MS Word screws up yet ANOTHER project?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Ken Poshedly reports: <<Nothing you guys haven't heard about before  
now. And nothing anyone here can do. I'm just venting.>>

Well, with a little luck, we can possibly help you prevent the  
problem in future, and maybe recover from the current problem with  
less stress than the last time. Also note that you may not be the one  
who caused the problem; someone else editing these files may have  
done it. And sometimes Word really does happen for no reason anyone  
can understand, but that's less frequent than most Word critics believe.

<<MS Word, the program that won't be fixed and won't go away, just  
undid weeks of work in an instant -- without me even touching a key.  
It simply changed the font and spacing in all of the dozens of tables  
in the 164-page manual I'm currently working on. Yep, whereas  
eveything in all of the tables was set to Arial 10 pt with preset  
spacings in place, in the blink of an eye -- and with no action by me  
-- I saw it magically change to Times Roman and goofed-up spacings.>>

When this happens, you've usually run into one of two problems.  
First, many people set style definitions to update automatically,  
which they assume means that if you update a style definition, all  
text formatted with that style will take on the new properties.  
Instead, Word updates the definition of the style to reflect the  
changes you've made in the text. This feature is only useful if you  
like to define styles by experimentation; for most people, it's an  
unmitigated disaster. Second, Word's autoformatting tools (Tools-- 
 >Autocorrect-->Autoformat as you Type tab) can screw you up in a  
similar way; the "Define styles based on your formatting" option on  
this tab will do this. So if you inadvertently changed the style by  
typing a character in Times, Word might helpfully screw up all text  
formatted using that style. As a general rule, both options should be  
disabled _always_.

The flip side of the coin is that if you manually edit the properties  
of a style such as Normal and click Apply when you close the dialog,  
Word will helpfully update the properties of all text formatted using  
that style, except for text that you have manually formatted (thereby  
overriding the style) or to which you have applied a character style.  
That's a good feature if you've defined and used styles rigorously,  
but not so good if you were careless. Because Word uses hierarchical  
styles (e.g., if you edit Normal style and your headings are left at  
the factory defaults, which is "based on Normal" in the style  
definition), then all linked styles will also change. Again, this is  
a good feature if you've designed your document to take advantage of  
it. Here, the solution is to define recurring elements such as table  
data using your own style name (e.g., KenTable1), and ensure that  
this style is not based on any other styles unless you want to edit  
one style and cause all linked styles to change. That's a useful  
feature too, but you need to plan for it.

<<they've finally ordered FrameMaker 8.0>>

Frame is certainly more intelligently designed and more robust than  
Word, but taking the above steps will make Word more stable and  
robust. Hope this helps you should you end up using Word again in the  
future!


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/home/onscreen-book.htm)


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