Woord 2000, headers and locking for edit.

[aalaan]

Hi all!

Back again, I'm afraid. I'm editing a large document and some problems
are troublking me.

1) I created a header in the usual way, and it worked. But now it has
disapperaed under print layout (yes, I checked that) and does not
print. And what's more I can't create a new one as clicking on headers
and footers, while it works for other documents, now won 't work with
this.

2) Occasionally, usually after an eror has occurred box (W98) I get
document locked for edit when I try to load a document. How can I
access the document?

These problems are really urgent. Any reply (preferably qucikly) would
be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

A disappearing or inaccessible header is often a symptom of document
corruption, and your other problems could be part of the same issue. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

 

[aalaan]

That could be it 'cos I do have disappearing text and so on. I now have print a
given page (this page) as printing an entirely different one and the total
pagenum being wrong printing '1 of 1',' 2 of 2', '181 of 181' etc.

Could I reload Word from CD and start again with a clean normal.dot?

 

[aalaan]

've got many problems similar to those in the reference you gave me, and I do use
floppy saves so that may be the answer. Can I reinstall Word from CD and will that
give me a clean normal.dot? I'll uncheck the modify normal.dot box. BTW, I've
noticed the missing words problem but it doesn't seem to be in the file - just the
display. Also if I ask it to print the curent page it prints a completely different
one and the headers say eg page 1 of 1 page, 2 of 2 etc when I set the header to
{page} of {pagenum}.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You absolutely do not need to reinstall Word, which will not touch
Normal.dot, the Registry, or add-ins, so it accomplishes nothing. All you
have to do to get a clean Normal.dot is rename the existing one (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/BlankDocNotBlank.htm). But if you're
having a problem with a single document, I would start by treating the
single document as corrupt (per
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm) rather than Normal.dot.

 

[aalaan4d]

Really Suzanne, you are saving my life! If I can help people a tenth as much as
this in my own area of expertise I will be very fulfilled.

Thanks in particular for saving me from a complete reload that would apparently
have saved nothing!

As a mater of interest, my undoubtedly corrupt file has also got this strange
bug in it:. The dictionary suddenly reverts from Australian English (which I'm
using) to US English and thus challenges many Aust. spellings (eg favour) which
is how you at first notice it. Then it changes back after a few paragraphs.
For interest, and in case it helps others, here is now a summary (from memory)
of all the wierd things happening on this file:

a) for some paragraphs dictionary changes from eg Australian English to US
English.
b) chunks of words disappear at random (apparently not from the file - at least
I hope not (please confirm) - but from the display)
c) sometimes words will not go fully to the margin but indent to the paragraph
first line preset, and this space can only be removed by typing the end of one
line and the start of the next again.
d) random line breaks (not paragraphs) appear in places.
e) spell (F7) keeps asking for a capital in the middle of sentences or even
words
f) printed pages show eg page 2 of 2 and page 3 of 3 when there are 185 pages!
g) headers sometimes cannot be invoked at all, and disappear when they have been
previously set.
h) a rogue section break appears
i) document suddenly cannot be loaded, reporting 'document locked for edit'
until I restart the machine (this was the nastiest 'til I discovered the
solution; being locked out of the document you are about to continue working on
is a nightmare!)

That would all be a symptom of a virus, I thought, but the virus checker reports
none. It seems that I have a corrupt document. To be frank, Suzanne, I found
the instructions for cleaning the actual document a bit hard to follow, although
I think it's become urgent to do so - I have to give this manuscript to
publishers, totally clean, in a few days! What is the most reliable way I
wonder? There is no special style. I can easily apply all the margins,
spacing, first lines, font and size and so on manually for the whole file. I
think that covers all the formatting?

Meanwhile, I will try your procedure for starting a new normal.dot (renaming the
old one). I take it that this does not alter the recommendation to prevent Word
from modifying it every time I alter a setting?

And instead of periodically saving to floppy, as I used to, I now propose to
copy the file to floppy under Explorer, from time to time. I take it that's OK?

Thanks a million again, and congrats on the whole MVP idea.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Before you do any of that, try this:

1. Ctrl+A to select the entire document.

2. Go to Tools | Language | Set Language and make sure that Australian
English is selected and that "Detect language automatically" is not checked.

3. With the text still selected, apply a single style (Body Text, say, or
whatever other style you are using for most of the document). See if that
irons out the problems with weird indents. If so, you can go back and apply
other styles as needed. Try to avoid using Normal, especially in a
structured document (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NormalVsBodyStyles.htm).

4. If section breaks are unwanted and unneeded, search for ^b and replace
with nothing.

5. For (f), see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/PageXofY.htm

6. The header/footer problem could arise from the unwanted section breaks.

7. Then go back to the article about cleaning the doc. Basically, what you
do is save it as HTML or XML, then reopen and save it as a doc. The article
recommends that you shut down Word between these operations. I'm not sure
what that's supposed to do or whether it's really necessary, but I guess it
would have the effect of making sure no temp files were lingering that could
have any effect.