Why does MS Word 'Update index' ask for confirmation? [closed]

Question

Why does Microsoft Word keeps asking before executing the "update index" command from the context menu?

Even worse, the default is "Update page numbers only", and I have to manually select "Update whole index", since I want to have an updated index after all.

This may have been reasonable in times where hardware was slow, or Word crashed every 2nd time, but wth recent hardware, Word should be able to do so 100 times faster than I need to even read the question. Or only ask when we have 100+ pages.

Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

I am not a fan of this dialogue, but in Word almost everything happens instantaneously. This task may take a significant amount of time (>1s) depending on your document's structure. Even with recent hardware.

Even if you use recent hardware, this does not mean others have recent or perormant hardware. Especially for users with less perormant hardware there are (online) alternatives to word. There is pressure.

It is a bad idea to do anything differently when the user is not 100% sure why the behavior changed. (Transparency) Some magic number is not transparent at all.