Does anyone have or know where to find

[The Blue Lotus]

Stupid someone decided to "upgrade" my word....
I have no idea how to use the new one I want my old one back!!!!!!!!!!! But, I can't find it anywhere...
Can someone Tell me where to find a Word 97 download?
Please and thank you.

 

[Black Dragon]

Ugh. The dreaded Word upgrade. I went through this a few years ago, when I was forced to upgrade to Word 2007. That horrible "ribbon" menu never feels natural. I use the program nearly every day, and it still annoys me.

Unfortunately, I don't think that it's possible to legally obtain the old Word anywhere. It may be available on some underground "pirate" file sharing sites, but aside from the legal issues, such copies will invariably contain viruses or back doors into your computer. You don't want to touch those.

 

[The Blue Lotus]

That makes me wanna cry man... But thanks, I'll keep hoping and looking cuz it took me years to figure out how to use the one I had properly, I really don't want to go through that all over again.

 

[MadMadys]

Well there are ways but as Dragon pointed out, it depends how legal you want to be about it. When it comes to viruses and the like, if you use some common sense when searching some sites, say for torrents, you can read reviews, check the number of downloads on a given file, and generally have a good impression of something before you ever download. Not that I have done this often, and I purchased my copy of Word 2010 through my former employer for next to nothing, I have gotten several programs this way and never had a problem using the methods I described to keep your wits about you.

Now if that still racks your nerves a little too much, you could try uninstalling the program and finding a friend that may have a copy still hanging around. I think even Word 2003 in close enough to '97 for the most part. My old copy of '03 had something like 10 copies you could use on it before it was tapped out so you could try and find someone who might have one. Possibly turning to eBay or Reddit for a copy someone has. That, of course, does have its own risks as well.

I hope you are able to find something to help yourself. There are some free word-like document programs out there if you're desperate as well though I can't remember any of them off the top of my head.

 

[Leif Notae]

Go for Open Office. It is free and resembles 97 more than anything else (AND there's no legal problems having it). You can save it like a .doc/.docx if you want. Check out FileHippo.com, you'll find it there along with scores of other free programs you should have.

 

[yachtcaptcolby]

I second the Open Office suggestion. Occasionally I have issues trading documents that use track changes back and forth with people who use Word, but otherwise it's pretty reliable and easy to use. I haven't tried it for any complicated formatting or mail merges, though, so I can't speak to how well it performs advanced tasks. If you're a Mac person, the iWork suite is also excellent and reasonably priced.

 

[Steerpike]

I second the Open Office suggestion. Occasionally I have issues trading documents that use track changes back and forth with people who use Word, but otherwise it's pretty reliable and easy to use.

LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice, tends to have a bit better compatibility in my experience. You might take a look at that one.

 

[CupofJoe]

LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice, tends to have a bit better compatibility in my experience. You might take a look at that one.

I have tried both and have both installed on different PCs and Laptops and I like LibreOffice a little better.
Also you can add things like Readability Report (Open Office) that is annoyingly accurate at spotting dashes used as hyphens

 

[PaulineMRoss]

There is another option - you could actually learn to use the new Word It might even be quicker than trying to find the old version (and getting rid of the viruses afterwards) or downloading something different and getting to know that. Everything you could do in the old Word you can do in the new one, only with better compatibility with the rest of the world.

Here's a suggestion: make a list of (say) the ten most common things you might want to do while writing but don't know how to do in the new version of Word. Then spend (say) three hours working through the list, using the online help and Google. If you survive the time without throwing the computer across the room, you'll have your decision.

Oh, and don't forget to write down the answers to your questions, because otherwise you'll end up repeating the same discovery process on a daily/weekly/monthly basis indefinitely.

Software upgrades can be a pain, but unless you actually need that one esoteric feature that's been discontinued, you're generally better off with the new version.

 

[Devor]

You can still get it legally on ebay.

 

[Leif Notae]

There is another option - you could actually learn to use the new Word

Oh Pauline... Always with the easy answers.

Really, this might be the way to go. With the way things are marching along, Word 13 is going to be all in the cloud and stuff. Google's Docs are doing the same thing. Hate to admit it, but this is really is it,

 

[Steerpike]

There is also AbiWord, a lightweight word processor that does a nice job. It won't have the most complex features of Word or LibreOffice, but it actually has quite a bit of capability.

MSWord 2013 isn't bad, it is just a matter of getting used to the placement of some of the options and features. I do think, as Leif said, services like this is Google Docs, which use the cloud, are going to be increasingly more important. In fact, if you haven't tried Google Docs yet, you might give it a look.

 

[SeverinR]

I got MS word 03 from Goodwill.
Didn't like it.
I learned MS word 2007, and was given a class on 2010 from work.
Biggest reason I want a dual computer with Linox and Windows, so I can keep MS Word 2010/07. Less chance to get a terminal virus when not using Windows, when on the web.

Having a world in one book, a table of contents of 12 pages, I love the ctrl click feature of the TOC on 2007, takes you to the heading(paragraph) you want.

 

[tlbodine]

I'm also in the Open Office camp. I do most of my work on a little netbook that has a truly obnoxious "trial" type MSWord installed -- it has ads in the side bar and doesn't let you use TrackChanges. I really didn't feel like springing for the full version, so I went open-source instead and haven't had any issues with it at all.

 

[The Blue Lotus]

Yeah well hubby is about to die!
I unistalled that crap he put in and reinstalled my word version after digging for hrs on an old external harddrive to find the file.
And in less than a week he manages to overwrite the damn thing again with this junk! :stomp:
One of these days I'm going to be forced to break his fingers I swear.

Oh well not going to go through all that yet again, I liked the simplicity of the old one. This one is a hot mess of useless crap.

 

[The Blue Lotus]

There is another option - you could actually learn to use the new Word

Yeah, that might be true however considering it is MY computer and MY work I don't really think I'm out of line being upset that/when someone removes a file I use daily and replace it with something else.... Something I neither want nor asked for mind you all without so much as even asking me first.
Where I come from people get shot for a lot less.