Animated Text: retain Tools, Options setting

[ChrisGreaves]

Word2003 but still , ...

For my sins I am implementing animated text.
I create a character style csB with settings of Bold and then Marching Black Ants.
I apply the style to a phrase and see that the phrase is Bold.
Not until I choose Tools, Options, View and check ON Animated text do the black ants start marching.

It seems to me that this Tools Option is not being saved. After lunch I reopen Word and the document and while the text is still bold, the ants do not march.

I figure that there must be/have been a way to make MSWord stay in a mode once set.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks, Chris

[HansV]

Can't help you with this, because this feature has been removed from recent versions of Word.

[ChrisGreaves]

Can't help you with this, because this feature has been removed from recent versions of Word.

It must feel awful to be deprived
Thanks anyway, Hans
Chris

[HansV]

I have to admit that I don't miss the marching ants at all...

[Charles Kenyon]

Cross-posted at: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/503 ... tting.html
For cross-posting etiquette, please read: A Message to Forum Cross-Posters https://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?184
I did post a suggestion there.

[kdock]

Charles, you referenced Woody's Word 97 Annoyances in your response to Chris at the other site. In '96 I was the Technology Director in a 4-office CA law firm that merged into in a VERY large law firm and I was, among other things, tasked with moving everyone from WordPerfect to Word in all twelve (or were there more?) offices. There were two of us heading up the whole shebang and we quickly started Word 97 Things That Suck, a long a fast-growing list. We were horrified by how badly autonumbering could be screwed up (after having several occurrences of numbers spontaneously changing mid-way through a document). After a good deal of troubleshooting, we reported to the CIO that there was trouble in paradise regarding numbering. She contacted MSFT because bad numbering was a non-starter.

Microsoft either didn't understand us or didn't believe us at first. But we were a huge firm using a preview copy of '97 directly from MSFT, and they were desperate to show that Word's numbering was just as good as WP's. Mmmm. So after complaining several times, MSFT finally sent a someone from Redmond to my office in L.A. where I demonstrated how outlines were shifting from one list template to another. Which I did over and over again. Hence the need to edit numbering in a particular fashion, described so well on Shauna Kelly's site. You're welcome.

Anyway, back to the original post, and to be fair to marching ants, I did find a couple of ways to make good use of them (and a reasonable alternative once MSFT took them away), but I do recall that the whole marching ants recall wasn't based on complaints from large customers, but that the strobing of the ants could conceivably trigger epileptic seizures. This is a far more dramatic and colorful, though possibly mendacious, explanation.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Kim