180 Page Word Document - Help! 1

[colobean]

I'm afraid!

I'm going to be getting a 180 page word document to fix today. The person working on it has been copying and pasting sections and moving to other sections. It's a mess. There are way too many styles. I can't tell what is what. The leading has gone wonky in some sections, tabs not alighned, etc...What do you think the fastest most accurate way to fix this would be? Should I clear the formatting and start from scratch or should I work on page at a time?

Thanks!

 

[Madawc]

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. This will allow you to change or remove any unwanted styles.

This applies for Word 2002, at least.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Windows XP & Crystal 10

 

[fumei]

Should I clear the formatting and start from scratch or should I work on page at a time?

First of all, my sympathies. Been there.

The critical question is, is your finished (corrected) document going to be based on a well-designed template? In other words, can you bring in the contents, clear format on everything, and redo with clean styles? Essentially, this is what you are asking I believe.

IMO...yes. While it may take a bit longer, having a document with well-designed styles is much better than one with a hodge-podge (which is what it seems you have).

It is hard to give specific advice, as I can't see the document. Also, you don't state your working version of Word. Madawc's suggestion of using the Styles and Formatting task pane is good. Another Task Pane you may find useful is Reveal Formatting. You can put your selection in one paragraph with a wonky style or format, and use the Reveal Formatting task pane to select every instance of that style throughout the document.

So say you have a wonky style (CrapStyle) being used. You can put the cursor in a CrapStyle paragraph, use Reveal Formatting to select every instance of CrapStyle in the document, and globally change them to use MyNiceStyle.

Once done you can use Styles and Formatting to delete CrapStyle right out of there.

The other advantage of Reveal Formatting is that the display area Formatting of selected text shows all the formatting attributes. You can change the attributes from right there.

What do to depends on:

1. what is your deadline?
2. are you attempting to put this into a clean, well-designed documents using clean well-designed styles; or are you basically doing an ad hoc "fix"?
3. is this a one-off; or will you be doing this again? In other words, how much work is this worth?
4. is this document created from a custom style that is a mess? In other words, if you "fix" the document, and give it back, (and you have not "fixed" the original crap template), there is a chance the person may update the document. In which case it will revert back to the mess from the original template.

Generally speaking, when correcting a large document, you want to try and do as many global changes as possible. This is problem if there was a gazillion manual changes done. A lot depends on whether you are correcting it to use fewer good styles, or not.

If you want, and it is acceptable to do so, you can ZIP the document in question, and send it to me. I will take a look at it and give an opinion (for what it may be worth) on a possible route. I can be reached at:

myhandle at telus dot net

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[SkipVought]

colobean,

I would take very seriously Gerry's opinions and his generous offer to give you an evauation of your document. He's a superstar.

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[colobean]

I would love to give you the document to look at and offers advise but it is very confidential so am not able to.

I do have one question though. The document has a watermark that is overlapped with another watermark. I can't get rid of the first one. When I do the Format-Background-Printed Watermark - no watermark - it only takes off the one. Any suggestions???

 

[SkipVought]

Try editing the HEADER or FOOTER and see if you can select and delete the watermark there.

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[fumei]

Then it probably isn't a watermark. Are you saying you have TWO, independent, watermarks on the same page?

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture