Posts by jo so

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

rtf files are smaller in size

For new files for notes on a topic, I often

- start it as a rich text format (.rtf) file

- keep editing it for days or weeks for content, not style (finally grows to about 10K in size)

- edit (refine) it with Micro$oft Word (ease of changing font styles, size, colors), ease of paragraph changes

Word saves the file as 15K file (old ".doc" files used to be 40K in size)

- edit it once more using Wordpad (add a space, delete the space) and save the file.

I end up with a 10K file.

I have been doing that process for over a decade both at work and at home.

Your Mileage May Vary

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

rich text format (rtf) is lean

I store most of my self-documentation notes in rich text format.

I mainly use WORDPAD.

Occasionally I use Microsoft Word to set page width margins, use advance global search and replace for font and font sizes, etc. saving the .rtf file.

Then once more open with Wordpad, make some minor change, and save the .rtf file.

The Microsoft Word .docx file may have been 19K and the Wordpad .rtf file may be 4K.

The smaller sized file transfers faster to my backup drive, smartphone, etc. without the "overhead" that Microsoft Word included during its save.

I will DEFINITELY miss having Wordpad around ... when that happens.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

30 years ago I remember an office department manager asking me, a programmer, how to improve his assistant's productivity. Every morning his assistant would log into a commercial off-the-shelf software program to run a bunch of reports to manually input into a spreadsheet to help measure sales, commissions, and goals. I analyzed the process, wrote some COBOL or RPG II program on a DEC VAX, and presented a new daily batch procedure that the assistant could run instead. My five hours of programming saved an hour each day of the assistant's time so that the assistant could spend more time on other needs. Those were the days.