MS Word

[Llowellen]

I realise it is all user-error. I should find myself a good website full of advice or buy Word For Dummies or something, but I have used MS Word for years and I have never been able to figure out why it randomnly changes font type, size, and bold/unbold if I choose to delete something;

or why it randomnly decides to adjust my page margins and borders;

or why sometimes, if I insert a table on one page, it will not let me use the last half of the previous page;

or why when I move a table an inch to the left it magically leaps a page backwards and lands on top of another table somewhere else.

Does anyone else have these problems? Because they drive me completely insane....

Cheers
Ian

www.llowellen.com
A d20 world design project that's waiting for your imagination.

 

[Prest0]

When you delete something, sometimes the remaining text takes on the formatting characteristics of A) the text that was deleted, or B) the text above or below. The same is true of cut/paste. The most important thing you can do to tame Word is understand how to use the stylesheet. Every heading and every paragraphy should have a style assigned to it. Then if a paragrah or heading goes wild because of cut/paste, it's a 1-click operation to reassign the correct style. Using styles in your manuscript also makes it much easier when you import the text into a layout program.

 

[Nellisir]

When you delete something, sometimes the remaining text takes on the formatting characteristics of A) the text that was deleted, or B) the text above or below. The same is true of cut/paste. The most important thing you can do to tame Word is understand how to use the stylesheet. Every heading and every paragraphy should have a style assigned to it. Then if a paragrah or heading goes wild because of cut/paste, it's a 1-click operation to reassign the correct style. Using styles in your manuscript also makes it much easier when you import the text into a layout program.

Ditto this. I used Word for years, with many similar complaints, until I gradually got used to styles. Upgrading to Word 2003 (the most recent, I believe) has made it even easier.

 

[Llowellen]

Yes. Stylesheets. I have heard of these, I have a pretty good idea what they are and what they are for, but I have to admit I don't know how to use them. I have several large manuscripts that are works in progress, if I can figure out the stylesheets will I be able to retro fit them to my existing stylesheets or are they too far gone....?

Cheers
Llowellen

www.llowellen.com
A d20 world design project that's waiting for your imagination.

 

[hammerlily]

>>or why it randomnly decides to adjust my page margins and borders;

Generally, if you adjust page margins & borders from page to page, or have different headers/footers on pages you (or Word automatically on your behalf) have put section breaks into your document. If you delete text that includes that section break, Word will default to the page margin & border setting of the prior section. You can avoid this by having the paragraph markings turned on so you can see where the section breaks are placed.


>>or why sometimes, if I insert a table on one page, it will not let me use the last half of the previous page;

Word generally keeps tables together as a paragraph style and will not flow a table over a page unless the table itself is more than a page long. The way to get around this is to split the table (once you know how much of your table you will need).


>>or why when I move a table an inch to the left it magically leaps a page backwards and lands on top of another table somewhere else.

Word enters an invisible anchor for each table or graphic placed in Word. Generally this is placed at the beginning of a paragraph & then Word tracks the horizontal and vertical offset from the anchor point as a "helpful way" to ensure that the table stays with the text that it is dropped into. This becomes particularly annoying when you are placing something into the first paragraph on the page or into a paragraph on the top of a two or three column page. On a multi-column page Word defaults to dropping this anchor into the paragraph on the leftmost column even if you are actually placing the graphic into one of the other columns. Again, if you turn on the paragraph markings, you can see the location of the anchor related to the table or graphic and minimize the problem. Or, you can use the advanced settings of the "format graphic" or "format table" option to set the anchor to a location on the page rather than a location in the paragraph - a tedious process, but will provide a more stable graphics placement.

Word... its like the government... its here to help! Ha!

 

[Prest0]

Yes. Stylesheets. I have heard of these, I have a pretty good idea what they are and what they are for, but I have to admit I don't know how to use them. I have several large manuscripts that are works in progress, if I can figure out the stylesheets will I be able to retro fit them to my existing stylesheets or are they too far gone....?

No, they're not too far gone. And again, it's much better to tame your manuscript with styles in Word than in layout. Depending on the length it may feel a bit tedeous, but with a good set of styles and an understanding of how to use them you can tear through a manuscript pretty quickly. I'll be doing that very thing tonight with a non-styled manuscript someone is sending me.

 

[Nellisir]

One of the nice things about Word 03 is that you can select one area of text (a header, say), and tell Word to automatically update all text with the same formatting to whatever style you choose or create. So if you've hand formatted all your headers, or subheaders, there's a pretty good chance you won't have to reformat all of them individually.

 

[hammerlily]

No, they're not too far gone. And again, it's much better to tame your manuscript with styles in Word than in layout. Depending on the length it may feel a bit tedeous, but with a good set of styles and an understanding of how to use them you can tear through a manuscript pretty quickly. I'll be doing that very thing tonight with a non-styled manuscript someone is sending me.

I wholeheartedly agree. Styles is the way to go with Word.

 

[JBowtie]

Alternatively you can use OpenOffice.org, which (besides being free) has two great features relative to RPG publishing:

1) Built-in export to PDF - even if you use a more advanced layout tool like Scribus, this is good for generating quick one-offs for playtesters.

2) Is more style-centric; it's just more consistent in the organisation, usage, and creation of styles than Word.