Getting it Right, Part One: Microsoft Word

This blog is going to be in two parts. Whether or not I successfully join the two parts together at their junction, well, that remains to be seen. Like hanging cabinets (long story), that can prove trickier than it seems at first.

I read a lot of books about Microsoft Office. I can say with absolute, unwavering confidence that the number is in double digits. It's probably pretty close to my age. While I spent three and a half years in the Office training trenches, I obsessed with the mission of learning it all, of slaking the unquenchable thirst for Office knowledge and understanding.

I just finished reading a book by a guy called A.J. Jacobs titled The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. This guy read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. As in, all 32 volumes.

I know exactly how he feels.

But I fear Jacobs and I both suffer from the same problem in our quest - we may be gaining knowledge, but really lacking in understanding. In both of our bookwormish quests to fill our brains with really great tidbits of trivia, I fear there was there missing a larger understanding of the why and wherefore.

I quote David Weinberger: "Knowledge without understanding is like, well, information."

So what I want to do in the second part of this blog is shed some light on where each of the five core Office applications fit into the organizational and business scheme of things, and how to best succeed with each one. I'll do them in my own chronological order, as in, how I learned them. To save both my fingers and my readers' eyes, I'll address one application per blog. Today's discourse is going to be my least favorite of the five: Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Word is, above all other things, a word processor.

Duh.

Yeah, I know. But I have to make this overly obvious finding from the Institute of Duh first so I can talk meaningfully about what Word is and what Word isn't.
Word is:

• An effective tool for letters, memos, and reports
• A useful way to manage large, complex documents
• One of the more effective ways to send out a mass mailing (marketing letter, holiday card, etc.)

Word is not:

• A page layout or publishing application. For anything more complex than a company newsletter, I personally think Word is the pits.
• A calculation application. I kid you not, I used to get all kinds of questions about how to do calculations in tables, use of Equation Editor, and how to do charts. In one word: Excel.
• A web design studio. I know, Word has this oft ballyhooed feature called "Save as Web Page." I implore you not to use it for that. The code it produces is horrifically unwieldy.

Now, about how to succeed with Word. There are a couple of best practices that we should all keep in mind. I certainly didn't invent any of these. I just try to pass on what I've learned from the trenches:

• Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Anything worth doing well is worth making a template out of.
• As long as you're going to have a template, make sure to embed styles into that template. If nothing else, change the Normal style to something more interesting than TIMES NEW ROMAN 12, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
• Use styles instead of local formatting. You'll thank me later.
• Eschew the use of Format Painter. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
• If you have templates for the whole group, make good and sure to go to Tools->Options->File Locations, and point your "group templates" to a shared, network directory.
• If you want to kick it up a notch, export the following registry key:
  Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\General\SharedTemplates
  (in my case, it's 10.0, because I use Office XP; 2000 would be 9, 2003 would be 11.)
• Kick it up another notch and have your administrator "push" that key to everyone in your office, so that everyone has their Group Templates set to that specified directory.
• Use AutoCorrect to your advantage. I would very highly recommend getting rid of "Automatically capitalize first letter of sentences," ditto table cells. I would recommend adding entries of your own for your initials, your company name, and any industry lingo you use often.
• Again, if you want to share that information, ask your administrator's assistance in "pushing" out MSO1033.acl, which is usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\ ; that's your AutoCorrect entries.
• Don't trust Normal.DOT further than you can throw it. If your Word starts acting weird, delete NORMAL.DOT. You can hunt it down at C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\.
• Add industry terms, lingo, and proper names to your custom dictionary. When you get the dreaded red squiggly, right-click on the word and choose "Add to Dictionary."
• In answer to your next question, the file is called "CUSTOM.DIC," and it's C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof\.
• If you're thinking of putting one person in charge of adding all the words to the custom dictionary, take heart - this is actually a file you can open and modify. So if you work in a field that has a fair amount of industry-specific terms (science, medicine, law), you might get one of your fast-fingered colleagues to create a base custom dictionary for the office.
• Remember, though, that Spell Check doesn't check for word misuse - if you say, "Linda excepted the job offer," when you should have said "Linda accepted the job offer," Word won't nail you.
• Now the good news - words you add to Spell Check are not the exclusive domain of Word. What you add in Word's spell check carries over to the other four applications, plus Project.
• Turn off Grammar Check. I, for one, think that it does litle more than give a false sense of security as to the readability of your document. This is a time to have someone just read the document, and look for consistency of voice, tone, and style.

In short, my dear readers, I would ask you to remember that Word operates on the principle of "Type first, format later." Your best bet is to get all your text down on the page, then go back and apply styles appropriately. Realize that if you can't get Word to listen to your formatting requests, you can always highlight the text, and then hit SHIFT+CTRL+N. That will set the text back to "normal."

In my next blog, I'll take on the biggest of all the beasts: Excel. Until then, be well.

Professional Looking Word Documents

I've seen a lot of Word documents in the course of my professional existence.

Problem is, most of them are poorly done. Some of the major mistakes I see:

1. Misspellings
2. Misused words, malapropisms, and inappropriate tenses ("the bird flapped it's wings" is incorrect; the correct phrasing is "the bird flapped its wings"; "disinterested" means impartial, not that you don't care)
3. Incorrect page numbers
4. Missing pages
5. Inconsistent use of fonts, sizes, and markup

The thing I find really puzzling is that most of these are so easily avoided.

So I'd like to offer a couple of best practices to make long documents really work in Microsoft Word. Some of them will sound like findings straight from the University of Duh, while, hopefully, others will be from the University of Aha!

1. Use styles consistently for your headers. Use at least two levels - the first level is the chapter name, the second level is the sub-topic under the chapter. Longer documents may require a third or fourth level of heading. You make the call - does the document justify it? I've done training for federal government and private sector organizations dealing with some fairly complex regulatory information, and four levels of header is not unheard of. Look at your subject matter.
2. Make an absolute religion out of using sections. Make your title page one section, your TOC another section, and each chapter in your document its own section. If you have an index (which you really should), make that its own section.
3. As mentioned in #2, you should have a TOC, an index, and a title page.
4. In the header for Chapter 1, go to View->Header and Footer. Then, go to Format->Borders and Shading. Put a border on the bottom, and apply it to the paragraph. Make the header contain the chapter title. In Chapter 2, and each successive chapter, go to View->Header and Footer. Click on the button that says "Same as Previous" to break the link between Chapter 2 and the previous section. The good news is that the border stays, but the chapter name can be different for each chapter.
5. In the footer, just keep the page number. Let that be consistent throughout the document, with the exception of the TOC and the title page. If you want, you can have the TOC and any other supplementary information (acknowledgements, copyright information, stuff like that) be all one section, and have the page numbering be Roman (i, ii, iii) instead of Arabic (1,2,3).
6. I would recommend using Next Page section breaks instead of Odd Page or Even Page section breaks. Odd and Even Page section breaks really only work if you're willing to have the page be COMPLETELY blank, devoid even of a page number. If you want a blank page at the end with the header and footer information, I'd use page breaks, rather than odd or even page section breaks; that way, I have more control over the document.
7. Indexes are a good idea if the reader is going to use your document primarily to look for specific terms, rather than read through a concept. If that's the case, a well-developed index will save your reader hours of time. Granted, it'll take us writers some time, but so what? We're here to serve the needs of our readers. End of discussion.
8. Small thing, but one that annoys the living daylights out of me: If you're going to use images (figures, illustrations, photos, etc) make sure they're high quality. Nothing says "I don't care what you think, Thou Reader" (thank you Walt Whitman) like a crappy image you downloaded off of someone's website and then (gasp!) enlarged. Just don't do it. Don't strain your readers eyes that way, and don't destroy your professional credibility in the first place. Get a good source image you can downsample, and go from there.
9. As far as images go, one other point - ClipArt and WordArt rarely if ever look professional and clean. You're better off not risking it.
10. Keep your markup to a minimum. Use bold and italics sparingly. Don't use sparkle text at all. Don't ever use underline, unless it's to reference a website.

Remember, above all, that your document is for the reader. Make it work for them, not for you. That's priority #1.