{"slug": "microsoft-word", "name": "Microsoft Word", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 11, "commenters": 90, "warners": 42, "score": -18.956, "rising": -2.27, "first": "2025-11-22", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "MS Word is properly great if you only use the custom style rules", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 11, "neutral": 27, "compare": 12, "warn": 42}, "spark": [0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "MS Word is properly great if you only use the custom style rules", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "o365.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/word", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Microsoft Word", "Word"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 788606272, "item_id": 49287892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287892", "by": "Rotundo", "date": "2026-08-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024.", "excerpt": "Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024. One-time purchase, or via subscription: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/get-started-with-office-2024", "context": "", "use_case": "Local word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Local-Only Microsoft Word?"}, {"id": 762232337, "item_id": 47639521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639521", "by": "NikolaNovak", "date": "2026-04-04", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats", "excerpt": "I use onenote as a personal note taking system. For shared artifacts we use word, excel or PowerPoint in corporate onedrive and it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats - you can't usually edit the same exact box at the same time, and it can get confused with offline changes by multiple people. But online changes by multiple simultaneous people seems to work really well. I especially enjoy when one ", "context": "", "use_case": "shared documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 762185057, "item_id": 47636566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47636566", "by": "necovek", "date": "2026-04-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.", "excerpt": "An aside: I am generally good at keeping notes while in a meeting, and I have tried shared notes in One Note, but as soon as someone else edits something in the same spot, it creates a forked history requiring manual reconciliation: does this work for you? I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better. Perhaps it's given away by \"One\" in the name (one simultaneous editor", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 760286400, "item_id": 47517900, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517900", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well.", "excerpt": "> I think there was talk of MS Word, too, and also a flop? There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well. For some strange historical reasons I can't recall now, though, it was called and marketed as MS Write instead. Write was the extremely basic free wordprocessor in Windows 3.x -- and so the name did the ST version a grave disservice. https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/microsoftwrite.html", "context": "", "use_case": "Word processing on Atari ST", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}, {"id": 755707152, "item_id": 47231697, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47231697", "by": "Someone", "date": "2026-03-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MS word also has character styles", "excerpt": "> MS Word is properly great if you only use the custom style rules (basically CSS classes) at the paragraph level, and never directly apply styling (basically inline styles) except for super basic stuff like making a word italic MS word also has character styles (like a CSS style on a <span>). IMO you should use instead of bold or italic. (There are three more types of styles: linked, table and List. See https://offi", "context": "", "use_case": "Document formatting", "switched_from": "", "story": "The beauty and terror of modding Windows"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804310160, "item_id": 50269385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50269385", "by": "nico", "date": "2026-10-28", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "and no, Word is not good for it", "excerpt": "I love this, and I feel every legal document (of which there are many, for example, a random one: insurance companies' policies) should have something like this (and no, Word is not good for it) Does it already exist?", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning legal documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Git for the US Code"}, {"id": 787680048, "item_id": 49230003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230003", "by": "ptx", "date": "2026-08-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms", "excerpt": "More concretely, Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms: 0. Freedom to run for any purpose? No. 1. Freedom to modify the program? Maybe; Microsoft can revoke it without cause at any time. 2. Freedom to distribute unmodified? No. 3. Freedom to distribute modified? No. I'm using the free software definition [1] because it's simpler and clearer than the open source definition [2], w", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port"}, {"id": 784016513, "item_id": 49001032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001032", "by": "oska", "date": "2026-07-21", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "More 'office productivity' has probably been lost to Microsoft Word than any other text-processing software on the planet.", "excerpt": "You could make a case for using Windows in the 90s (and yeah, I did; the last version of Windows I used was NT in the 90s). After that your time was much better spent on learning and using Linux (downloadable for free). Visual Basic is a whole steaming pile of crap and you would always have been better learning to use non-corporate, non-proprietary languages and development stacks than wasting your time on that. And ", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing"}, {"id": 780277152, "item_id": 48767322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767322", "by": "me-vs-cat", "date": "2026-07-02", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999", "excerpt": "Yet absolute price per GB isn't the full story when the popular tools accessible for the general public require more RAM for the same task today as compared to the past. You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999, or running MS Word 97 to edit academic essays turned this year. Even for background services, rather than the general public, I would not attempt running an emai", "context": "", "use_case": "document editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Monetization Gateway"}]}], "who": [{"by": "giancarlostoro", "context": "non-native English speaker", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674822", "date": "2026-04-07"}, {"by": "kjellsbells", "context": "Has used Word for 20+ years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322544", "date": "2025-12-18"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["word processing", "document editing", "versioning legal documents", "note-taking", "writing documents", "local word processing"], "compared": [{"slug": "microsoft-excel", "name": "Microsoft Excel", "co": 13, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "libreoffice", "name": "LibreOffice", "co": 11, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "latex", "name": "LaTeX", "co": 10, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "apple-pages", "name": "Apple Pages", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "wordperfect", "name": "WordPerfect", "co": 7, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "google-docs", "name": "Google Docs", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wordstar", "name": "WordStar", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "git", "name": "Git", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46313518", "title": "The immortality of Microsoft Word", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46997356", "title": "Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238703", "title": "I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47722011", "title": "Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341578", "title": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597159", "title": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"warn": 2, "compare": 1, "neutral": 6, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 9, "compare": 2, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"warn": 7, "recommend": 2, "compare": 2, "neutral": 3}, "2026-03": {"warn": 5, "recommend": 3, "neutral": 5, "compare": 1}, "2026-04": {"compare": 2, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 2, "warn": 5}, "2026-05": {"warn": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"warn": 5, "compare": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"warn": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 5, "warn": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 805099280, "item_id": 50318705, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318705", "by": "pron", "date": "2026-10-31", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Today's browser-based MS Word consumes less (relative) RAM than the C++ version did in 1998", "excerpt": "> That doesn't make sense. If the cost of RAM is high and being used by models then yes, you should try to use less RAM. No, that's not the conclusion. If using models costs you, say, $10 an hour, and a GB of RAM costs you, say, $0.0001 an hour, then clearly you shouldn't spend your time on reducing the insignificant cost if you want your work to deliver the most value to users. But again, \"less RAM\" is more or less ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Prospero: A new coding harness for a more civilized age"}, {"id": 804310160, "item_id": 50269385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50269385", "by": "nico", "date": "2026-10-28", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "and no, Word is not good for it", "excerpt": "I love this, and I feel every legal document (of which there are many, for example, a random one: insurance companies' policies) should have something like this (and no, Word is not good for it) Does it already exist?", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning legal documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Git for the US Code"}, {"id": 804099008, "item_id": 50256188, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50256188", "by": "yako21000", "date": "2026-10-27", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it didn't crash on windows 3.1x", "excerpt": "Haha, well at least for what I used Word at this time, it didn't crash on windows 3.1x. But I was pretty young then, so I didn't do much with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows"}, {"id": 804038416, "item_id": 50252401, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50252401", "by": "dpark", "date": "2026-10-26", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I see Word and VS Code.", "excerpt": "In fairness I did not do a full inventory of all the apps I use. I see Word and VS Code. It may be less than I thought if I inventoried every app I regularly use. I see some have gone the \u201cbrowser\u201d direction with tabs folded into the title bar and the menu bar dropped. Windows Terminal, File Explorer, and Notepad are all that style now. Edit: Actually Notepad has the tabs in the titlebar thing but retained the menu b", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11"}, {"id": 800807776, "item_id": 50050486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50050486", "by": "miffy900", "date": "2026-10-12", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a business that depends on Word to the point they pay Microsoft for it", "excerpt": "I doubt Microsoft will take it seriously enough now, when it's in such an early state. What matters here is if this `wordcraft` app gets serious widespread use and businesses (which is Microsoft's main revenue source) start using this in favour of MS Word. Then I'd say anything's possible and testing in court whether LLM-vibecoded reverse engineered-apps actually do infringe on IP-rights is something Microsoft would ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Will Microsoft sue vibe coded wordcraft for copying its Word GUI?"}, {"id": 800491216, "item_id": 50030701, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50030701", "by": "sdcfgy", "date": "2026-10-10", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Microsoft Word.", "excerpt": "I use Microsoft Word. I now await my fate.", "context": "", "use_case": "note-taking", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again"}, {"id": 791409104, "item_id": 49463069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49463069", "by": "surgical_fire", "date": "2026-08-27", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On the rare occasions I used Word to write things in the past", "excerpt": "On the rare occasions I used Word to write things in the past, it would replace dashes with em-dash. I normally use dashes when writing, never bothered myself with writing an em-dash properly otherwise.", "context": "", "use_case": "writing documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pnpm 12.0"}, {"id": 790146288, "item_id": 49384143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49384143", "by": "EagnaIonat", "date": "2026-08-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MS Word uses ML in grammar and spell checking.", "excerpt": "MS Word uses ML in grammar and spell checking. Related patent: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/11636263 As long as you are using red squiggles instead of blue you should be fine though. IMHO though, they should say GenAI as AI is too broad.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Berkeley Law prohibits AI use in classes (by default)"}, {"id": 788606272, "item_id": 49287892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287892", "by": "Rotundo", "date": "2026-08-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024.", "excerpt": "Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024. One-time purchase, or via subscription: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/get-started-with-office-2024", "context": "", "use_case": "Local word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Local-Only Microsoft Word?"}, {"id": 787680048, "item_id": 49230003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230003", "by": "ptx", "date": "2026-08-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms", "excerpt": "More concretely, Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms: 0. Freedom to run for any purpose? No. 1. Freedom to modify the program? Maybe; Microsoft can revoke it without cause at any time. 2. Freedom to distribute unmodified? No. 3. Freedom to distribute modified? No. I'm using the free software definition [1] because it's simpler and clearer than the open source definition [2], w", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port"}, {"id": 784016513, "item_id": 49001032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001032", "by": "oska", "date": "2026-07-21", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "More 'office productivity' has probably been lost to Microsoft Word than any other text-processing software on the planet.", "excerpt": "You could make a case for using Windows in the 90s (and yeah, I did; the last version of Windows I used was NT in the 90s). After that your time was much better spent on learning and using Linux (downloadable for free). Visual Basic is a whole steaming pile of crap and you would always have been better learning to use non-corporate, non-proprietary languages and development stacks than wasting your time on that. And ", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing"}, {"id": 782179856, "item_id": 48886241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886241", "by": "muhamsyaddad", "date": "2026-07-12", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "i make the microsoft word but less sucks", "excerpt": "https://mathend.vercel.app/ i make the microsoft word but less sucks, and there is scientific calculator integrated and also ai on it too, available on linux (stable) and windous (unstable).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780277152, "item_id": 48767322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767322", "by": "me-vs-cat", "date": "2026-07-02", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999", "excerpt": "Yet absolute price per GB isn't the full story when the popular tools accessible for the general public require more RAM for the same task today as compared to the past. You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999, or running MS Word 97 to edit academic essays turned this year. Even for background services, rather than the general public, I would not attempt running an emai", "context": "", "use_case": "document editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Monetization Gateway"}, {"id": 779478720, "item_id": 48717420, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717420", "by": "newswasboring", "date": "2026-06-29", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using MS word my entire life it seems, still don't know what the rules are lol.", "excerpt": "Yeah but daily tools have lots of complexity which appears as non determinism (if we are thinking only UX, not actual determinism). For example, try moving an image in the word doc. I have been using MS word my entire life it seems, still don't know what the rules are lol.", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No \u2013 88"}, {"id": 779169169, "item_id": 48698073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48698073", "by": "gramie", "date": "2026-06-27", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "When MS Word screws your entire document's formatting by typing a single letter", "excerpt": "I learned to love WordPerfect. I still miss the ability to \"Reveal Codes\" and see exactly where it had placed the non-printing codes to turn on/off bold, italics, to change margins, etc. When MS Word screws your entire document's formatting by typing a single letter, or moves stuff around the page seemingly randomly, your only option is to undo or reload the document. You can read an insider's story of WordPerfect by", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)"}, {"id": 778964464, "item_id": 48685279, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48685279", "by": "alex_suzuki", "date": "2026-06-26", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried it in Word on macOS but didn't get it to work.", "excerpt": "Oh, interesting! I tried it in Word on macOS but didn't get it to work. But it works in the browser (question mark = calculates check digit). It uses this, which i have no idea what it is :-) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_ae#tag-calt", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Libre Barcode Project"}, {"id": 778498209, "item_id": 48656138, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48656138", "by": "sien", "date": "2026-06-23", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "had a real time spell checker before Word did.", "excerpt": "Prowrite on the Amiga had a real time spell checker before Word did. Possibly there were other programs that did as well prior to that. But Prowrite did it and had a red squiggly line under incorrect words. https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue123/P215_1_REVIEWS_PROWRITE_3.1.php", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words"}, {"id": 775795187, "item_id": 48487199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487199", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-06-11", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "better than InDesign or Word where changing the page size will probably break the layout.", "excerpt": "I guess I'd call it mostly fixed: most TeX engines only produce a single page size at a time, but you generally only need to modify a single variable to change the page size and, after recompiling the document should be perfectly reflowed into the new page size. This is not helpful at all for someone who wants to be able to freely rotate their phone, but it's still better than InDesign or Word where changing the page", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts"}, {"id": 775432305, "item_id": 48464519, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48464519", "by": "nosioptar", "date": "2026-06-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've seen ms word cludge up machines that should have plenty of power to run a word processor.", "excerpt": "That's a wonderful machine. I'd love to see that style of keyboard on new stuff. Its wild to me to think of how much old computers could do relative to new. WordPerfect for DOS was always responsive and quick wheb I used it. I've seen ms word cludge up machines that should have plenty of power to run a word processor.", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "GentleOS \u2013 Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI"}, {"id": 774266115, "item_id": 48391632, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48391632", "by": "coldtea", "date": "2026-06-03", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "Word not WordPerfect.", "excerpt": ">First to market is the winner even with an inferior product. See whatsapp and telegram I don't think so. We use Excel not Lotus 1-2-3. iOS and Android, not Palm and Blackberry OSes or whatever mobile shit MS had first. We use Gmail not AOL. Google not Lycos or Altavista. Chrome not Netscape. Facebook and co, not Friendster or MySpace. Word not WordPerfect. Access not dBase. And regarding WhatsApp it's not ICQ or MSN", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoPro warned it may not survive"}, {"id": 773951649, "item_id": 48371978, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371978", "by": "wowczarek", "date": "2026-06-02", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "never have to touch Word again", "excerpt": "To me, Pandoc is \"never have to touch Word again\", in other _words_, salvation. Sadly, the .docx templates aren't enough - they have the styling, but for those forced to produce a .docx output as a necessity for \"corporate\" consumption - you will find it that it's not quite straightforward to insert a title page, and out of the reference docx file, only the styles are used, not the content. You can define headers and", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773529025, "item_id": 48345564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48345564", "by": "arendtio", "date": "2026-05-31", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word", "excerpt": "I have been using it for a while as well (started with OpenOffice). However, not all apps can keep up the pace. As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word, but Calc, for example, is just much slower than MS Excel when you build a bit larger spreadsheets. So from an ideological perspective, I agree, but you should know that there are some drawbacks / the products have different strengths.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products"}, {"id": 773485248, "item_id": 48342828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48342828", "by": "jmward01", "date": "2026-05-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to like Word", "excerpt": "> Microsoft's strategy had never been centered on their software succeeding on its intrinsic merits. Microsoft used to build the best stuff. I'm not sure when that ended, I just remember the decline. I used to -jump- at release day for their latest OS version. Their dev tools were considered top tier and I used to like Word. Now every interaction I have with a MS product is painful and my trust in them is so far nega", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products"}, {"id": 772944306, "item_id": 48309019, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309019", "by": "dustin1114", "date": "2026-05-28", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "There is a bit of manual tweaking required in LaTeX that I haven't figured out how to automate yet. It's mainly related to chapter endings: if there are only 2 or 3 lines on the last page, I can subtly tighten the tracking from a paragraph on the second to last page and eliminate an almost-empty page. Also, I have PNG maps that currently need some one-off LaTeX directives to lay them out how I want. I could probably ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline"}, {"id": 772644192, "item_id": 48290262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290262", "by": "huijzer", "date": "2026-05-26", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "it will be a mess (as usual with Word)", "excerpt": "Seems it\u2019s currently a percentage: https://forum.typst.app/t/how-to-leave-a-single-line-of-paragraph-on-the-previous-next-page-widow-orphan-control/5191 On Pandoc I agree. Word custom styles is possible I believe but it will be a mess (as usual with Word).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline"}, {"id": 772547347, "item_id": 48284209, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48284209", "by": "diamondap", "date": "2026-05-26", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the Word to PDF X-1/a to epub/kindle pipeline is painful", "excerpt": "Kudos to you for doing that. I've been publishing print and ebooks since 2015, and I can attest to the fact the Word to PDF X-1/a to epub/kindle pipeline is painful. Making minor edits after publication is also painful, as the author notes, and can be error prone if you fail to make identical changes to all formats. The problem was bad enough that I built by own markdown to HTML to PDF/X-1a processor using Python, We", "context": "publishing print and ebooks since 2015", "use_case": "book production", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline"}, {"id": 768789473, "item_id": 48049342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48049342", "by": "evilmonkey19", "date": "2026-05-07", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "It makes my life so much easier compared to badsoft and its not-word-ing", "excerpt": "I have been using Typst for creating notes and it is an awesome tool. I use it to create notes on welding for my students. It makes my life so much easier compared to badsoft and its not-word-ing (you understand me).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust"}, {"id": 766467600, "item_id": 47904225, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47904225", "by": "danaris", "date": "2026-04-25", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Frankly, I think it was much more stable then than it is now.", "excerpt": "I used Word\u2014mainly on Mac, version 4.01\u2014all through middle and high school for my homework, and never had any particular problems with it. Frankly, I think it was much more stable then than it is now.", "context": "former middle and high school student", "use_case": "homework writing", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's Missing in the 'Agentic' Story"}, {"id": 766269393, "item_id": 47891837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891837", "by": "einpoklum", "date": "2026-04-24", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "rather than Microsoft Word", "excerpt": "Please try to encourage them to open up LibreOffice Writer rather than Microsoft Word though! They should not have to suffer with CoPilot and MS spying on you all the time. https://www.libreoffice.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using the internet like it's 1999"}, {"id": 764384705, "item_id": 47774044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774044", "by": "anyfactor", "date": "2026-04-14", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "They were struggling with Microsoft Word and Excel", "excerpt": "I am really interested in the concept of elder/senior citizen technology. The basic design concept for them is answering \"what am I looking at?\" I created this tool (https://anftr.com/) for some of my ex-colleagues in their early 50s who were trying to navigate the world of office software. They were struggling with Microsoft Word and Excel, and I have seen them yell at ChatGPT and bash their mouses constantly, hopin", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Easiest UX for Seniors"}, {"id": 763733329, "item_id": 47733333, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47733333", "by": "ninalanyon", "date": "2026-04-11", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "when our company switched from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word that's what everyone had to learn to use", "excerpt": "Most of the reason was corporate decisions. My wife was perfectly happy writing a novel in WordStar under CP/M on our Osborne. But in offices you have to use what you are given so when our company switched from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word that's what everyone had to learn to use.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "WordPerfect", "story": "Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python"}, {"id": 763573328, "item_id": 47723333, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723333", "by": "analogpixel", "date": "2026-04-10", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer", "excerpt": "at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in. I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their document", "context": "", "use_case": "word processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python"}, {"id": 763572929, "item_id": 47723308, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723308", "by": "fractallyte", "date": "2026-04-10", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "In contrast, Word uses the \"nested containers\" model", "excerpt": "One feature missing from almost every mainstream word processor: REVEAL CODES! (https://kb.corel.com/en/127364) This is a famous \"killer\" feature from WordPerfect: the ability to view and edit the low-level formatting for a document. It's invaluable for fixing weird bugs. However, it works only because WP uses the \"text-stream\" paradigm, where a document comprises a linear stream of text with formatting codes (Bold, ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python"}, {"id": 763461428, "item_id": 47716339, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716339", "by": "teekert", "date": "2026-04-10", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Word kept deleting my last 1-2 sentences for some reason", "excerpt": "I consider myself a Power User, use of Windows is not friction free :) Over the years I've come to believe that there is only one thing important: What you are used to. The friction is in the change process. Not in the destination. As an independent, I have several customers on MS365, you know what my super power is? FireFox cookie containers. One for each org, and I switch with 0 effort between the orgs. No need for", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"}, {"id": 762797153, "item_id": 47674822, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674822", "by": "giancarlostoro", "date": "2026-04-07", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Word does it to an extent, but I don't use Word nearly enough for it to be meaningful.", "excerpt": "English is not my first language, but when I started using Firefox with the built-in spell correction, I firmly believe my ability to spell words went drastically up. My grammar is stiff iffy, like I'm pretty sure I do comma splices everywhere, but at least most people can understand what I say now compared to when I was 13 and on the internet. If there was a \"gramma nazi\" teenie tiny LLM with a total focus on Englis", "context": "non-native English speaker", "use_case": "grammar checking", "switched_from": "", "story": "LLM may be standardizing human expression \u2013 and subtly influencing how we think"}, {"id": 762232337, "item_id": 47639521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639521", "by": "NikolaNovak", "date": "2026-04-04", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats", "excerpt": "I use onenote as a personal note taking system. For shared artifacts we use word, excel or PowerPoint in corporate onedrive and it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats - you can't usually edit the same exact box at the same time, and it can get confused with offline changes by multiple people. But online changes by multiple simultaneous people seems to work really well. I especially enjoy when one ", "context": "", "use_case": "shared documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 762185057, "item_id": 47636566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47636566", "by": "necovek", "date": "2026-04-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.", "excerpt": "An aside: I am generally good at keeping notes while in a meeting, and I have tried shared notes in One Note, but as soon as someone else edits something in the same spot, it creates a forked history requiring manual reconciliation: does this work for you? I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better. Perhaps it's given away by \"One\" in the name (one simultaneous editor", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"}, {"id": 762145536, "item_id": 47634096, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634096", "by": "jazz9k", "date": "2026-04-03", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "when the alternative was a hacked together Word document", "excerpt": "I love markdown for technical reporting when the alternative was a hacked together Word document.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the heck are we still using Markdown?"}, {"id": 761140384, "item_id": 47571274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571274", "by": "_the_inflator", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "as long as Word and Excel is starting on a business guy machine the day is saved", "excerpt": "Please walk the walk. You never worked in a corporate environment. It is just as the author said: developers are a pretty new phenomenon after all in these companies and are after all suspiciously treated because of leakage. And as long as Word and Excel is starting on a business guy machine the day is saved. And controlling works this way: 10.000 machines? Wow what?! Those so called developers demand 32gb RAM? WTF!?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Time to Dump Windows?"}, {"id": 760286400, "item_id": 47517900, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517900", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well.", "excerpt": "> I think there was talk of MS Word, too, and also a flop? There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well. For some strange historical reasons I can't recall now, though, it was called and marketed as MS Write instead. Write was the extremely basic free wordprocessor in Windows 3.x -- and so the name did the ST version a grave disservice. https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/microsoftwrite.html", "context": "", "use_case": "Word processing on Atari ST", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}]}