Product Reviews

More people use Word rather than any of the other applications in the Office suite, so it's the one that generates the most interest when an Office upgrade arrives. This time around, we're happy to report that there's plenty to be pleased about.

Among the most obvious new features is the Notebook view. This new member of the View menu, which joins Online Layout, Page Layout, and Outline views, is designed to resemble a notebook. There's a heading section at the top of each page, into which the date and time are added automatically. When a Notebook is started, Word creates three tabbed pages, and more can be added. However, Notebook's features offer far more than just aesthetic appeal.

Notebook allows you to record audio alongside typed notes. Cleverly, it tracks the notes you take along a timeline, which is synchronised with the recorded audio. When you click on the loudspeaker icon that sits in the margin beside each new note, Word replays the audio recorded while you typed that note. This is an incredibly useful feature that allows you to sketch the details of a conversation or presentation in note form and then easily access the relevant recorded snippet for fuller investigation when you come to write up the notes.

Notebook also borrows some features from Outline view. Each new note is created at level one but you can demote it to create sub-notes. When you create a sub-note, an arrow appears in the margin alongside the main note to indicate you can collapse the group so just the main note is shown.

Word's formatting palette has also been overhauled. At the top of the palette is an Add Objects tabbed dialog that lets you add things such as date, time and word count to a document. Usefully, it also allows you to add symbols such as © and for which you may otherwise spend time struggling to remember the correct keystroke. Tables and flowchart symbols can also

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be added from here, and we'll forgive the Word Art tab, as it's easily ignored. Bullets and Numbering now has its own expansible dialog, and there's also a new Style dialog, which allows you to select a style from a menu, create a new style or modify an existing style. Our only complaint here is that the Modify command is hidden in a drop-down menu that only appears when you hover over the currently selected style. The Formatting palette itself fades into the background if you don't use it for a while, and then re-appears when you call it into action. Some users will love this feature, but we found it rather irritating.

Word provides access to Office 2004's Toolbox. Here, you can add files to Office's Scrapbook; check Encarta's World English Dictionary, Thesaurus and the Encarta encyclopedia; check the compatibility of your file with other versions of Word; and access the Project Center (see p30). Unfortunately, it's set to launch with an animated flourish. You'll want to switch that off straightaway.

Word's integration with Project Center works reasonably well, but there are a few rough edges. In the Schedule and Tasks section, Project Center invites you to add a new event or task by clicking the New button. However, there's no New button. There's a button with a star on it, but there's nothing except trial and error to identify this as the New button. Pressing this button takes you to Entourage to create a new event or task, but once you've finished, you have to make your way back to Word manually.

Other new features include improvements to Word's track changes features, as well as better long document support. You can now navigate long documents by viewing thumb-nails of the pages in a navigation window.

On the negative side, the problem with Word's preferences still exists. Although there's a Global Preferences dialog, many preferences for individual tools must be set from separate windows - for example, Auto-formatting must be set in the AutoCorrect section of the Tools menu.

We were pleased with Word 2004's performance. Although the initial launch was interminably slow, everything after that was speedy enough to keep us happy - this feels like the nippiest version of Word in ages.

Word 2004 is a worthwhile update: the Notebook view is great and the Project Center could change the way you work. The rough edges and interface idiosyncrasies are more annoying than problematic, and if you use Word, don't hesitate before upgrading.