Rapaire repeats a "standard idiot" complaint:

Unless MSO has seen the light, you can still do more with WP. Take, for just one example, the "Reveal Codes" function: if you have a problem in a sentence and have to fix the formatting you can do a "Reveal Codes" and it will show you the formatting codes -- takes the guesswork out of it.

Since the first Windows version before the main programs were combined into an "Office" package, Word shows on the toolbar the format applied to each character; or you can open the sidebar to show paragraph formats fully and completely.

You NEVER NEEDED TO FLOP BACK AND FORTH between reveal codes and not reveal codes since the "CODES" WERE ALWAYS SHOWN ALL THE TIME.

You don't need codes since the format for characters, for words highlighted, or for sentences/paragraphs selected ARE ALWAYS SHOWN and you just select another format if you want them different.

That is, until Office 2007, when Microsoft decided Office is ONLY FOR IDIOTS and made most of the useful tools inaccessible.

Prior to Office 2007, it was at most three clicks to nearly ANY OPERATION you wanted, and related operations were in a single menu.

Beginning with Office 2007, you have to figure out first which of the five top menues you might find a function on, then GUESS which of 70 to 95 unintelligible icons on each menu might get you close, then often you have to scroll through as many as 200 "presets" to get to "other choices" where you may find half of one of the simple menus that used to be accessible in two clicks.

But HALF OF THE OTHER HALF of the menu you need is on a different "top menu" where you repeat the process, to (maybe) continue an operation (to as nearly complete as you're expected to be smart enough to know you should want to do it) in (I've counted) 143 clicks to do what should require 3. The remaining half of the "other half" of the menu you should have had in its entirety in 3 clicks is not accessible by any means so you just can't do it any more.

And Office 2007 - and presumedly 2010 - has no functional "Help" file to explain anything. You're simply sent to "web help" where all you find are links to "social networking sites" where multitudes of blithering/blathering idiots will tell you (incorrectly) how to choose blue flowers for the background instead of polka-dotted giraffes - and why that's more important than knowing how to copy paragraph styles from one form to another (which you apparently can no longer do, beginning in Word 2007).

Until Office 2007, I never met a professional WP person who learned to use Word with basic professional competence after using Wordstar or Word Perfect, all in professional applications, who would willingly return to either. Open Office does not include all the capabilities easily accessible in older Word, but may be at least as good as Office 2007/2010. I'm still looking for a fully useful alternate to Office 2007.

John