Introduction

If you are a student or a busy professional working and switching between different systems, it’s really hard to maintain your documents. Even though you have the option of USB drives and mailing services it’s a hassle to manage your files via mobile storage or downloading attachments. Software providers have understood this crisis which has given birth to online word processing software.

The latest entrant in this field is Adobe’s Buzzword, part of Acrobat.com. Adobe’s new online web-based Flash word processor is simple to use, in fact it exceeded my original expectations. Google Docs and Zoho Write are other options, but in my opinion, Buzzword has an excellent user interface, the application is lively and user friendly with a handful of other features to manage, share files and convert files to PDF.

The application runs in your browser and it allows you to edit, share and manage documents with other authorized users. Since the data is stored on a centralized Adobe server, you can access your documents from anywhere in the world. Despite my enthusiasm, I do have to tell you that Adobe Buzzword is just a simple word processing document— don’t expect the full feature set of Microsoft Word, but Buzzword is free.

Getting Started With Adobe Buzzword

All it takes is just five minutes to sign up an account with Adobe. Visit http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ and click on Sign up now in the top right corner and fill in the form.

Once your account has been created you will get a confirmation email. To activate your account, click on the URL in the email and then just login to Adobe Buzzword to start using it.

Note: The activation must be done within three days of registration.

The unique feature of Adobe Buzzword is that with signing up for an account, you are allowed to access all the services of Acrobat. Once you login to the server, the website welcomes you with a classy black interface, and then you’ll have access to Buzzword, Adobe Connect Now, Create PDF, Share and My Files, with all the necessary word processing tools.

Click on the Adobe Buzzword tab.

Creating and Editing Documents

Access

After you first login to Adobe Buzzword a new window opens displaying your list of documents created in Buzzword. (If you are using Buzzword for the first time, the screen will have a default document named “Welcome to Buzzword”). The list of documents can be arranged based on file size, date, recently modified and other options. In this picture you can see three documents in my account, arranged by the size of the documents. Being freeware, the storage space is limited to 5GB.

Edit and Create

To edit a document, just click on the document name. If you want to create a new document click the New tab at the top right corner of the screen(where the pencil icon is). The shortcuts are similar to those of MS Word, but the graphics in Buzzword are far more exciting.

The interface is elegant and attractive. On the tool bar you have different options in the form of icons. Once you place the cursor on the icon the flash player reveals hidden text to explain the functionality.

File Formats

Buzzword currently imports and exports Rich Text Format (.RTF) files, Microsoft Word (.doc) files, and Word 2003 XML files.