Microsoft Word 4+

Eventually, when I have word and powerpoint open long enough, saving becomes troublesome. Sometimes I can't get any option to save locally, other times the save dialog won't even appear no matter how I try to save. Sometimes I can work around it by choosing to share. Sometimes that doesn't even work. Most recently, I literally copied my document contents to a mac Pages document, then saved as a Word document from there as a workaround. SUPER frustrating.

Also, when working on documents with others, they updating of changes is at least better than it was before. Before, a conflict in changes would occur that would require one person to create a new document and share that to get back in sync. Now, at least eventually, they can typically get back in sync. However, despite great connection speeds, it can take 10-15 minutes to get back in sync. Not exactly real-time collaboration.

Just too many frustrations for me to not prefer Google docs or mac Pages over Word.

I detest nearly everything about this updated "subscription-based" online version of Word. Did they even speak to anyone who uses Word for editing? I hate how the comment function works--it's extra key strokes for me to "send" a comment, extra key strokes if I want to delete a comment, it's super annoying if I type a comment and forget to hit "send" and then go to type another comment and ugh--Word will take me back to the one I forgot to enter and then lose my place in the document. I hate that I have to select "edit comment" in order to type additional information in an old comment-- basically everything takes longer because there are at least two additional key strokes for every comment I want to enter. For someone who is typing multiple comments on every page of a 400 page document, this adds up to a lot of wasted time. And don't even get me started on comments about deleted text that just vanish...Or how Word reverts to the "list" setting when viewing comments that have been resolved, so then you can't see the actual text that's been resolved unless you select "contextual" but then the very next "resolved" comment reverts back to list... again, it's just more time wasted clicking on things. If there were literally ANY program I could use instead I would switch in a heartbeat.

I've had a number of problems with Microsoft Word lately. Unfortunately I feel dependant on the program because it is what I and my clients have used for years. I'm not a fan of the subscription-based payment model (I much preferred the one-off-license for the single product rather than continual payments for continual updates). In the latest iteration, the comments section can be hard to follow if you are working on a document with many comments... same with the footnotes. I don't like that you have to complete one comment before working on another and that to reopen a comment to edit it, you have to click into and select edit... it ruins my workflow and is just an extra and unnecessary step. Also, my latest problem is that I haven't been able to save my files anywhere... I just have to turn my computer off and hope that they appear as autorecovered files, otherwise they remain as 'untitled document 3' or whatever. I haven't tried reaching out to whatever customer support exists (does it exist? it should for the continual payments), but I'm feeling pretty frustrated and about ready to bail and convert my business into one based on Google Docs right about now.