Word Vragen en Antwoorden

Template usage

Toolbar disappeared

Q: Could you take a look to see if these chapters all associate with the correct template? I reformatted these chapters here for an editor and they worked fine. However, now that I've sent them to her she claims that the KAP menu/toolbar does not appear when she opens them.

A: To check: use Tools/Options -- the top field shows the attached template, with an Attach button next to it to change it.

Now if you do this, you'll see that the template path is fully specified, all the way up from the disk drive. So if you associate the template, and it lives in, say, C:\MyTemplates\editors\ then what will be shown in that box is C:\MyTemplates\editors\vbaKAPedvo.dot.

You're probably beginning to see what's happened. On your editor's system the templates live in a different directory path than on yours; all she has to do is click that Attach button and find where the template lives on her system.

Note--if you close a toolbar to completely remove it from the screen, it will not automatically re-appear, not even if the template that contains the toolbar is attached to the document. It has to be made visible again using the Toolbars option from the View menu. Word feels that if you discard a toolbar that's because you don't want to see it again until you explicitly change your mind. Custom menus however are always available when their templates are loaded.

Editing

Including styled text

Q: An editor has asked if they change the font size of the text (to 10 point) and the headings (to 12 pt.) in the author template, will there be a problem when they incorporate all these individual chapters with the book template -- i.e., will the font sizes revert back to the standard sizes (11 for text and 13 for headings)?

A: Yes, they will revert back.

This always happens when you include (or copy) into another document-- the style definitions of the receiving document apply.

So-- ANY changes should be made in the finished book. In this case that's a trivial task. Make the book, make sure NOT to unlock any fields. Re-define your styles, then update all fields.

Tables too wide

Q: My tables are too wide even though they do not contain much text. Do you know how this can be easily fixed?

A: You can drag the vertical borders or, more accurately, set the column width using the corresponding option on the Table menu.

Superscripts

Q: My superscripts are forcing more room between the lines.

A: Unfortunately, this cannot be easily helped (if you fiddle with the line spacing, your text will no longer conform to the style guidelines).

Fully-justified

Q: My text flows in two columns with fully-justified alignment. If I have a long phrase, for example the URL of a website, I get very ugly bits of whitespace.

A: There's nothing you can do about this ugly amount of whitespace in between words. And this time we really cannot even blame Word: if you say "justify" and then you say "but here's a string that has no spaces anywhere where you're allowed to break" then what can the poor program do?

Equations

Q: Once we import a paper, we are unable to change the styles of the equations. The parts of the equations should be italicized. For some reason you can hardly tell they are in italics.

A: The equations in the document you sent were inserted with an external plug-in to Word. Double-click them to edit the equations in that external application.

Language setting

Q: Once we have a paper in the template we can no longer change the language from English (U.K.) to English (U.S.).

A: You can either re-define Normal style to have US English as its language, or, even simpler, you can Select All and set the language to US English.

Non-breaking hyphens

Q: We have problem to keep a minus sign with the temperature value especially at the end of a line (e.g. -15°C). Do you know how to resolve that?

A: This one's easy! Insert the minus sign using Control-Shift-hyphen.

Graphics

Pictures float all over the place

Q: When I try to put a figure into the picture placeholder following the instructions, somehow the inserted picture is always on top of the page, i.e., the picture does not fit into the picture placeholder, instead, it overlaps everything on top of the page with words underneath can still be seen. I wonder if you are familiar with this kind of problem?

A: I just tried inserting a picture from file (Insert menu, choose Picture, then From File) and it worked fine. Same for a non-floating pic from another doc. What's possible is you've copied a floating picture from another Word doc or perhaps a pic from another application. Default in your setup may be to paste as floating. Solution: select placeholder (click on it), choose Paste Special (not Paste) from the Edit menu, un-tick the "float" checkbox before clicking OK.

Pictures do not show up

Q: I am editing an edited book. I have gotten to put all the chapters together but now many of the figures have a big X in them (which they did not when they were in the separate chapter documents).

A: Is it possible that originally the pictures were not themselves pasted into the document, but linked to instead? In such a case I'd expect a big cross, indicating the graphics file is not found. This could happen if the graphic is linked to using a relative path name and the book file is in a different location on the hard disk from the chapter file.

Drawing software

Q: Can you recommend any drawing programs that work well with Word? We are currently using PowerPoint for this but it does not work too well.

A: PowerPoint is a very bad idea, it's not even a drawing program at all! PP is for making presentations, not drawings.

Anything that works well with the operating system (Win or Mac) will integrate well with Word.

I would recommend Adobe products; Adobe know about graphics, it's their core interest. They're the ones that set the standards rather than follow them (they invented PostScript for example).

For vector drawing the standard Adobe product I think is Illustrator, for pixel drawing it's PhotoShop. Both are available for Windows as well as the Mac, so you'll never have a problem moving things around.

Indexing

Distinguishing index entries

Q: When there are two people with the same name [e.g., Solomon, Harris, Porter] how can I index them separately? Can this be done manually?

A: Yes. Change the XE fields that mark the index entries (not of course the text in the doc itself), so that it says "Solomon, Peter" for e.g. Peter Solomon and "Solomon, Mark" for, you guessed it, Mark Solomon.
You could have this neatly running in, and all sorts of nifty formatting. Check out the Help, how to do indexing is not too badly described (better anyhow than I can do in an email).

Index entry fields taking up space

Q: I tried to use the Word Index facility, but there were many problems. I had to search for a word and then mark the word with a "tag" that indicates it is for use in the index. When the tag is placed in the text, it takes up actual space just as if another word were placed in the text.

Because of this, words were pushed onto a different page than where they originally started. If I was only doing a few words, it would have been great, but since there are quite a few and they appear on multiple pages, the page numbers in the index were wrong. I hope that makes some sense.

A: The "tags" are actually Word fields (XE fields). They are formatted as hidden (invisible) text.

If you see them on the screen and if they affect word wrapping etc, then you have set Word to show hidden text. Clicking on the pilcrow icon in the standard Word toolbar toggles this (on and off). Or, more subtly, using Tools/Options/View/Non-printing characters you can determine exactly what sort of hidden stuff you want to be displayed.

What's not displayed does not affect pagination. Refer to the Word documentation for more information.

Two notes:

1) You should ALWAYS turn the display of hidden text off when updating ANY fields, not just index fields.

2) PRINTING of hidden text is separately set in the Print Options.

Indexing and mixed case

Q: Suppose that I have a word listed in both uppercase and lowercase throughout the monograph, say "Hello" and "hello." It appears that Word does not recognize that these two entries are the same word. Thus, if I capture the uppercase one, Word ignores the lowercase one and vice versa.

If I capture both, then two entries show up redundantly in the index section. Do you happen to have any solution to go around this problem?

I would actually like Word to pick up both upper and lowercase versions of a particular index entry. I would like only one version of the word-upper or lowercase- to be listed in the index with the page numbers for all representations of the word to appear next to it.

A: The Help says quite clearly: "Mark All marks the first occurrence in each paragraph of text that exactly matches the uppercase and lowercase letters in the entry." This makes sense, as capitalization often indicates a difference in meaning. The "Byte" in "Byte Ryte" is not the same as the "byte" in "a bit and a byte".

Say here's a piece of Word doc:

>>>>> page 1 <<<<<<<<<<<

The word hello is used in many different ways. [...]

>>>>> page 2 <<<<<<<<<<<

Hello there, we might say to someone. [...]

Now you highlight hello on p1, press Alt-Shift-X and up pops a dialog box. Say you do nothing else and click on Mark All straightaway. Then you go to page 2 and do exactly the same on the word Hello.

Your Word doc will now contain invisible coding for index entries, as follows:

>>>>> page 1 <<<<<<<<<<<

The word hello{XE "hello"} is used in many different ways. [...]

>>>>> page 2 <<<<<<<<<<<

Hello{XE "Hello"} there, we might say to someone. [...]

Insert an Index and this will result in:

hello, 1

Hello, 2

If I understood you correctly, what you would like is for the Index to read as follows:

hello, 1, 2

The standard way to achieve this is to change the capitalization in the dialog box before you click on "Mark" (or "Mark all"). Your Word doc would actually become something like:

>>>>> page 1 <<<<<<<<<<<

The word hello{XE "hello"} is used in many different ways. [...]

>>>>> page 2 <<<<<<<<<<<

Hello{XE "hello"} there, we might say to someone. [...]

and the index would result in:

hello, 1, 2

I've just cobbled up a few lines of code that forces all index entries to lowercase. You could run this routine after you've marked up all index entries that should be forced to lowercase but before entering any where capitalization should be preserved (such as proper names). Here it is:

Sub lc_index_entries()
Dim f As Field
For Each f In ActiveDocument.Fields
If f.Type = wdFieldIndexEntry Then f.Code.Text = LCase(f.Code.Text)
Next f
End Sub

Enter and store this in your Normal.dot template and from then on, running the macro with the name lc_index_entries will force all index entries currently in the document to lowercase. Update the index and you see the effect. (It's irreversible.)

A button or keyboard shortcut could be made to more easily call the macro. Unfortunately I cannot explain in an email how to store macros in a template or how to assign buttons or keyboard shortcuts. It's not something you should do unless you know how to do it... messing up your Normal template means messing up *everything*. So if you want to try this and do not know how, find someone to do it for you.

Multiple indices

Q: I need more than one Index in my book: a general one, and another one listing only proper names.

A: The switch to use for distinguishing between multiple indices is the \f switch (both in the index entry fields and in the index field itself). So an index entry {XE "miller" \f "genindex"} shows up as "miller" only in an index {INDEX \f "genindex"} and an index entry {XE "Miller" \f "nameindex"} shows up as "Miller" only in an index {INDEX \f "nameindex"} -- and so on.

Look up indexing in the Help; paying particular attention to what's said about the \f switch.

Complex documents

Continuous autonumbering

Q: When I put the individual chapters together in a complete volume the (auto-generated) Figure numbers and Table numbers are continuous throughout the book, thus the first figure of the last chapter has figure number 118, whereas it is Fig. 1 in the text. All my chapters are in separate sections. The only solution I can find to this would be to change the switches for the table and figure field numbers in each chapter. Is there an alternative?

A: Indeed that would be the only solution. There is no alternative. Unless -- let me think -- flash of inspiration -- right, here's a workaround:

- Go to the first chapter section and select the whole section -- NO MORE NO LESS.

- Press F9 to update its fields.

- STILL WITH EXACTLY THAT SECTION SELECTED NO MORE NO LESS, press Shift-Control-F9 to unlink its fields. The numbers are turned into editable text.

- Now REPEAT for your other chapter sections, ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME and working your way DOWN.

Note: the changes you make by doing this (turning the number fields into text strings) are irreversible.

Positioning endnotes

Q: I am using Word to produce the document and have been unable to place the bibliography after the endnotes. Word does not appear to allow any text to follow the endnotes. I wonder if you have any suggestions?

A: By definition, endnotes are placed at the end so you cannot insert anything after them.

What you could do, as a workaround, is place your bibliography in a separate file with a page numbering starting at whichever page number is required, e.g. if the body of the manuscript has 217 pages (including endnotes) then set the page number to start at 218.

OR but it's perhaps a little late for that, you could have set the endnotes to be printed not at the end of the document but at the end of each section instead (when inserting an endnote, click Options in the dialog box, then select "end of section" for "Place at:"). If you'd done that then all you'd have to do now is create a new section for the bibliography. However the endnotes would then be printed at the end of *each* section, not at the end of the doc as a whole.

Linked headers and footers

Q: We are to the point where the individual chapter files have been combined into the larger edited volume file. The problem arises after the section breaks. At that point the headers between the introduction and the following chapter are linked. I cannot make one header refer to the introduction and then the headers for the chapter refer to the chapter.

A: Sections are tricky. Back up your doc before playing with them. It can be done however, only if you don't know how I just cannot teach you by email. If you are sure you need to do this then there's nothing for it, you'll have to buy a good book on Word.

The thing to remember is that any new section you create in an existing document *by default* has the same headers and footers as the one immediately preceding it -- they are "linked" in Word jargon. First unlink, then edit. Also remember any Word section can have up to 5 separate headers and footers, all linked to previous by default. Other section characteristics may be inherited, too. If you fiddle with headers and footers always check that not only those in your current fiddled-with section are OK but also the ones in the previous and next sections.

Odd/even headers and footers

Q: I cannot get different headers for odd and even pages anymore.

A: For each section, use File/Page Setup/Layout (tab) and set as appropriate.

Rogue footnote separator

Q: On p.5 there is a rogue line at the bottom as if there were a footnote, but there isn't!

A: The footnote on the previous page has a bit of white space at the end which makes the whole footnote just long enough to no longer fit on the page -- it has to wrap to the next page and there it is, the continuation of a footnote consisting of just white space.