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CEO, Lasotell Pty Ltd.
http://www.lasotell.com.au
Have you been losing too much time to the apparent vagaries of
Word's list numbering? This problem is easily managed at an
organisational level using a Word template, and it can save
several work days of effort per week in a busy office.
The problem is well known: all of a sudden the number streams
go on a holiday and they refuse to behave in a rational manner.
The problem arises because Microsoft wanted people to easily
use the same numbers and bullets created on one PC when editing
the file on another PC. Microsoft implemented bullets and
numbering by storing formatting information for the bullet and
number streams in the Registry of the PC. When you open a file,
the Registry is updated with the formatting information and
everything works fine until you either exceed a secret, err…
predetermined number of slots in the Registry. Or you overwrite
slots you have already used in your documents. The laborious
fix is to go to each item in the Bullets and Numbering gallery,
press the Reset button, and then reformat every list in the
file. The smart fix is to use a template and distribute that
template across the whole company to prevent the problem in the
first place.
In our organisation, we have two standard templates for all
draft work. One template has a full-width text line, and the
other template has a one-inch left indent. (The publishing
people apply a publishing template for the final version of the
deliverable.) Each template has a range of predetermined styles
and a toolbar with a button for each style so with only one
click users can apply the style. The toolbar also includes a
default table formatter, table and figure captions, and a
graphic placeholder style. The secret to the success is a
Visual Basic script that defines all the relevant styles and,
most important, all the number streams used in all the
predefined list styles. When the templates are put on a new
machine for the first time, the full-width template is opened
and an Initialise script is run on the PC. From that point on,
files from any PC that have been similarly initialised can be
swapped and inserted without risk of number stream corruption.
If someone needs to use the narrow-width template, they execute
the Initialise script from that template, and away they go.
If files are received from third parties that are not using one
of the standard templates, the file is opened, one of the
standards attached (using the Automatically Update Files
setting), and resaved before making any attempt to edit the
file. This procedure works 98% of the time. In the rare case
that the procedure doesn't work, the Template User Guide
describes one or two other procedures to fix the problem. Once
in every four or five work months of effort one file will seem
to work only with the old hard slog procedure. Typically, the
author of this file has neither understood nor used styles in a
sensible manner, and the file is a nightmare to begin with. Our
publications people fix those files.
The basic rules distributed with the template are quite simple.
- Thou shalt use only the preset styles on the toolbar when
creating a deliverable document—with one exception (see rule
2).
- If thou absolutely must make one or more variant styles, thou
shalt add thine initials to the prefix or suffix of the new
style name.
- If the number streams go on holiday, thou shalt open a new
document based on this template and press the Initialise
button. When initialisation is finished, close and discard
the un-named file. Return to the original file and reapply
the default style again. If that procedure does not work,
thou shalt consult the Template User Guide for further
options (or call the publishing group).
This approach has eliminated number list problems and the
associated loss of time from our organisation. On the rare
occasion something does go wrong, someone typically has been
using the full-width template and then decides to use the
narrow-width template but forgets to re-initialise the PC with
the different template. When they click on an alpha list style,
for example, the list appears at the same position as in the
wide template. Re-initialising with the narrow template
provides the instant fix, and reapplying the style causes that
list (and all other numbered and bulleted lists) to appear at
the correct position from that moment on. As an additional
benefit, because all files are created with the same set of
named styles, the publications people changing the deliverable
version of the file to a completely new format by attaching a
different template is a trivial matter.
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