This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, January 2001, by whose courtesy and that of Brett Lockwood, the author, we are republishing it here.
It is my impression that Word 2000 is not widely used yet in the editing and publishing spheres, either on the Mac or the PC platform. In part, the uptake of Word 2000 depends on the desire to use other Office applications. If you want to use Excel 2000, or Access 2000, you end up with Word 2000 also, as you would buy the Office application suite. If it is still possible to purchase Word on its own, which is doubtful, the price will be such that you may as well get one of the lower end Office 2000 packages, unless you want to use Access, in which case Office 2000 Professional is the package you would buy. However, though editors are mostly still using Word 97 and Word 6/7 (Word 7 is Office 95) on the PC platform, or Word 5.1/6/7, or Word 98 on the Mac platform, authors I have worked with often use Word 2000, and depending on the type of formatting in their documents this can mean that I must use it also.
In this article Word 97 refers to the PC platform and Word 98 refers to the Mac platform. Word 97 for the PC is in fact Word 98 for the Mac; in other words the software functionality is the same&emdash;almost exactly the same. There was no Word 97 release for the Mac, just as there was no Word 98 release for the PC. Confused?
Concerning the PC platform, Word 97 will open and read Word 2000 (PC) documents, and although some Word 2000 (PC) features are lost upon conversion to Word 97, these are features unlikely to be used by editors. They are also features which can be turned off in a simple procedure in Word 2000 (PC) (via Tools, Options, Save, and checking the 'Disable features not supported by Word 97' option). That is, features in Word 2000 (PC) not supported by Word 97 can be deactivated so that people working with both versions can have confidence that their documents are totally compatible. This is obviously handy for editors. From this perspective editors who work by choice with Word 97 (PC) or Word 98 (Mac) are faced with no great urgency to upgrade. Whether Word 2000 (Mac) and Word 98 have the same compatibility option, I am not sure. I think it is likely that they would. I have not been able to test drive Word 2000 for the Mac.
There are advantages in moving to Word 2000. Editors are not, first and foremost, computer operators. In fact, desktop editing constitutes an additional substantial skill layer to what is already a multiskilled profession. So the completely rejigged on-line Help system in Word 2000 (PC) will be welcomed by most desktop editors. It makes information more accessible and exploits hyperlinking extensively to facilitate Help topic-to-topic transfer. It is very useful for people who need to use Word regularly but who do a lot of other things as well. And of course with an absence of supplied hard copy manuals now the norm, a good on-line Help system is really important for users. Word 2000 (PC) on-line Help looks radically different, and it is. I was startled by it to begin with, but it is a lot better than Help in Word 97. (Of course, people have stated that you cannot learn a software application via its on-line help system. This is totally correct.) Another improvement in Word 2000 is extended multilingual support. Language dictionaries for Word are now available for over seventy languages, and language formatting and spell checking are now very powerful tools. They have been powerful for quite some time, but Word 2000 takes them to another level, particularly language support. Word 2000 also incorporates other improvements useful for editors.
Word 2000, apart from on-line Help, does not operate in a dramatically different way to Word 97, but the differences are substantial enough to make attractive the option of running both versions side-by-side on one PC to help Word users avoid the learning problems, delays and worries likely to be experienced with a sudden transition. These notes may assist editors who would like the comfort factor of using Word 97/98 and Word 2000 interchangeably whilst learning the ins and outs of Word 2000. You can have your cake and eat it too! I am not certain whether the advice below applies to Mac users. I assume that it would. The Office 2000 Mac documentation would have this information. A phone call to an Office Mac reseller would probably get you the answer too. The installation procedure would be a little different, but the scenario would be the same.
Also, these notes apply to single-user licenses for Word 2000. They do not necessarily apply to multi-user (corporate) installations (which may or may not be network installations), though it is possible that the configuration discussed here could be effected on a corporate or network installation. Put otherwise, these notes apply in the first instance to stand-alone installations of Office 2000 on PCs.
If Word 97 is already installed, you must select the 'custom' option when installing Word 2000. If Word 97 is not on the PC and you want to use it, it is advisable to install it before installing Word 2000 (when installing Word 97, the two service release patches, SR1 and SR2, must be installed as well). A 'custom' installation of Word 2000 also provides the option of not installing Internet Explorer version 5.x web browser (this is installed automatically with the 'standard' installation).
The custom install allows you to create the folder name of your choice for Office 2000. The normal (standard or default) installation sets up Office at C:\Program Files\MicrosoftOffice. A logical folder setup for the custom install would be C:\Program Files\MicrosoftOffice2000. This differentiates it from the folder containing Office (or Word) 97, which is essential. Decide on your folder name prior to installation. Altering it later is inadvisable. Advice on this can be found in the Office 2000 booklet.
The custom install presents many options. Take your time and look through them. You can always uninstall or install Office components at a later date, but given that hard copy manuals no longer accompany Office, the inspection of installable components is one of the few points at which an (admittedly skeletal) overview of Word's facilities can be obtained without going out and getting a third-party manual, which would probably not contain such a listing anyway (I've never seen one). I learnt quite a bit by spending 20 minutes examining the installable components information. My suggestion is that 'if in doubt, install it' (Internet Explorer 5 excepted). Installing every Word component takes about 100 MB of disk space, and disk space is now very affordable.
Read the Microsoft documentation. With a custom install you have several install modes available. Choose one that actually installs the files on your PC. This sounds nonsensical, but makes sense on reading the install notes in the Office 2000 booklet.
Install all the proofing tool options. Word 2000 English edition can proof text in Italian and Spanish as well as English. Proofing tool use is increasing amongst editors. (If you want to proof text in additional languages then look into the Microsoft Office 2000 Proofing Tools CD). This is another reason to use the custom install. The standard or default Office 2000 install does not install all of Word's proofing tools. Fonts are installed into a common folder: you don't have to concern yourself about a fonts folder for 97 and a fonts folder for 2000. However, to be on the safe side, if you have some fondness for certain fonts you are using in Word 97, copy them elsewhere while you install 2000 and then install them again, if you need to, into the fonts folder using the File, Install New Font menu on the font folder menu bar.
After installation, you must register Word 2000 before using it fifty times or it stops working. Also, you can register your copy for use on one desktop computer plus one portable (laptop) computer. Thus you have only two registrations to play with.
You can register directly over the Internet upon installation, or by phone or fax, or by surface mail. With the latter three options you get a number to enter into your computer. Internet registration is simple and fast and fully automated. With postal registration, remember the fifty-use limit and register fast!
I couldn't find anything in the documentation about registering. After installing Word 2000 I started it up and played around some and then closed the program. Bingo! The registration information appeared. I followed my nose and registered over the Internet without complications within one minute.
Now for the tricky bit. When you want to run Word 97 instead of Word 2000 you must start up Word 97 before you open a document. A good way to set up this procedure is to add a Word 97 shortcut to your desktop. Then you just double-click on this shortcut to launch Word 97 and then go on to open your documents. To create a shortcut to Word 97 you locate the winword.exe file for Word 97. There are various ways to do this, but one is to use the 'file find' facility in Windows Explorer (using the menu sequence of Tools, Find) , remembering that winword.exe for Word 97 has an icon comprising of a light blue (turquoise) italic 'W', and winword.exe for Word 2000 has an icon with a bordered bold dark blue 'W'. Stick the shortcut right in the centre of your screen where it is hard to miss.
On the other hand, when you want to use Word 2000, you should launch it from the Start menu, or by double-clicking on a Word document file. In other words, if Word 2000 is installed on a PC that already has Word 97 installed on it, Word 2000 takes precedence as the version launched when the standard modes of starting Word are used, which makes sense. If you get your head around this bit you will be OK.
Also, starting Word 2000 after using (opening and closing) Word 97 produces a message saying that Word 2000 is being 'configured' and there is a delay of maybe ten seconds. There is a cancel button on the message window. I suggest you don't use it. Instead, if you open Word 2000 when you really wanted to open Word 97 (which will happen from time to time), let it completely start up, then just close it down and start up Word 97 instead.
You can always confirm the version of Word that is currently open by clicking on 'Help' on the Word menu bar and choosing the 'About Microsoft Word' option. And you might want to keep your Word 97 and Word 2000 documents in different folders, though this is not essential. Also, I have been told that both Word 97 and Word 2000 can be open (run) at the same time. I am wary of this and I haven't tried it. It isn't necessary. But I have found that this 'twin' installation uses separate NORMAL.DOTs (separate Normal templates), which is handy to know and supports the idea that you can run both versions at once.
I have found that running both Word 97 and Word 2000 is very useful as a way of learning the differences whilst maintaining productivity. I have had no trouble with this configuration. I've been using it for several months now, and recommend it as a means of greatly dampening the upgrade leap. As you would suspect, there is no time limit (built-in expiry date) for use of this Word configuration. You can go on using Word 97 and Word 2000 interchangeably for years if you want to. I probably will.
About the author: Brett Lockwood (brett@melbpc.org.au; www.WordBytes.com.au) is a freelance editor and training officer for the Society of Editors (Victoria).
On the Mac, the equivalent software is Word 98 and Word 2001. Canberra Society of Editors member, Clive Huggan, who uses Word 2001 on the Macintosh, strongly recommends not having Word 98 and Word 2001 on the same computer because serious conflicts occur when the Word 2001 software mistakenly uses scripts and extensions from the earlier version. This topic in all its permutations has been discussed over several months on the Microsoft News Server (microsoft.public.word.macword2001). The gurus in the newsgroup recommend de-installing Word 98 totally -- and not with the De-install program on the Word 2001 CD but via an upgraded De-install program available from the Microsoft Mactopia website.
Clive is willing to give more information if any member wishes to call him on 02 6247 0672. He also has available a very comprehensive set of notes he has compiled in recent months on "upgrading" to Word 2001 from Word for Mac 5.1 (which many Mac owners have stuck to because they consider subsequent versions have been badly implemented and have lost many useful features of this last Mac-specific version). He says he has not had any trouble with compatibility with Word 2001 when transferring files between Windows and Mac computers, because the code in the Windows and Mac versions is now virtually identical.
And Peter Judge has Word 5.1 (his preferred version) and Word 98 for the Mac on the same computer, twice over - in one case by putting the two versions in different partitions of the hard disc, and in the other case by simply having the Word 5.1 application files tucked away in a separate folder. And no problems - but don't try to run the two versions at the same time. Files are transferred easily in Rich Text Format between the two versions or with PCs.