Mangled WORD doc

[Ria_Amp]

I was wondering what the experts on this would do in this case.

A friend of mine was hired to "do some light editing and oh, BTW fix the
TOC and Figures, and resize graphics for a 40 page doc " on a 24 hour
deadline. 4 or 5 people has contributed to the doc before he got it. When
the doc came it was 140 pages - the TOC was pages numbers started at one
in places, some page numbers were clearly picking up a Header 9 Style, the
Appdendices need Appendix page numbers, the list of figures disappeared
when the table was updated and listed two figures that weren't on the
origianl lists. There were multiple header styles in the doc. The effort to
resize .bmp graphics by copying to another program, converting to .jpg and
reinserting (oh but maybe he did paste!) the image caused the file to
increase in size...

I got involved in helping and consider myself an Intermediate user.

1. We fixed the TOC (section breaks were starting page number one)
2. I started working on understanding what was going on with the figures
and discovered the issue with the figures .....

when we stopped and said, can't do this in the time frame.

Is the correct thing to do under those circumstances to simply strip the doc
of formatting and rebuild using a known template?

Did copying the graphics instead of reinserting cause the file to increase in
size?

Thanks. I'd love to have been able to fix the file......: )

 

[Jezebel]

Advice to sailors caught on a lee shore in a storm: rule 1. Do not let
yourself get caught in this situation.

Clearing all formatting and starting again is often the best approach. When
you've got a mess like this to deal, you have to make a full pass through
the document, checking it page by page, paragraph by paragraph anyway. If
you know more or less what the document is supposed to look like, it's
easier simply to apply the correct formatting from scratch, rather than
trying to correct the formatting that was originally there. If the original
was the product of just one person, there is sometimes enough consistency to
use automatic methods (eg, you can use Find and Replace to look for
formatting features and convert to styles) but with 4 or 5 originators this
usually won't work.

Pasting graphics directly into documents is not a good idea. In some
cases -- it depends on the graphics application -- what you get is not an
embedded graphic but an embedded *object* -- eg, if you're using Corel, you
get an embedded Corel object: double click the graphic in Word and it opens
in Corel. Not surprisingly, this involves a LOT of data, in addition to the
graphic itself, getting stored in the Word document.

The best approach is to prepare the graphic in your graphics app -- set the
finished size and resolution -- then save as GIF or JPG (depends on the
graphic which is better). Then in Word use Insert Picture from File, either
embedding or linking. Avoid making ANY change to the graphic once it is in
Word. Has the added advantage that you have backups of the graphics,
independent of the document.





I was wondering what the experts on this would do in this case.

A friend of mine was hired to "do some light editing and oh, BTW fix the
TOC and Figures, and resize graphics for a 40 page doc " on a 24 hour
deadline. 4 or 5 people has contributed to the doc before he got it. When
the doc came it was 140 pages - the TOC was pages numbers started at one
in places, some page numbers were clearly picking up a Header 9 Style, the
Appdendices need Appendix page numbers, the list of figures disappeared
when the table was updated and listed two figures that weren't on the
origianl lists. There were multiple header styles in the doc. The effort to
resize .bmp graphics by copying to another program, converting to .jpg and
reinserting (oh but maybe he did paste!) the image caused the file to
increase in size...

I got involved in helping and consider myself an Intermediate user.

1. We fixed the TOC (section breaks were starting page number one)
2. I started working on understanding what was going on with the figures
and discovered the issue with the figures .....

when we stopped and said, can't do this in the time frame.

Is the correct thing to do under those circumstances to simply strip the doc
of formatting and rebuild using a known template?

Did copying the graphics instead of reinserting cause the file to increase
in
size?

Thanks. I'd love to have been able to fix the file......: )

 

[Ria_Amp]

That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming my instincts.