set up so I can work. Not personalized yet, but I can muddle thru for the most part. I am having trouble with IT and commands. Whenever I run an entry in IT that has a command in it, it has just been backing up and deleting the short that I had typed in Word 2003 and not spitting out the command at all. It just deletes the short and sits there. I have never seen this before. I have installed IT and my glossaries on other computers before and I did not run into this. Has anyone seen this before? Do you have a solution for me? (please, please, please??)

I have some work that has to get out first thing this morning, so I have to suffer with what I have, but I plan to call the IT people when I'm done unless I find a BRILLIANT person here that can tell me how to fix it!

Did you go from Win XP to Vista? Until the next version of IT is released, you need to turn off the User Account Control (UAC).

Just curious here. Are you running both Word 2003 and 2007 on your Vista machine? If yes, was 2003 installed before 2007? The oldest version must be installed first if you're going to to run both.

I thought I had already turned UAC off, but when I called tech support just now that the was the first thing she had me check -- and sure enuf if was on. She said it could sometimes turn itself back on if you have a major software update to Windows.

Both 2003 and 2007 are currently on the computer. 2007 came on the computer preinstalled and I just put in my activation code. Then I installed 2003 after that. So far I haven't had any problems, but I haven't tried to start up 2007. The last time I did that, I had to wait thru a big long install before it would open.

Thanks for your help!

Glad you got IT taken care of. I know I couldn't work for two minutes without my IT.

When you're bouncing back and forth between Word versions, you'll have to wait for Word to reconfigure itself each time. The delay really isn't all that long, but long enough to be irritating. You can get rid of the delay with a registry fix, but I don't advise people on how to mess with the registry since you can disable your entire system if you're not careful.

You're also going to confuse Word big time if you don't uninstall and reinstall in the correct order. If you want to bite the bullet and just work in 2007, you can work in your old documents and continue to save them in 2003 format. You can also set the default save in 2007 to save down to 97-2003 (or save documents down individually).

The majority of old 2003 keyboard shortcuts still work in 2007, but you will probably have to change a few of your IT command entries as you come across them.

After having 2007 and then having to move down to 2003, I actually find that I like 2003 better. It is much more customizable than 2007. Have you found ways to customize 2007? I like having additional menus, additional right-click choices, stuff like that.

That's because you're more accustomed to 2003. You can customize 2007 as much as 2003, just differently. 2007 took away the ability to customize right-click menus -- they want you to add those options to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). You don't really need to do either way because you can assign your own keyboard shortcut to those same options. It just all depends on the way you work as to which way is the most efficient for you. Me, I prefer keyboard shortcuts. 2007 can make you crazy because they expect you to use the mouse even more than earlier versions.

I rarely use the Ribbon and keep it hidden for more document screen space. You can toggle the ribbon on and off with a shortcut. Between that huge ribbon on top and IT on the bottom, screen space is very limited. I didn't have to change many of my IT command entries because most of the old built-in keyboard shortcuts still work -- even a lot of the old Alt + underlined letters of Menu items.

I agree with you 110% and, as a result, I almost never use Word 2007. Classic Word was easy to customize. To customize Word 2007, you have to write XML code, which is not all that difficult but takes more time and effort than doing something similar in Word 2003. Here is one tip. If you create a new toolbar in a .dot file in Word 2003, that toolbar will appear as an Add-In tab when you use the .dot file in Word 2007 with no need to write any code.

I am working with a client who loves Word 2007. I do all of the macro programming with Word 2002 then I give him the result after I test it in Word 2007 to make sure everything works.

Another thing I hate about Word 2007 is the tiny icons on the QAT and that you can't put a button with text instead of an icon on the QAT.

I wonder if anbody at MS ever heard of the old saying "If it ain't broke don't fix it."?

Or if they ever thought of asking the people who USE the software what they thought of their changes??

MS claims that they did extensive testing of the 2007 interface with users and that the interface strongly appealed to thse users. Many industry observes believe, however, that the testers were casual users. It appears that MS is more interested in keeping novices happy than in making more advanced users more productive. My solution is to offer a choice of interfaces.

The new interface appeals to the point-and-click crowd. I have taught Word in many offices (and in many different industries) and most users would rather point and click. They always claim they just don't have time to learn the shortcuts. They would rather type their name and title out in full on every single letter than to bother even learning AutoCorrect or AutoText.