M
Mark Tangard
Our documents travel, and the road is bumpy. Most (ok, almost all) of
the people who open and edit the files are not Word experts. In 2 years
I’ve been able to infuse in them only the most basic skills in using
styles, templates, and related features. Our documents are averagely
complex -- tables, bullets, graphics, etc. Our work is very
collaborative, that is, many people edit the same files in turn.
I now distribute templates for section authors to start from. This has
cut down as bit on the mess. As documents approach the home stretch, I
fix most formatting errors, apply styles in place of manual patch-ups,
and generally purge the bad blood. But even when I’ve done my
damnedest, things sometimes fall apart if control reverts to any of the
authors’ PCs for even tiny changes. In particular, we see these 2
events in almost any file if another person edits and re-saves the file
on his/her PC:
1. The hanging-indent level in bullets changes to 0.05 or 0.5 or 1.0
inches. (We use only 0.25 in normal text and 0.1 in small fonts within
tables. This happens with the built-in bullet styles, custom bullet
styles (created both the dumb way and the hard way), and faked bullets
created with the toolbar button.
2. Text that has been wrapped carefully around embedded pictures,
frames, etc., no longer breaks as arranged on the source PC. I know
this is a perpetual imperfection but some of the mismatches are not
minor (e.g., whole words stretched across a line where 3 once fit). As
our files are often dense with photos, this tends to change more than
just a few spaces; often it displaces entire pages.
In both cases, these glitches can happen anywhere in the file, not just
necessarily in the area near the edit, which hints that a style problem
is involved; but I see no other clues.
The upshot of this is: As they reach maturity the documents are just too
testy to be edited anywhere except the source machine. Since our work
is entirely collaborative, everyone needs to be able to check out a file
and edit & resave it without having its formatting collapse. This
happens even between PCs running the same Word and Windows versions
(Word 2000, WinXP) and using the same (nearly empty) Normal.dot.
So, to produce an acceptable final copy, I must either (1) at some point
require all further changes to be made on the source PC, or (2) whenever
anyone else changes a file, check all the bullets and pictures in it and
repair these problems. Neither is practical.
Any ideas on how to minimze this trauma?
TIA
Mark
the people who open and edit the files are not Word experts. In 2 years
I’ve been able to infuse in them only the most basic skills in using
styles, templates, and related features. Our documents are averagely
complex -- tables, bullets, graphics, etc. Our work is very
collaborative, that is, many people edit the same files in turn.
I now distribute templates for section authors to start from. This has
cut down as bit on the mess. As documents approach the home stretch, I
fix most formatting errors, apply styles in place of manual patch-ups,
and generally purge the bad blood. But even when I’ve done my
damnedest, things sometimes fall apart if control reverts to any of the
authors’ PCs for even tiny changes. In particular, we see these 2
events in almost any file if another person edits and re-saves the file
on his/her PC:
1. The hanging-indent level in bullets changes to 0.05 or 0.5 or 1.0
inches. (We use only 0.25 in normal text and 0.1 in small fonts within
tables. This happens with the built-in bullet styles, custom bullet
styles (created both the dumb way and the hard way), and faked bullets
created with the toolbar button.
2. Text that has been wrapped carefully around embedded pictures,
frames, etc., no longer breaks as arranged on the source PC. I know
this is a perpetual imperfection but some of the mismatches are not
minor (e.g., whole words stretched across a line where 3 once fit). As
our files are often dense with photos, this tends to change more than
just a few spaces; often it displaces entire pages.
In both cases, these glitches can happen anywhere in the file, not just
necessarily in the area near the edit, which hints that a style problem
is involved; but I see no other clues.
The upshot of this is: As they reach maturity the documents are just too
testy to be edited anywhere except the source machine. Since our work
is entirely collaborative, everyone needs to be able to check out a file
and edit & resave it without having its formatting collapse. This
happens even between PCs running the same Word and Windows versions
(Word 2000, WinXP) and using the same (nearly empty) Normal.dot.
So, to produce an acceptable final copy, I must either (1) at some point
require all further changes to be made on the source PC, or (2) whenever
anyone else changes a file, check all the bullets and pictures in it and
repair these problems. Neither is practical.
Any ideas on how to minimze this trauma?
TIA
Mark
