[Technotroll]

Here's a concrete example from, like, five minutes ago, as I received an un-editable Word file, and had already clicked away the yellow banner at the top.

Technotroll: How do I enable editing of word document?

ChatGPT: To enable editing in a Word document, follow these steps:

Open the Word document you want to edit.

If the document is in "Read-Only" mode, you'll need to enable editing. Look for a yellow or red banner at the top of the document that says "Protected View" or "Read-Only." Click on the banner, and you should see an "Enable Editing" button. Click on it to enable editing mode.

If the document doesn't have a "Protected View" or "Read-Only" banner, it may already be in editing mode. In that case, you can start editing right away.

If you are using Microsoft Word, you can also check the top-right corner of the window. If you see a button that says "Editing Restricted," it means the document has restricted editing. Click on the button and select "Stop Protection" to enable full editing.

In some cases, the document may be password-protected, preventing any edits without the password. If you're prompted to enter a password when trying to edit, you'll need to obtain the password from the document's owner or author.

By following these steps, you should be able to enable editing and make changes to your Word document. Remember to save your changes regularly to ensure your work is preserved.

Technotroll: I clicked the x on the yellow banner. Now what?

ChatGPT: If you accidentally clicked the "x" on the yellow banner in Microsoft Word, which appears when a document is in "Protected View" or "Read-Only" mode, you can still enable editing by following these steps:

Click on the "File" tab in the top-left corner of the Word window. This will take you to the "Backstage" view.

In the "Backstage" view, you should see an "Enable Editing" button on the right-hand side. Click on it to enable editing mode.

Alternatively, you can press the "Esc" key on your keyboard to exit the "Protected View" and enable editing.

If you closed the yellow banner by mistake, don't worry. You can still enable editing by following the steps above. Remember to save your changes regularly to ensure your work is preserved.

Conclusion: It worked almost immediately. If I were to Google it, I'd have to verify multiple documents before I got to the answer.

[jrflowers]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “verify multiple documents”?

https://serpapi.com/playground?q=How+to+enable+editing+of+a+...

It looks like Google’s output is nearly identical information as what ChatGPT gave you. If you chose to trust ChatGPT’s output simply because it was more confident sounding, does that actually qualify as the software doing better?

[Technotroll]

That's a big “depends.” We can assume that Google employs ML too, and that it will tailor its output to the particular user. Thus, your output might not be the same as mine. With that said, I think it's a positive development that Google does indeed offer quick tuts among its other search results.

However, if you do not get a quick guide, or if you're not satisfied with it for whatever reason (perhaps it doesn't work, which has happened to me multiple times), then you'd be forced to browse documents either way. This takes time and energy which I'm not prepared to spend. That has very little to do with how “confident” the information sounds, it has to do with the likelihood that I will expend energy on bs tasks when I can just get the answer right away. Google simply doesn't offer that.