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http://daiya.mvps.org/bookwordframes.htm
Overview
Authors generally write one chapter at a time, so that each chapter takes life as a separate entity. However, its tricky to print sequentially numbered pages, create a table of contents, or use crossreferences when each chapter is a separate file. Word promises to make combining chapters easy with the Master Document feature, but this is likely to corrupt your documents and you are advised to avoid it.
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Instead, you will generally be best off if you combine your entire document into one file and format it consistently. To do this, the most fundamental concepts you need to understand are Styles, Templates, and Sections. Section breaks between your chapters will let you mimic many of the things that you thought you needed separate files to do. Styles and templates help you enforce consistency while minimizing the work you have to do. Styles are about structure. Working so extensively with Word demands that you learn to think a little bit like Word thinks. There are two facets to writing a book in Word. In the manuscript phase, you write and collect all the text that is part of the book. In the formatting phase, you decide what the book will look like. These are very different actions. In the first phase, you need to format the text according to the structure of the book, not according to what you want it to look like. You dont tell Word that you want the text under the picture to be centered and bold, you tell Word that this piece of text is a caption, by applying the Caption style. In the second phase, you tell Word what you want a caption to look like, by defining the Caption style. As long as the book is formatted according to the role each piece of text plays, it is very easy to change your mind about what you want a caption, or a heading, or a footnote, to look like. Formatting according to structure allows you to implement the final touches very easily. When the thesis czars demand 12pt footnotes, not 10pt, it only takes you a few seconds to change the Footnote style to 12pt. When the publisher asks you to use underline instead of italics, it only takes you a few seconds to change the Emphasis style. Templates hold sets of style definitions. Templates also hold layout instructions, such as margin size and the location of page numbers. As long as all of the text is formatted according to structure, you can simply change the template you are using and redo the look of your entire manuscript in just a few seconds. If you want to use one font for print and another for the web, you simply insert the same text into a Print Template and a Web Template, and voil, all the appearance changes are made for you. You should realize that Word is designed for user customization and if you are writing or editing long documents, it will definitely be worth the trouble to add your own keyboard shortcuts, create your own toolbars, and record the occasional macro. This page does not emphasize such tricks, but there is a section at the end to get you started customizing Word. This page also finishes off with links to additional resources. In particular, an article titled Bend Word to Your Will may be useful, as it is an even more extensive compilation of tips on using and customizing Word, many of them addressed to people who are doing long documents. Also realize that there are usually multiple ways to accomplish the same task in Word. If you are already well into the writing process, it is not too late to apply these suggestions. In fact, its easier to understand how styles and templates work if you already have a lot of text you can play around with, and its easier to design a template when you have a rough sense of the structure of your document. Just do a Save As TestFileName to protect your work in progress, and experiment to your hearts content. Experimentation is often the best way to learn to control Word. If you choose not to combine the chapters, you can and should still use most of these techniques. Basing each chapter on the same custom template and using styles will still be the best way to achieve consistent formatting. Word offers slightly more complex features that enable you to manage sequential page numbering and tables of contents, etc., across multiple files. Those tips are not so well documented, but you will find a few links below. This article is divided into a number of subsections. As the linked articles were usually written to answer specific questions, not designed to walk someone through the process of writing a book, you may find repetition, and you may find indirect answers that require you to apply what you learn and your understanding of Word to your particular situation. Mac users: articles written based on WinWord usually hold true for MacWord, but keyboard shortcuts often need to be translated; for references to Tools>Options, substitute Word>Preferences. Many of these links (any at http://word.mvps.org) will require you to hit refresh several times if you try to access them with Safari. If you are familiar with web design, using styles in Word instead of directly applied formatting is very similiar to using CSS, and is based on the same principle of separating content from presentation. Cascading styles in Word, however, refers to the ability for a style to be based on a different style and to inherit most of its properties from that style. Templates in Word are not nearly as powerful as templates in a program such as Dreamweaver or GoLiveonce the document has been created the link with the template is broken, and you can no longer update layout or text elements, as you can with web templates. You can still use the Word template to change style definitions, however, rather like a CSS stylesheet, but you have to consciously enable it.
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General Principles
How Word Thinks
This article has a brief discussion of how Word understands the composition of a document, which is very different from the way you might understand it. You should also realize that Word doesnt think in terms of pages. A somewhat more extended and less technical discussion of what that means may be found here. Though I know it may be hard to believe, the Help system can often be extremely helpful. There is a lot of information in the Help topics. It's often tricky to find the right topic, so you might have to try a few guesses, but Help pleasantly surprises me more often than not.
Working Efficiently
Word is supposedly set up to "help" the novice user. For anyone writing a book, you want to turn off most of Word's "helpful" features. In general, taking control of Word requires overriding many of its defaults. Setting Up Word Word has a number of features that let you quickly enter repetitive material, whether that material consists of plain text abbreviations for long words, accented or formatted text, tables, graphics, or fields. Exploiting AutoCorrect Using AutoText When you are in composition mode, try to keep your hands on the keyboard as much as possible. This might mean you leave layout and some formatting for the editing process, rather than the composing process. Useful Keyboard Shortcuts Creating a Keyboard Shortcut
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however, set Word to automatically create backups, which will keep a copy of the last saved version of the file. In Tools>Options>Save, check the box for always create backup copy. You should also try to train your fingers to hit Ctrl-S to save whenever they are not busy. My personal preference is to do a File>Save As FileName# at the beginning of every major editing session, whether Im editing for textual content or for format. Avoid using Words Version feature, as it has been linked to corruption. You should also set up a good backup strategy. If your document does become corrupted, see these links: WinWord versions MacWord versions Section breaks hold a great deal of information about the document, and can sometimes corrupt. Many experts will advise you to avoid section breaks. As long as these are used for good reason (beginning a chapter with "different first page header/footer, a change in page orientation or number of columns), they should be acceptable. You can use StyleRef fields to change the text of a header/footer without section breaks, as detailed in this article.
Basic Techniques
Styles
Styles are collections of formatting instructions that let you change the formatting of large amounts of text with just a few simple steps. If you select all your text, then go up to the toolbar and change it from 10pt to 12pt, that is called direct formatting, because you have directly applied formatting to the text. An alternative is style-based formatting. Styles deal with structure, not appearance. You assign styles to text depending on the role that text playschapter heading, footnote, block quotationnot depending on what you want that text to look like. You need to understand styles because Word thinks in terms of styles, and if you use direct formatting in a book, Word will fight you on every single page. You might compare it to giving a person directions in Italian when that person speaks Spanish. An introduction to styles Why use Word's built-in heading styles? How to save yourself hours by using Outline View properly Why does text change format when I copy it into another document? How to Apply A Style How to Modify A Style How styles in Word cascade What is the difference between the Normal and Body Text styles? Default Paragraph Font Explained One neat trick: you can use Find & Replace to easily change styles throughout a document. [Article forthcoming]
Templates
Custom templates let you set the layout you want, and can hold a set of custom styles so that Heading 1 in
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the Web version of your book does not look the same as Heading 1 in the print version of your book. Creating a Template - The Basics (Part I) Creating a Template (Part II) If you start by creating a custom template for your book, you will invariably find that you keep changing the style definitions and what the layout looks like. Its very easy to switch templates by using Insert>File to insert the book into a new doc based on a different template, or to attach a different template through Tools>Templates and Add-ins. If you attach a template, all it will do is update the styles. If you have changed layout elements such as margins, or text in the header/footer, you need to use Insert>File. Insert>File has the additional benefit of creating another backup. What Happens When You Attach a Template
Sections
As said above, section breaks between your chapters let you mimic many of the things that you thought you needed separate files to accomplish. You can have different headers and footers, you can restart page numbering, you can restart footnote numbering, etc. However, if possible, you should avoid section breaks. The more section breaks a document has, the more complex it is, and the more chances for corruption. Making the most of headers and footers How to set up a document with front matter numbered separately Working with sections How is it possible to copy an entire document into another document without bringing across the header and footer? Where section breaks are necessary, it may be easier to leave adding them until the end. If you know what you want as the end result, you can take advantage of the fact that Word links sections by default, but once you have unlinked the headers and footers, you may find you need to repeat actions as you change what you want. You can use StyleRef fields to change the text of a header/footer without section breaks, as detailed toward the end of this article. More Useful StyleRef Tricks
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You can also use the Browse Object to easily navigate to specific items in your document.
Special Cases
Numbering
Are you using outline numbering in your book? For example: Chapter 3 has a section 3.1 then a subsection 3.1.1. You need to set up outline numbering. Numbering in Word can be extremely complicated, but follow these directions for an unbreakable system. Create Numbered Headings Number Headings and Figures in Appendixes If all you want is a chapter number in the header and table of contents, see here. Word's Numbering Explained Page Numbering in Word
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Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents Creating an Index in Word How can I automatically generate an index in Word? How to create a glossary
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collaborators to follow these suggestions. See Understanding Your Document for some tips to make the process easier, as well as Customizing Word. Also see this more detailed Advice from a Professional on coordinating multiple authors and dealing with multiple levels of review. One exception: you may want to use templates to share macros and custom toolbars with collaborators. If you are sending camera-ready copy to a professional printer, see here for a procedure to create crop marks.
Master Documents
Why Master Documents corrupt How to recover a Master Document With care, long document professionals who are expert in their use of Word manage to use Master Documents safely, particularly in more recent versions. Here are some instructions. Steve Hudson (aka Word Heretic) on how to make Master Documents work safely
More Information
Customizing Word
The Word MVP FAQ site has an entire section on Customizing Word, but these three articles are the most frequently useful. How to assign a command or a macro to a toolbar How to assign a command or a macro to a keyboard shortcut Creating a macro with no programming experience using the recorder Don't forget about the Tools>Customize dialogthere are far more predefined commands in that dialog than there are on the menus or common toolbars, and you can set up Word to access them quickly.
Additional Resources
Check out the Word MVP FAQ site, of course, but it almost has too much information to easily find what you need. (What's an MVP?) Here are some sites that are likely to be most useful with reference to long documents: The Editorium is directed toward those who edit, write, or typeset in MS Word, and its free newsletter has a wealth of useful tips. You can read the current and back issues online. MVP Suzanne S. Barnhills site (author of many of the articles linked above, she also provided much of
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the advice in the text). MVP Shauna Kellys site (author of many of the articles linked above). MVP Stephanie Krieger's blog concentrates on long and complex documents. MVP Margaret Aldis has some articles that may be useful. MVP Clive Huggans Bend Word to Your Will is a massive, dictionary-style compilation of tips and tricks for using Word, written especially with reference to MacWord. Microsoft also provides training on their Office Online site. In particular, users of Office 2003 can take online tutorials, including some on headers and footers, and Tables of Contents.
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