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Microsoft, thanks for your support- NOT!
May 8, 2008

I know I am in danger of surprising a lot of people – but it is time I came out of the Microsoft Office Suite closet and admit I am power user of Office products like Word and PowerPoint.

I would be the first to tell you Not to use Word for page layout and to create color separations. But the fact is that No matter what you say or do you can’t stop some people from using the wrong program to create files they want to print from.

I have learned through teaching a seminar “150 Money Saving Tips to Avoid Output Mistakes” there will always be some people using Word, Publisher or PowerPoint who want to go to a printing press.
Therefore you can help them or avoid them – I decide to help them.
 
So like many other people  - I have figured out how to get Word to print 4 color work. The two greatest challenges is how to create run arounds for pictures and how do you create separations. The separation issue got much easier when Acrobat incorporated the ability to print 4 color separations from 3 color PDF files.

And in the last few versions of Word you use the polygonal lasso tool to draw a "run around" shape over the picture you want to crop then you can cut and paste the picture inside the shape which will crop out the background.

Here is what I consider the really bad news: in the Office 2008 you can no longer create run arounds. I did not believe this until I posted a message of the Word forum and got the response, “Sorry: Bitmap editing is gone in 2008.”

Why is this bad news? You might say that hopefully people will switch from Word to another program. As Borat would say “NOT”.

Because in the real world if users can do something in an old version and not in a new version then they will send more files in older versions of software. And getting older files with newer versions of the Mac or Windows OS (Operating Systems) creates even more problems. All I can say to Microsoft is thanks for your support - NOT!

Posted by Howie Fenton on May 8, 2008 | Comments (1)