MS Word 2002, Word 2000, Word 97 - any major differences between the three?
Thread poster: Robin Ward
Robin Ward
Robin Ward
Germany
Local time: 16:41
German to English
+ ...
Jul 25, 2002

I purchased a new PC with already-installed Windows XP (Home edition) and among other things Word 2000 a while ago. In my office I use Word 97, and I\'ve heard that Word 2002 now also exists.



I\'ve tried making a comparison of Word 2000 and 97, but can hardly find any differences. I\'d be interested to know whether there are in fact any important differences between the two that I might have overlooked - and whether I\'m missing out on anything of any significance by not (y
... See more
I purchased a new PC with already-installed Windows XP (Home edition) and among other things Word 2000 a while ago. In my office I use Word 97, and I\'ve heard that Word 2002 now also exists.



I\'ve tried making a comparison of Word 2000 and 97, but can hardly find any differences. I\'d be interested to know whether there are in fact any important differences between the two that I might have overlooked - and whether I\'m missing out on anything of any significance by not (yet) having Word 2002!




[addsig]
Collapse


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:41
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
No major, but important minor differencies Jul 25, 2002

Word 97 was the first one to come with a lot of creators and add ons form Microsoft. The software was unstable. Word 2000 was a better companion, worked more stable.

Word 2002 (or Word XP) is the best one you can get. The software is very stable, and when it crashes (it happens sometimes, but even a MAC crashes too), you get everything recovered you have worked on before the crash.

Some people like the new functions and creators, some hate them - but the PLUS is you can switc
... See more
Word 97 was the first one to come with a lot of creators and add ons form Microsoft. The software was unstable. Word 2000 was a better companion, worked more stable.

Word 2002 (or Word XP) is the best one you can get. The software is very stable, and when it crashes (it happens sometimes, but even a MAC crashes too), you get everything recovered you have worked on before the crash.

Some people like the new functions and creators, some hate them - but the PLUS is you can switch everything off you do not need. And you can adapt Word with all menus and tasbars and a lot of other things so, that it stucks to your needs - no other software for text processing is so flexible.



Using Word 2002 you can get the same results as using any DTP - the only difference is, nobody wants to use Word as DTP (it is really a pity).



Best

Jerzy
Collapse


 
Maria Knorr
Maria Knorr
Local time: 11:41
English
+ ...
Annoying differences Jul 25, 2002

What I found to be the biggest difference is the stupid lines under the words (green, red, etc.) Plus there are lot more menues to get rid off, so unless you have a huge monitor you can\'t really see the entire page of your work.

I think the main reason Bill Gates is coming out with all of this stuff is that any respectable company needs to come out with an update about every two years and being as smart as Gates is, he is just charging people way too much money for a product that i
... See more
What I found to be the biggest difference is the stupid lines under the words (green, red, etc.) Plus there are lot more menues to get rid off, so unless you have a huge monitor you can\'t really see the entire page of your work.

I think the main reason Bill Gates is coming out with all of this stuff is that any respectable company needs to come out with an update about every two years and being as smart as Gates is, he is just charging people way too much money for a product that is not all that.

Summary: don\'t waste your money on it.



Collapse


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:41
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Reply to Maria Jul 25, 2002

Those \"stupid\" lines can be disabled, but they are signs for bad spelling of your text and bad grammar (the language of the text must be set properly, then most if those lines dissappar from alone).

What I see is, that you have made no attempt to adapt Word to your needs - and blame it on Bill! Well, try to have a look on Word help files, youl\'ll find instrukctions for changing menus, tool bars and adapting them to your needs. You can then use Word as a very simple text editor. The
... See more
Those \"stupid\" lines can be disabled, but they are signs for bad spelling of your text and bad grammar (the language of the text must be set properly, then most if those lines dissappar from alone).

What I see is, that you have made no attempt to adapt Word to your needs - and blame it on Bill! Well, try to have a look on Word help files, youl\'ll find instrukctions for changing menus, tool bars and adapting them to your needs. You can then use Word as a very simple text editor. The only question is, whatfor do all the people pay their money, if they do not want to use all the features of the software they are buing? Not only Word, but all other text editors and DTP programms have a lot of functions that seem not to be necessary - but for QuarkXPress you have to pay more than 2000 EUROS! Word is thus more flexible as QuarXpress and does not cost so much.



After all, one needs to learn to use the software to work with - this is the only way to get GOOD results of your work. You do not start to drive a car without learning it first.



Just my two cents

Jerzy
Collapse


 
Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:41
English to German
+ ...
It depends on what you need Jul 26, 2002

I\'m still using Office97 to this present day - Word is running pretty stable, provided it\'s operated under Windows NT or 2000.



If all you need is a text editor, I suppose you might as well stay with Word 97.



I agree with Jerzy - the vast majority of Word users never bother to browse through the online help function or user manuals, let alone get proper training on the software. I very often find that even the basic concepts (such as formatting using t
... See more
I\'m still using Office97 to this present day - Word is running pretty stable, provided it\'s operated under Windows NT or 2000.



If all you need is a text editor, I suppose you might as well stay with Word 97.



I agree with Jerzy - the vast majority of Word users never bother to browse through the online help function or user manuals, let alone get proper training on the software. I very often find that even the basic concepts (such as formatting using templates, revision marking or annotation) are completely unknown.



Talking about \"wasting money\": IMHO any professional software is a waste of money, unless you get proper training on how to make the most of it.

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-07-26 05:10 ]
Collapse


 
PAS
PAS  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:41
Polish to English
+ ...
some examples Jul 26, 2002

Like Jerzy said, most of the differences between Word 97 and 2000 are minor (I haven\'t used 2002). Below is a (admittedly subjective) list of some of Bill\'s \"improvements\" from 97 to 2000. You decide if they will make you run to the software store and contribute to Bill\'s olympic size swimming pool on his Tahiti ranch.



1. In Word 2K you get to display the font name in that font (so you see what the font looks like before you change it). 97 doesn\'t have that option.
... See more
Like Jerzy said, most of the differences between Word 97 and 2000 are minor (I haven\'t used 2002). Below is a (admittedly subjective) list of some of Bill\'s \"improvements\" from 97 to 2000. You decide if they will make you run to the software store and contribute to Bill\'s olympic size swimming pool on his Tahiti ranch.



1. In Word 2K you get to display the font name in that font (so you see what the font looks like before you change it). 97 doesn\'t have that option.



2. Word 2K finally allows you to merge two cells in a table vertically. Other processors could do that for years.



3. You get the dog, the cat and the Earth as your assistants, not just the stupid paperclip. (That\'s an MS Office feature and yes, I know, you could download other assistants for Office 97 as well, but they were not as nice to stare at).



4. In Word 2K, when you split the screen between two documents, each document retains its menus and toolbars. This results in massive waste of space on your monitor. If you have a 24\" display then no problem, but if you\'re like the rest of us 15-inchers (or even 17) then it\'s a pain.



5. Correct me if I\'m wrong on this one, but when you open more than one document in Word 2K, the program opens up each time (i.e. you have as many copies of Word open as you have documents - this is much harder on your processor).



6. In Word 2K You get to draw tables and cells with your mouse. This is actually sort of useful... The whole table section has many more options than Word 97.



7. In Word 2K, if you highlight a piece of text and then open the find/replace function, that text automatically appears in the find/replace dialog. This is useful if you want to work on unusual characters (such as lost foreign diacriticals).



8. My wife\'s favourite (mine too, in a way) - the bullets and numbering tool. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to deal with bullets and numbers in Word 2K. They do everything and anything except what I want them to do. I\'ve been using Word since 1993 (starting with v. 2), had a short encounter with Word 5.5 for DOS on the way and never, ever had such problems with numbering and bullets as now. If someone can provide me with a tutorial (25 words or less, please , I will be eternally grateful.



9. A basic one page document containg just text is now about 21K in size. In 97 it was, I think, 12K and in Word 6 it was below 10. It\'s just one A4 page - why are they getting bigger?



10. Office software keeps demanding more from your computer\'s resources. If you have a weak computer, Office 97 will run (a little) smoother.



11. Overall, I got used to all the changes from 97 to 2K. It\'s like dishwashers and mobile phones. 15 years ago nobody had them and life went on. Now if you\'re without a mobile phone, it\'s like being deaf, dumb and blind. If you start using 2K and then for some reason have to go back to 97, you will find some of those missing little perks annoying, but you can just as well easily live without them.



To Jerzy - Yes, Word is becoming more advanced as a DTP tool, but I wouldn\'t really attempt anything \"professional\" on it.

You can buy \"lite\" or \"express\" versions of most software and then it\'s not that expensive.



OK, that\'s my $ 1.99\'s worth.



Pawel Skalinski
Collapse


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:41
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Word as DTP Jul 26, 2002

Well, Pawel, I agree with you, no one is using Word as a DTP tool. But this is not due to the lack of functions or possibilities in Word to be a DTP tool, but more the fact, that all people working in the printing industry \"love\" Macintosh and love to use ugly tools, which are \"horrible\" for usualy people. Have you ever tried to edit a text in Pagemaker or Framemaker? But this is nothing! Try to workj with Interleaf/Quicksilver. It is pure horror! Those tool are not for text editors, and nob... See more
Well, Pawel, I agree with you, no one is using Word as a DTP tool. But this is not due to the lack of functions or possibilities in Word to be a DTP tool, but more the fact, that all people working in the printing industry \"love\" Macintosh and love to use ugly tools, which are \"horrible\" for usualy people. Have you ever tried to edit a text in Pagemaker or Framemaker? But this is nothing! Try to workj with Interleaf/Quicksilver. It is pure horror! Those tool are not for text editors, and noboy will tell me they are convienient to use for someone, who wants to write text or so. And have you ever tried to buy a \"lite\" or \"expres\" version of them? There are no such versions! I asked Adobe and Broadvision several times to provide me with such a \"lite\" version only for handling the documents for the purpose of translations - no response!



Comming back to differencies between Word 97/2000/2002 - your points are good made!

Only with one point you are wrong - opening several documents in Word 2000/2002 does not mean staring Word as many times. The difference is, in Word 97 you had to switch between windows (and so between documents) choosing the Window-option from menu, but with Word 2000/2002 you can switch between documents using ALT+TAB too, what is much more convenient.

Of course new versions of Word need better hardware, but a new version of Corel Draw demands better hardware too. Every new software needs better hardware - but the demand is never as high as the games have. So if you are able to work stable with Word 97 (and this is as Ralf stated only possible with Windows NT/2000 or XP), you will be able to run even Office XP on your computer.

Office 2000 runs with Celeron 500 and 64 MB RAM and a very easy graphics adapter (S3 with 8 MB RAM on my notebook) without any problem. And PIII 733 MHZ with 384 MB RAM lets you work with Office XP/TRADOS with convenient speed.



Regarding your numbering / dot-lists problem in Word 97. This function is a bit more sophisticated as it was before, because it is used to bring automatic numbering for titles and subtitles in the document.

Therefor you have three possibilitis of generating automatic lists in Word: with dots or dashes as simple lists or with numbers for numbered lists. The third possibility is for the text structure. Right cliking on a paragraph in the list brings you to a context menu with option for steering the automatical numbering. There you can set the necessary options, as starting number, position of the text, position of the number and so on.

And Word 97 (and 2000/2002) are able to make quite complicated numbering lists - what you need is only to try how it works. And do not hesitate to consult your cat/dog or any other assistant or simply the help files - those are better then any other help files I´ve seen. You can simply ask a question and the help function finds (almost everytime) what you are looking for. And sometimes there are even animations to show you how it works - please show me an other text editor or similar programm with such good help online.

I´m sure, would more people make some efforts to learn Word better, they never would use anything else. If you don´t like something in Word, you can deactivate this function, and if you like Word to behave in a special way - you can set it to.

A very good example:

I´m using a PC with german OS and Office XP in German. I have installed Proofing Tool Kit, so I have the spell checker for Polish. And I can write Polish using the keyboard layout from Windows, but it is very inconvenient for me. Long time ago I worked with Windows 3.1 (German) and a tool - \"Zecer\" - which allowed me to put polish characters using \"ALT+character key\", and I really used to this. I found this method very convenient, so I taught my Word to accept a \"ALT+character\" as a polish character - try to do this with any other software!



Just my point of view

Jerzy
Collapse


 


To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:


You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »

MS Word 2002, Word 2000, Word 97 - any major differences between the three?







Trados Studio 2022 Freelance
The leading translation software used by over 270,000 translators.

Designed with your feedback in mind, Trados Studio 2022 delivers an unrivalled, powerful desktop and cloud solution, empowering you to work in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

More info »
Protemos translation business management system
Create your account in minutes, and start working! 3-month trial for agencies, and free for freelancers!

The system lets you keep client/vendor database, with contacts and rates, manage projects and assign jobs to vendors, issue invoices, track payments, store and manage project files, generate business reports on turnover profit per client/manager etc.

More info »