Re: Do you think I am asking for trouble? Was RE: Real WorldAdvantages of Office / Word 2007 and Windows 7

["William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>]

As much as I dislike Word, Word does do some things very well and better 
than others. For best results on large manuals, here are a few things I 
found you have to be aware of and take care to avoid.

1. Extremely large file size - this has more impact than pages, however, 
they usually go together.
2. Embedded pictures - many simply import a raw camera image and drag the 
corners to fit. This can easily drop 2 Mb in the doc for each picture. Use 
photo editing software, like the included Microsoft Office Picture Manager, 
to reduce size by percentage. You will see the file size in Windows Explorer 
actually go from 2xxx kb to 500 kb or 100 kb or whatever.  Try to stay in 
the 100 kb range or lower if you can keep decent image quality.
3. Limit the number of styles - really set some styles and stay with them. 
Many will use Normal and then create multiples by applying formats to the 
paragraph like bold, color, italics, centering, indenting, and so on. Set 
some styles and stay with them, instead of adding custom formats to 
paragraphs.
4. Tables - these can be killers on long tables over dozens of pages, like 
bill of materials at the end. Be sure to not have text boxes in them or 
artwork changed by dragging corners.
5. Numbering - while you can create custom numbering styles like in 
FrameMaker, my experience is that this is a prime area for things to screw 
up quickly. As such, the standard Microsoft numbering system is the least 
likely problem creator.
6. Styles - I think it was Ben who mentioned that Word 2007 has the style 
buttons not really doing real styles. Avoid using the buttons and use the 
Styles menu.
7. Books - Most places I have been avoid this and simply print up each book 
chapter as a separate file. I haven't used it in 2007 so I don't know if it 
has improved.
8. Links - cross links for references seem to add lots of overhead. They 
have been a problem area where large docs seem to keep multiple copies of 
the link when you are looking to insert a reference. I don't know what 
impact that actually has on the document, but if the cross reference is 
showing several times in the menu, then something is wrong.
9. Import by reference - I have found this can be an issue if the files get 
moved around or are accessed off servers by reference rather than direct 
paths.

I'm sure there will be many others added by others here.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kat Kuvinka" <katkuvinka -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 9:37 AM
Subject: RE: Do you think I am asking for trouble? Was RE: Real 
WorldAdvantages of Office / Word 2007 and Windows 7