Only able to see heading 3 text when looking in Outline view

[James_Harraway]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)

I hope someone can help!

I am currently writing a thesis usingMicrosoft Word for Mac 2004. I am using a Mac with OSX.

I created a template with the styles, margins and so on that I need using my work computer (PC with word 2003) and then transfered and saved the template as a .dot file in my mac "my template" folder. I then created a .doc document for each chapter of my thesis from the template, and started writing.

I have written half of the thesis, and had no problem. However, this morning when I opened one of my chapter files, I could no longer see any of the writing in the "heading 3" style in normal view. In fact, I can only see it in the outline view. I can't see it in the print view, but it does print onto the page. All the other headings seem ok. When I click on where the heading three writing should be in the normal view, it takes me to a blank screen.

Could anyone please help! I would really like to be able to see my headings in all views, as I am afraid they will disappear altogether! I dont think I have done anything different to make it do this - it just came up like that when I opened the file.

Hope you can help - I am really worried,

Yours,

James H

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello James,

Do your backups of your thesis file exhibit the same behaviour? If the
following does not work, it may be better to modify a "Saved As" backup
file. But let's not consider that yet.

Let's divide the possible source of the problem into two: the document
itself, or Word 2004 and/or your OS.

To see if it's the Word document, copy some of the text that encompasses the
text you are not seeing. and paste it into TextEdit or another text-handling
application. Does the text styled as Heading 3 appear normally? If not, if
you select all text and apply black as the font colour, does it appear now?

If the text shows in that application, go to the Word document than choose
Format menu => Style and see whether there is anything odd with the Heading
3 style definition, e.g. "white" as the colour, or "hidden text". If there
isn't anything odd, open Find & Replace and, with the "Find" and "Replace"
boxes empty, search for Heading 3 style and Replace All with, say, Heading
6. Does the text appear?

If it does, let us know and we'll work it out from there.

If it doesn't, the next step is to remove possible corruption of the
document. Select all the text in the document (Command-a) then hold down the
Shift key and hit the left arrow key. This de-selects the final paragraph
mark. Now copy. Paste into a new blank document.

However, to move to Possibility #2: when OS 10.0 was released, it was
really a beta version that shouldn't have been released at all. Soon
afterwards, many modifications were made to it. In the almost 6 years since
then, two profound changes have been made to OS X. The OS is now very
different from OS 10.0. It could be that some application (not necessarily
Word) has interacted in a way that is bringing about this problem in Word
2004.

One way of finding out whether the OS is to blame would be to open the
document (and, for comparison, an earlier backup of the document) on a Mac
with a later OS -- or even a PC, so long as you include a ".doc" suffix in
the file name.

When you get back to us, we can move ahead on one of the lines above,
depending on what you discover.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[James_Harraway]

Dear Clive;

Thanks very much for the detailed answer. Following your advice I looked through the format menu for the Heading 3 style, and found that the tabs had changed themselves somehow from 1.27cm (hanging indent) to -57cm, explaining the dissapeared text.
When I changed it back, the text reappeared in all views. I am certain that I didnt change the style myself - is there any way that autoformat or something like that can sometimes just change the tabs for a style? I am veyr happy to get my text back, but would like to prevent it recurring!

Thanks again for your help;

James

 

[Clive Huggan]

Dear James,

I'm glad you found it!

Normally I'd be quite assertive in saying that Word would not change the
margin setting (if it happened to me I'd suspect a stray, high-speed manual
change to the tab when I inadvertently dropped the tab by releasing the
mouse button while trying to do something else, then agreeing to change the
style when asked. But the OS 10.0 / Word 2004 combination makes me not so
assertive.

Anyway, if it's any consolation, yours is the first instance ever reported
in this newsgroup. So it's unlikely to recur. If it does, it's either "pilot
error" or time to upgrade your OS!

Cheers,

Clive
======

 

[Guest]

Thanks again Clive; I'll update as soon as I get this thesis finished!!!

James