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Author Topic: Writing in MSWord problem
Tiergan
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Sort of a strange question for you all.

I use Word 2000 and when I write, the “style” window next to the font says “normal”. I do most of my first draft in Courier 12, 1 inch margins as that will give the 250 printed words a page, very easy to keep a rhythm going. After first edit I change to TNR just as its easier for me to read and makes different drafts noticable instantly.

My problem lies in sometimes when editing I notice that the “style” window for some lines changes to “body text indent.” Anyone know why or what I did to make that happen?

This really effects pasting a portion in the body of an email, it changes everything, some paragraphs are indented, some aren’t.

Should I even be writing with “normal” in the “style” window or is there a better way to enter my manuscript.

Open to any and all help.


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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I know we have some people here with MS Word experience, and I hope they have an answer for this question.
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TaleSpinner
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Word is extremely powerful in formatting documents, but it can be tough if you misuse or misunderstand it.

Word enables you to associate different formats with different paragraphs. For example, you could have a normal para in Courier 12pt, left justified, and a heading para in Courier 14pt bold, centred. To avoid manually formatting each paragraph you preset para formats and give them names. They're called "styles" and you can find the details in the Help pages--search for "style". It's not a trivial feature to learn about.

The style feature has an option whereby if you change a style, it automatically changes all paras that use that style to the new one. (It can be switched off, but you have to understand styles to do it.) Sounds to me like you've accidentally invoked it when changing formats.

"normal" is the default para style. It will use that automatically if you do nothing, so you don't get a choice--either use "normal" or learn how to use the formatting features. The question really is, do you want to learn Word?

The formatting is held in the Word document. If you copy and paste it into an e-mail, you'll generally lose it--although if you use MS Outlook, while some or all of it will be retained, if the recipient uses a different e-mail reader their mileage will vary.

Hope this helps,
Pat

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited April 11, 2008).]


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debhoag
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Hey, Talespinner!

Invoke is the right word. Talespinner gave you the high-tech cover-up version, but reality is that there are little imps in there that change everything when you least expect it, just to drive you crazy. I suggest lighting three red candles by the light of the full moon,while standing on your head. For $1 I'll send you the exorcism chant that goes with it. Jeez! Do I have to explain everything?


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TaleSpinner
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Hey Deb!

Imps? I thought they were gremlins. It's true I often feel a need for three candles and a full moon--but I can't stand on my head. So I cuss instead. Looooooong and LOUD. Usually works too!

Cheers,
Pat


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KayTi
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What? No ritual sacrifice to the MS Word gods? Have I been slaughtering all those goats and squirrels for no reason?

(this is really much funnier if you know I'm a vegetarian...) LOL

To be serious for a moment, Tiergan, I don't use MS Word 2000, but I think Talespinner's got a point there that you're probably inadvertently switching styles - but probably the style switch happens between MS Word 2000 and whatever text editor your email program uses. Outlook uses MS Word by default, so if you don't currently have Outlook, that might be one option, but again as Talespinner points out, your recipient might still have the issue.

You can also highlight the ENTIRE document, and manually select the style you want (I believe. Again, I'm not on Word 2k, I'm on 2003) To select the entire document, move your mouse to the left side of the window until the arrow changes from pointing toward the left to pointing toward the right. Hold down the control key and click. Your whole document (all headers, footers, special parts of the doc, everything is included) is now selected. If you now choose a style, it will apply to EVERYTHING. That may help. Or it may be as useless as a ritual sacrifice. LOL

Good luck!


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debhoag
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you're making me feel better, Kayti. I was going to mention the live chicken, but thought it would be in poor taste (no pun intended, vegadarlin')
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TaleSpinner
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I've had a love-hate relationship with Word ever since it was white text on a blue background on MS-DOS. Then, it was quite primitive and I've been able to learn it slowly over the years, mastering each feature I've deemed useful as it arrives.

The thing that drives me crazy about it is the way it automagically does things for you, without asking permission and without allowing you to tell it, "Do what I say not what you think I want."

I've seen several discussions about selecting the best word processor, and most people seem to settle upon Word, because of its power, the fact that almost everyone has it, and it's easy to exchange marked up drafts.

Word today is an enormous thing and must be daunting to learn. Like most help systems I suspect Word's is more useful when you know how Word works than when you don't. I'd suggest visiting Borders or Waterstones for one of those huge fat tutorial books on Word and dedicating an afternoon or two to figuring it out. (Skip the features you don't need.) This might sound like a long time, but a writer needs decent tools to work with and for most of us the days of pen and paper are long gone. A bottle of decent malt whisky or whatever tickles your fancy might help during this exercise.

Cheers (hic)
Pat

p.s. Does the chicken work instead of the standing on one's head?

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited April 12, 2008).]


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darklight
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Better still, TaleSpinner, ask a child, that usually does the trick. I tend to ask my daughter if I have problem.

But yes, Word, I have discovered over the years, does odd things to text without being given permission. I've had to retype whole pages before because Word has altered the formatting and I couldn't figure how to change it back.


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Tiergan
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Thank you all for the advice.

After the kids went to sleep I tried the candles last night, but my wife got the wrong idea(well lets just say another idea). Not that I’m complaining you know, but when the chickens came out she freaked.


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Corky
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quote:
I've had to retype whole pages before because Word has altered the formatting and I couldn't figure how to change it back.

What I usually do when Word does that is cut and paste the offensive text into a Wordpad text document and make sure I've saved it as text (by closing the Wordpad document). Then I open it again and cut and paste it back into Word.

If that doesn't help, THEN I retype it.


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debhoag
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I'm old. When the chickens come out, chuck just goes in another room and watches TV for a while.
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TaleSpinner
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Another thing. If you do a search for "Word" of Hatrack Open Discussions there have been several useful threads on it, especially one about not putting your whole novel into one file because sooner or later Word will trash it beyond the reach of any number of red candles, full moons and headless chickens.

Hope this helps,
Pat


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Cheyne
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I've never heard that one before. How big is too big? I have 40k in one file and while i have backed it up several times and places when can i expect the word gremlins to attack?
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KayTi
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Cheye - the thing you should do is periodically copy/paste the text into another file, or copy/paste into an email, something like that. It's not just a matter of having a copy of the physical file, sometimes the file itself becomes corrupt.
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Cheyne
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Kayti-Not to appear too dense, but...
Did you mean to say that I should cut and paste the whole 40k into a brand new word file from time to time, to avoid corruption?

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Lynda
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The "copy/paste" thing (copying from Word and pasting in Notepad or any plain text program) strips the programming from the file, so you get rid of the "extras" that Word is CONVINCED you want in there. Word gets a lot of bad words from me on a regular basis, but so far, it seems to be the best there is. Sad, that.
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TaleSpinner
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Here's the thread about Word corrupting long files.

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/004481.html

The gist of it is, if the work is over 200 pages split it into several files because sooner or later Word will blow up--and previous backups may also become corrupt.

Simplest thing to do might be one chapter per file.

Cheers,
Pat


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Cheyne
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Thanks, Pat.
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Tiergan
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The advice keeps coming. Now I am scared more than ever. I do keep the chapters seperate at first but then join by section in the next draft. THanks for all the advice.

Todd


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TaleSpinner
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quote:
Now I am scared more than ever.

It's like any tool, helpful or dangerous depending on how you use it, and how well you understand it. With a chainsaw you can fell a tree or cut off one of your legs. Or the petrol tank can explode and burn your forest down.

Nobel invented dynamite to help miners make large holes in the ground, and was dismayed to see it used for bombs and wars--hence the Nobel Prizes.

Cheerfully,
Pat


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Corky
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HELP! I'm having trouble with a formatting problem in MS Word.

I type dictation for this woman who is writing her memoirs, and I do it on her computer which has MS Word. She is old, so she has me use single-spaced 20-point Times New Roman, and it's enlarged so she can see it on the screen as I type.

Today, when I was moving some stuff around between some of the documents (chapters), some of the paragraphs went to double-spaced lines and 10-point font. If I changed the font size back to 20-point, it stayed double-spaced, and I could not figure out how to get it to go back to single-spaced lines.

Anyone have ANY ideas? Please?


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extrinsic
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Cutting and pasting excerpts as I know it in an MS Word document reverts to the default document template format. A quick work around to restore the line spacing would select all, the entire document, then set the line spacing for the entire document. In the long run, as an alternative, setting up a document template with all the formating as the client prefers would obviate the cut, copy, paste problem. Then when opening a new document select that template and the problem shouldn't recur.
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Betsy Hammer
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For next time: When you paste something into another document, a little icon that looks like a clip board shows up at the bottom of what you've pasted. Click it. Select "Match Destination Formatting." That should make it look like what you've already got there.

Another thing to try, since you already pasted a bunch of stuff, is to "Remove Space After Paragraph." This option is in the same drop down as the line spacing options. (I'm assuming that the line spacing options aren't solving your problems, right?)

(Warnings: I'm no expert. I use the 2007 version.)


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Corky
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Thanks. I think that did it.

I'll remember to set the format of each document/chapter before I start typing.


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rstegman
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The talk of chickens is gets me breathing heavy,

I am on a vegitarian diet, the hard part is catching them....


One thing you can do, is safe your files as Text files, rather than as a Word file. This will strip out the code from the text. There are two kinds of text it can be saved to, I am not sure which terms yours uses. One is where all that is saved is the hard returns and tabs. The other places hard returns at the end of each line on the page. Try to find the first one.
A couple test save files now will help when you are runing into problems.

80% of my writing is in note pad or word pad, simply because I am not fighting codes.
I love wordperfect because it does not change codes on you and seams to me to be logical. Of course, I started with wordperfect5.1, blue screen with white letters. I loved it so much that when I found one of my old installation disks, I added it to my windows 2000 computer.


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Corky
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I love Wordperfect, too, but when you have both of them on the same computer, there seems to be some kind of resource conflict that MS Word, being nastier, usually wins.
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rstegman
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The big advantage that I have found with WORDPERFECT, that I have not found in WORD, is a command called REVEAL CODES.

With this command, you can cause hidden underlying codes to appear, and you can delete the codes. This is a big advantage when you copy and paste something into your document, or when your document does something really strange. You can find out why it happens. If you hit some key combination accidentally, you can see what the code is and know how to get that effect on purpose.

Usually, I have the biggest problems with codes, which is why I use notepad.

OPEN OFFICE is pretty much designed around word. I don't seem to have as much problems with it as the few times I have played with word. It saves is most all word formats, better at it than wordperfect.

Edited to say that Word Perfect's macros are external. That is an advantage when someone sends you something and it really does something strange. There are no Wordperfect viruses. No one cares to go through the effort to send a macro to do harm as they have to get the person to run it manually.

[This message has been edited by rstegman (edited September 18, 2009).]


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