way OT writing program

what you need to write a good book

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Step 1 find a skilled editor. If you never wrote for a target audience before you may not yet appreciate the best advice you will have on this topic.

When it comes to computers I am at the back of the pack, yet I find Word easy, if not trivial to deal with. Learning a bit about Word will save you gobs of time writing. Go to Best Buy or Staples or there must be hundreds of places to buy Word.

Re: what you need to write a good book

Jack Guzman from Maine

I will look for word in staples.I won't be publishing. I just want to write down an account of my adventures in the 60s and 70s to pass on to relatives before old age removes it all from my memory.At the moment I'm looking at something called Google docs that looks promising.

Re: way OT  writing program

David NECT

What I'm taking from your question is that you don't have word processing app, of which Microsoft Word is essentially the universal standard, on your computer now and you're not wanting to pay for Office 365 or the other ways to get Word. If that's correct, then Google Docs is an excellent, free choice. You can write your book on it, share it as something that people can link to in Google Docs to read, or export it into Word or PDF formats that almost anyone can open and read.

PS: Sounds like a great project. My step-father had a million adventures in those same years and I, my sister and his grandkids have very much enjoyed hearing about them.

Re: way OT  writing program

Jack Guzman from Maine

Wordpad is what I was looking for when I ended up in Microsoft store country,I just forgot what it was called. Found it thanks.

Re: way OT  writing program

Yonak

Jack, I can commiserate about passwords, secret code words sent to your cell phone and the like. I just wasted 30 minutes on that kind of nonsense just to log into my Apple account in order to set up a new phone. It's really getting out of hand. What's all the security all about ?

I would suggest getting an old version of Word. It won't cost an arm and leg, it won't have all that password stuff and it won't be near as complicated to use.

Re: way OT  writing program

Dick Coers

I started writing when our Grandson was born. I was 63 when he was born and since my Dad died when he was 61, I thought I better tell him what my life was like. I was also seeing my Mother declining from dementia, another reason to document my life for him. I also included some interesting stories about family. When he gets old enough, he may find it fascinating to know about his 3 times great grandmother living with no electricity nor indoor plumbing until she moved into a nursing home in her middle 80s and died at the age of 95 in 1980. I'm on Apple machines, so just use Pages.

Re: way OT  writing program

Dale Stansbery

There are a number of free "Office" programs that do a nice job with word processing, and give you more flexibility than notepad. Libre Office, and Open Office come to mind as well as WPS Office.

Free *LINK*

John in NM

Try this one. I've never installed it on Windows 10, but it works well on my wife's old Windows 7 machine.


https://www.libreoffice.org/

Re: way OT  writing program

Chuck in Mtl.

you can find an older version of office on ebay. I just saw office 2013 for $40 on ebay.

Re: way OT  writing program

John Jardin

Jack, I've been reading your common sense posts for years and this one has inspired me to do exactly what you want to do.

I have been working on a project for over 2 years now and getting close to the end. However, this week I decided to take a break and look for a short project.

Thanks to you, I have found it!

Another possibility *LINK*

Ellis Walentine

Depending on how fast you type or how you compose as you type, you might be a candidate for Dragon software. Check it out.

Ellis


Dragon

Re: Free

John McGaw

LibreOffice is quite good but is just about as complicated as Word. For utter simplicity one might simply use the inbuilt Windows Notepad app or if a bit more oomph was called for there is the free-to-download Notepad3 app. Personally I use WordPerfect which has been with me since DOS days.

Re: way OT  writing program

Jerry Nicholson

Abiword used to have a Windows version but I don't know if they still have that or not. Simpler than Libreoffice Writer and Microsoft Word but somewhat compatible with Word. I use the Linux OS (mostly) and usually use Libreoffice Writer but for some things I prefer old Microsoft Word 2003. I have tried later versions of Word and much prefer the old 2003 version. Microsoft Office 2003 might still be available on E-Bay.

I still use Word 2003 on my Windows machines

Ellis Walentine

It doesn't open .docx files and it isn't available in a 64-bit version, in case that makes a difference to you, but it works fine for me. I really don't like having to learn new software at this point in my life.

Ellis

Re: Free

Jack Guzman from Maine

I'm up with utter simplicity. I am fine with complicated details when building a Windsor chair but when it comes to computers I'm still learning Dick and Jane.

Re: Open Office

Stuart Johnson

Take a look at Open Office: https://www.openoffice.org/

Re: Free

John in NM

Since the original complaint is Microsoft's overly arcane login crap (guy at work having trouble with this too), programs like libreoffice and openoffice would address that problem. Since they are free, there's no loss in trying one (I prefer libre, but openoffice is also a good program and quite similar).

If one is doing more than simple correspondence the more complex programs can be well worth learning for their more advanced formatting features (page numbering, chapter/title page formatting, end notes, etc). I've also had a lot of use for the ability to drop photos inline and do simple formatting of them to get them to play nicely with the text around them. Then I also usually export as a pdf so that the document is truly portable across platforms (or at least they were until Adobe decided that editable pdf's were the new great thing - now portability is relative).

However, if one truly needs a very simple and approachable text editor for little more than editing text, I would agree that the simple programs are the best for that application. I still use vi at work for editing config files - much to the horror of some of the younger people who aren't yet used to my old timey ways

WordPad

Bill Howatt

I'd go with WordPad since it is quite capable for doing this job and much of the learning experience is transferable to full-blown Word if that should become necessary.

Even though he is looking for something simple, after a bit of experience and getting into the project there may be the "I wish I could do this" type of issue so using something real simple may be a dead-end.

Libre Office and Open Office are candidates but they both have learning curves similar to that of Word. Between the two, I'd go with Libre but that's personal preference since they both will work.

Bill

Word 97

Jerry Nicholson

I actually liked Office 97 just fine but I don't think it works right for any version of Windows past XP. I couldn't see any real practical difference between Word 97 and Word 2003 but I have really hated any version of Word after they started the newer "ribbon" thing, or whatever they called it.

If anyone cares, Word 2003 works reasonably well with recent versions of Wine within Linux, specifically Linux Mint. I use Word 2003 for some of my genealogy stuff in a virtual Windows environment (VirtualBox).

Open Office, Libre Office are FREE!!!

Jerry Nicholson

NM

Re: Open Office, Libre Office are FREE!!!

Ellis Walentine

I've used Open Office for years on various Windows boxes, because Office 2003 doesn't understand .DOCX and .XLSX files. I had a lot of trouble trying to use Libre Office on my MacBook. I'm still looking for something more user-friendly than Pages for the Mac.

I refuse to get Office 365 and Adobe CS because I don't use them enough to justify paying dues.

Ellis

Re: Open Office, Libre Office are FREE!!!

Jerry Nicholson

There are several patches that allow Office 2003 to open and save files created in later versions of Office. I have not tried any of these and have no idea if they work correctly or have undesirable side effects. And I don't know if they apply to Macintosh versions of Office.

Jerry