Wish List—sort of—for 2008

Hello. I'm an upper year university student who has given up the pen and paper for my notetaking and been converted to using Microsoft Word 2007. It has been great, but I consistently find myself ALT-TAB'ing to mspaint or some other drawing application for diagrams that are needed for my notes. My wishlist for 2008 includes only one thing: Integrate the Equation Editor (with linear format) into OneNote. (currently copying equations into OneNote formats the equations as pictures, which is unacceptable)

I do not have admin rights on the computer that I am trying to do the online trainning for the office 2007 programs is there another media player that I can use to hear the audio?

I second the improved drawing tools . . . and please bring back the ability to group shapes with pictures. Anyway Microsoft could place their mouse cursors in the Symbols category? I create handouts and these would be great.

Dear Word Team, Thank you for being so open and attentive- I'm sorry I'm asking a tangential question, but how can I ask you a question directly or suggest a topic for a post? I've tried the Office Discussions Group in vain. Can you possibly help? My question is at www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx [search for aDude, post on the 10th of January 2008]

I think it is imperative that Microsoft offer a way to interactively update the bibliography styles that come with Word. Fixed citation styles severely limits this wonderful feature for those that really can benefit from it (those who publish). It would greatly benefit me if Microsoft added a GUI interface to update the citation styles, this would allow me to use the program for publishing in scientific journals as well as write my thesis. I have started a discussion forum on this with MS support. www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx

I would love to see more flexibility with numbering, document outlines and what appears in the TOC. For instance, let's say I want something like this:

1.0 Heading 1 1.1 Heading 2 1.1.1 Body Text 1.1.2 Body Text 1.2 Heading 2 1.2.1 Body Text

2.0 Heading 1 2.1 Body Text 2.2 Body Text

3.0 Heading 1 3.1 Heading 2 3.1.1 Body Text 3.2 Heading 2 So in this case I want 1.1, 1.2, 3.1, and 3.2 to appear in the TOC, but not 2.1 and 2.2. Also possible that, even though 3.1 and 3.2 are H2's, I might not want them in the TOC because it would be hugely long, but I would want them to appear in the document map so that users could turn it on/off at their own discretion. Also assistence with the track changes feature when using multilevel list numbering. If track changes is turned on, the numbering doesn't work the same. And lastly, it would be GREAT to have more insight into which features in the new version of office are not availabe in the old. Even though I always run in compatability mode, I have lost track of the number of times I have created things in 2007 that can't work in 2003 and Word's ability to downgrade it is sufficiently insufficient that I have had to redo a substantial amount of work to ensure it will work for my 2003 users. Thanks

It would be great if you could develop the ribbon bar idea even further. It would be cool to be able to sqash it down into only one (or maybe even two) rows to free up some of that valuable screen real estate. How about buttons to perform some of the actions? Maybe even allow users to modify the buttons and create custom sets of buttons?

First of all Im sorry about writing my problem in this subject. Let me explain my problem in word 2007. I write with Times New Roman for normal writings and I use the equation part of the program for the equations. Everything is ok until I wanted to take a print. Preprint task shows equations will be written as I write but when I printed there are no equations in the page. How could I get managed to this problem? Also printing is slower than other versions.Why and how could we solve it?

Why did you get rid of View > Normal mode. Currently the only place I see see styles at a glance (and I don't mean opening the style select list which forces me to scroll to find the style in use) is in Outline mode, not a mode I like to work in. I want to be able to click on a section of my document and see Heading 1 or Body or Bulleted list, etc. RIGHT ABOVE the document, on the ribbon. It's much too tedious and user unfriendly to have to toggle between a margin of styles on the right which forces you to scroll if your style in lower in the list, and the document. Please put the Normal view back into the application or put the style in use on the ribbon.

Could you please allow the option to use Word 2003 style menus in the next release. I find the new interface too slow to use, though it is probably fine for beginners.

I mentioned in a separate email that multiple citation types would be helpful. The first footnote in Chicago/Turabian format is a full reference, but thereafter references are abbreviated. It would be great to have a way to use this tool to cite those things appropriately.

Better help text. For example, every term used in a menu or dialog should be explained. The one I'm most curious about right now is "Disable linked styles". Will selecting that item help me clean up unlinked styles? Or does it somehow prevent the creation of them. If the second, what will Word do when there's a formatting conflict between the origin and destination styles? Does it have any effect if one had chosen to retain destination styles when pasting? A search for the term above--even site wide-- produces no usable information.

Put back the "From Scanner or Camera." Why it was removed is beyond me.