Word 97—Ease of Use

Basic Usage

In addition to typing, proofing and formatting, users spend a lot of time generally interacting with Word to get their tasks done. Word 97 has made a number of improvements in the interface to make getting your work done even easier:

Recovering Corrupt Files

Word 97 has a more robust file format and an improved recovery scheme that greatly reduces data loss. Word tries to recover silently in most cases to maintain document integrity, and in the worst case, offers a corrupt file converter that at the very least recovers all document text.

Usability Improvements

Microsoft continually looks at data from PSS, usability tests and from our Wish line to finesse our interface. In Word 97, they have made subtle but important changes to make the interface more intuitive and efficient:

• Ruler ScreenTips - you now get tips for tab stops, indent, column and table adjusters which makes it easier to manage the layout of your document.

  
  The Ruler now provides ScreenTips for margins, indents, columns and tabs
  

• Smarter disabling of character formatting - If you select text, apply formatting such as bold or italics by clicking on the bold or italics buttons on the toolbar, and then click outside of the selection, they now automatically turn off the formatting for you to save you the effort of turning it off after your selection.
• No more accidental deletion of section breaks using backspace - Microsoft noticed that a lot of users inadvertently deleted section breaks as they backspaced through their document and often witnessed unexpected results! Now, Word only deletes section breaks when users use the Delete key or when they select the break and Backspace over it. Otherwise, Backspace acts like a left arrow key.
• Tabs as indents - Users use the tab key to move things over. Word 95 automatically converted tabs inserted in the first line of paragraphs to first line indents and tabs inserted in second line to full paragraph indent. Word 97 has made tabs as indents more flexible. First, they have proximity based indents. This means if you insert a tab, Word first checks the significant left edges of the surrounding paragraphs, including numbered paragraphs. If it finds an indented paragraph above your tab, it automatically assumes the indentation of that paragraph, ensuring that your text lines up correctly. Second, if you have an embedded tab in the first line of a paragraph and then hit tab in the second line, we create a hanging indent for you that matches the margin of the embedded tab. This is very convenient for creating resume like layouts.
• AutoSave becomes AutoRecover - Word has renamed AutoSave to AutoRecover to eliminate user confusion on the results of the operation and to ensure that users do a full file save instead of relying on AutoSave to do it for them.

I can see clearly now, the brain is gone...