atw: Is MS Word really this bad?

Hi austechies,
 
Perhaps I've been living on that holiday island called Adobe FrameMaker for
too long, and expect MS Word to be similarly intuitive and smart. Or maybe
I'm just a fool for thinking so. But I've gone bald today trying to do this:

*       get a string of characters in various footers to automatically
reflect text a user enters into a text box on the first page of the
document.

Simple in FrameMaker. But in MS Word? 
 
If I assign a bookmark to the text in the text box, there is no automatic
updating. I have to go to each footer (each footer in each section) and
manually update the cross-reference. Even so, If the user completely changes
the text in the text box-which I expect they will do often-the bookmark
vanishes and no form of updating inserts the new text in any footer. The
result is an error message. The same occurs if I cross-reference a heading
rather than a bookmark. Completely change the text of the heading, and
bingo: every cross-reference to it converts to an error message on updating.
 
In FrameMaker you can cross-reference any paragraph tag-not just the eight
reference types MS Word gives you-and if the entire text so tagged changes,
each cross-reference to it also changes-automatically-and regardless of
whether it is in the body of the document or in a footer or header. Simple,
intuitive, what anyone might expect. 
 
Do I really need to master VBA to use MS Word and keep my hair?
 
BTW: I'm using MS Word 2003.
 
 
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W:  <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au

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