Ex-WordPerfect Users
Jerry Litt
unlearn WordPerfect and am having a terrible time. How did those of
you who made this switch handle it? My biggest problem is formatting
and rearranging. I am flabbergasted when I look at the Reveal Codes in
WordPerfect for a converted Word document.
Can someone suggest a book or some way of understanding the system
that Word uses?
Thanks
Jerry Litt
jl...@capedcod.net
Bill Coan
I'm not a former WordPerfect user but I'll weigh in with a few observations
anyway.
Word documents are based on templates. When you create a new document, the
new document takes on the page margins, paragraph styles, and content of the
underlying template. (If you don't explicitly select some other template,
your new document will be based on Word's default template, which is called
normal.dot.)
Most connections between a document and its template are broken immediately
after the document is created, so you can make changes to the template
without affecting existing documents and vice versa. For example, the
template's page margins and content have no effect on existing documents;
these settings affect new documents only. Changes in paragraph styles and
character styles can have an effect on existing documents in special
circumstances; but by default they affect new documents only.
PAGE MARGINS AND HEADER/FOOTER DISTANCES
In its default configuration (as shipped by Microsoft) normal.dot has top
and bottom margins of one inch and left and right margins of 1.25 inches. On
a letter-size sheet, this leaves an area six inches wide and nine inches
tall for the body of the page. If you create a new document and immediately
start typing, you're typing into this area (the body of the page).
In normal.dot's default configuration, the distance from the top edge of the
page to the top of the header is set to 0.5 inches. This means you can
create a header up to 0.5 inches tall and it will still fit in the top
margin of the page (which, recall, is one inch) without affecting the body
of the page. (If you create a taller header, so that it extends downward
past the top margin, into the body of the page, Word will shrink the body of
the page to accommodate the height of the header. In effect, this means the
top margin setting is a minimum setting; the body of the page will start at
LEAST one inch down from the top of the page. If you put in a four-inch tall
header, the body of the page will start below that.)
The distance from the bottom edge of the page to the bottom of the footer is
set to 0.5 inches, too. The footer grows upward. This means you can create a
footer up to 0.5 inches tall and it will still fit in the bottom margin of
the page without affecting the body of the page. But if you create a taller
footer, so that it extends upward past the bottom margin, into the body of
the page, Word will shrink the body of the page to accommodate the height of
the footer. In effect, this means the bottom margin setting is a minimum
setting; the body of the page will start at LEAST one inch up from the
bottom of the page. If you put in a four-inch tall footer, the body of the
page will start above that.
Interestingly, when you're entering text into the body of a page, you can't
enter text into the header or footer. Likewise, when you're entering text
into the header or footer, you can't enter text into the body of the page.
So you have to switch the cursor back and forth. In a new document, which
usually has nothing in the header or footer, you have to select Header and
Footer on the View menu in order to switch the cursor back and forth. After
you place some text into a header or footer, however, you can double-click
the header or footer to switch the cursor to that area and double-click the
body of the page to switch the cursor back. (This assumes that you're in
Page Layout view. In Normal view, you must always rely on a menu command to
switch the cursor back and forth.)
If you don't like normal.dot's page margins or the header and footer
distance settings, you can open normal.dot and use the Page Layout command
on the File menu to change them. Or you can open a document that happens to
be based on normal.dot and use the Page Layout command and then simply click
the Default... button in the Page Layout dialog box.
PARAGRAPH ATTRIBUTES
In Word, paragraphs flow between the margins of the page. That is, the first
paragraph starts at the top of the page at the left margin and flows until
it hits the right margin at which point it wraps back to the left margin and
continues on in this fashion until the end of the paragraph is reached.
(Actually, a paragraph can be indented from the left and/or right, in which
case it may not flow all the way to the page margins.)
A paragraph has a surprising number of attributes. To see them, choose the
Paragraph command on the Format menu. They include alignment, indentation,
and spacing attributes plus the following "pagination" attributes:
window/orphan control, keep together, keep with next, and page break before.
It's easy enough to experiment with these attributes to see what affect each
has on the appearance of the paragraph.
The biggest surprise may be this: Paragraph attributes apply to the entire
paragraph. If you choose the Paragraph command while the cursor is flashing
in a particular paragraph, only that paragraph (but ALL of it, not just part
of it) will take on the selected attributes. If you choose the command while
two or more paragraphs are selected, all selected paragarphs, including
those that are only partially selected, will take on the selected
attributes.
Spacing attributes include space before and space after. Think about this!
No need to add hard returns before or after a paragraph in order to create
space between paragraphs. Simply set the spacing attributes to suit your
purposes. (This sounds like it would be a lot harder than simply adding a
few hard returns but don't decide for sure until you read the topic after
this one.)
When line spacing is set to Single, Word adjusts the line spacing based on
the size characters that you type. If you change a single character to a
larger point size, Word will adjust the spacing of the line to accommodate
that character. Likewise, if you insert an inline graphic (one that acts
like a character, in that it maintains its position between the preceding
and succeeding characters), Word will adjust the spacing of the line to
accommodate the graphic.
When line spacing is set to an explicit value (say, 12 points), Word doesn't
adjust the line spacing. Characters or graphics that are too tall to fit in
this space will be truncated to fit.
PARAGRAPH STYLES
Applying a paragraph attribute might seem unnecessarily clumsy in Word but
after you understand the philosophy behind Word's approach, you begin to
appreciate the thinking that went into it. Consider:
If you want a paragraph to be right-justified, with 12 points of space
before it, with 18-point line spacing, there's no doubt about it: you'll
need to issue a hot-key command for each of these attributes (three commands
in all) or else you're going to have to open the Format Paragraph dialog box
and click three times to select these attributes. That's the bad news.
The good news is that never again will you have to issue three commands in
order to apply these attributes to another paragraph. Never! Instead,
immediately after setting up your first paragraph this way, you can choose
Format Style and assign a name to this collection of attributes. The
collection of attributes thereby becomes a style. In this case, you might
call this style "Peculiar." Fine! The next time you want a paragraph to be
right-justified, with 12 points of space before it, with 18-point line
spacing, you'll choose Format Style and select Peculiar. Better yet, simply
pull down the Style list on the Formatting toolbar and select Peculiar. No
need to view a dialog box at all.
After applying a style (i.e., a collection of attributes) to a paragraph,
you might wonder how in the world you can tell what those attributes are,
especially since you don't have a reveal codes command to rely on. Well,
there are several ways. First, you can simply look at the paragraph! If it's
right justified, you'll know it. If it has 12 points of space before it,
you'll see it. If it has 18-point line spacing, you'll see that, too.
Second, you can position the cursor in the paragraph and look at the Style
list on the Formatting toolbar. If your paragraph has been styled with the
Peculiar style, you'll see Peculiar listed in the Style list. Third, you can
position the cursor in the paragraph and choose Paragraph on the Format
menu. This brings up a dialog box that shows the current setting of all
attributes. Fourth, you can click the What's This? tool and then click the
paragraph. This brings up a help balloon that explains the formatting
applied to the paragraph and to the characters.
PARAGRAPH MARKS
Here's a truly surprising thing about paragraph marks: they store the
paragraph attributes for the entire paragraph. Copy a paragraph mark from
one paragraph and paste it at the end of a second paragraph and the second
will take on the attributes from the first! The paragraph attributes are
stored in the mark!
CONTENT
If a template contains two paragraphs of text in the body of the first page,
a document based on that template will start out with the same two
paragraphs of text. If a template contains a header and a footer, a document
based on that template will start out with the same header and footer.
SECTION ATTRIBUTES
Word documents are divided into sections. A new document typically has just
one section. (An exception would be a document based on a template that
contains two or more sections. Such a document would start out with the same
number of sections as its template.)
Each section of a document ends with a section break, just as each paragraph
ends with a paragraph mark. The only exception is the last section of the
document, which ends in a paragarph mark with no section break.
A section has a surprising number of attributes. Unfortunately, there isn't
a single dialog box that displays them all. Instead, they are scattered
among several dialog boxes.
Section attributes include the following:
Page size and orientation
Page margins
Header and footer distances
Types of headers and footers: primary alone; odd page and primary; first
page, primary, and odd page.
Starting page number
Number of columns
To see these attributes, place the cursor in the section you're interested
in, then choose the following commands, one at a time:
File|Page Layout
Insert|Page Numbers|Format...
Format Columns
SECTION BREAKS
Section breaks store section attributes in the same way that paragraph marks
store paragraph attributes. Copy a section break from one section and paste
it at the end of a second section and the second section will take on the
attributes from the first! The attributes are stored in the section break!
(The last paragraph mark in a document stores both paragraph attributes and
section attributes. Copy this paragraph mark to a different document and
you'll copy not only the paragraph attributes but the attributes of the last
document section as well. This can lead to unexpected results.)
AUTOTEXT and MACROS
In addition to providing a new document with page margins, paragraph styles,
and possibly some content, a template can provide access to powerful custom
features created by the user. These include autotext entries and macros.
Autotext entries are chunks of reusable content, which can range from as
little as a single word or drawing object or table to as much as an entire
document section. When you create an autotext entry (which is a piece of
cake) you choose which template to store it in. From then on, whenever
you're working on a document based on that template, you can insert the
autotext entry by choosing the Autotext command on the Insert menu.
Macros are series of commands that can be carried out with a single
keystroke or mouse click. You can record a series of commands or you can
launch the vba editor and enter a series of command manually. The resulting
macro can be assigned to a key or key combination or to a toolbar button or
to a menu command. When you create a macro, you choose which template to
store it in. From then on, whenever you're working on a document based on
that template, you can run the macro by pressing the assigned key or key
combination or by clicking the assigned toolbar button or menu command.
CREATING A TEMPLATE
You can save a document as a template simply by choosing Word Template in
the File|Save dialog box. Or you can create a new template based on some
other template by choosing File|New|Template...
I realize I've told you more than you may have wanted to know. I also
realize that I haven't directly answered your question. Still, I hope that
the information provided here helps you begin to see how a Word user thinks
about documents, templates, and formatting.
--
Bill Coan
Microsoft Word MVP
Neenah, Wisconsin USA
http://www.wordmacros.com
Jerry Litt wrote in message ...
Suzanne S. Barnhill
appreciate how brilliant it is. <g>)
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Bill Coan wrote in message <#BmY3N1b#GA.204@cppssbbsa03>...
Bill Coan
Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote in message ...
Howard Kaikow
good general book on the product to which you are moving and read it
straight thru. This will give you an overview of the new product. While
doing so, keep in mind the kinds of things you wanna do.
It does little good to lament on how much easier it was to do something in
WP or in Word.
A book often recommended for Word is the Que Special Edition Using Word 97
Platinum Edition (or a title similar to that).
John McGhie
The problem is the "paradigm shift" between Word and WP. Read what Bill
Coan sent you, three times, slowly.
This may help:
WordPerfect considers a document to be a "type stream". If you picture
WordPerfect sitting on the end of the printer cable, sending characters
one-by-one, and every now and again, inserting a COMMAND to change what the
printer is doing. For example, WP sends the commands for "Ariel" font and
"bold". It then expects the printer to print every character that way until
WP tells it to do something else (start a new line, for example).
So WP has this "concept" of a document as a stream of characters
interspersed with control codes. WP stores the document on disk pretty much
as you see it in Reveal Codes.
Word, on the other hand, sits above the document, looking down on it. It
considers the document to be a "container". Within this container, are more
containers, and within them, still more. Word sees a document as a set of
Chinese Eggs.
Into each of these containers, Word inserts objects. These objects can be
bits of text, or bits of pictures, or complete files created by other
applications. On each container, Word attaches a label describing the
contents. This label is the "property sheet" for the container.
To make a document in Word, you create containers, fill them, and manipulate
their properties to decide their position and appearance. For example, you
create a container called a "paragraph". Into it you place a string of text
like this sentence. Then you apply the properties "Font=Times New Roman",
"Size=12", "Face=Bold", "Language=US English", "Space before=12", "Line
height=1" etc etc etc... The properties of each container affect all the
items it contains, including all the other containers. For example, each
character is a container that can have a font, size, and colour, but it
inherits these character-level properties from the paragraph that contains
it unless you override them just for that character.
Regrettably, long ago, Microsoft decided that this mechanism was far too
complicated for us to understand, so they hid it from us. If you ever open
a Word document in a hexadecimal editor and have a look, you will soon
discover that they were right. A Word document internally is a maze of
pointers to the various containers, which appear in the file in a sequence
unrelated to the order in which they print.
After you have inwardly digested what Bill sent, I would make the following
suggestions for a long and happy life with Word:
1) Forget reveal codes. They are not useful in Word. If you need them,
click the "What's This?" button, and then click the text you are interested
in. That will show you most of the current properties.
2) What you see on the screen is what you are going to get. If the text on
the screen does not appear bold, then it does not have the bold property,
regardless of what you feel it "should" have :-)
3) As far as humanly possible, avoid direct formatting in Word. Word is
designed to run on Styles. Learn to use them. It is so much easier to get
one style correctly formatted than it is to get 174 paragraphs all looking
the same. Ignore the format painter: it's a problem looking for a place to
happen.
4) Do not accept Word the way it came out of the box. Customise the hell
out of it. That's why it was designed that way. Start with the toolbars:
piss off all the rubbish that comes on the standard toolbars and add your
favourite styles and tools in their place, so everything you need is only
one click away. Get into macros as soon as you can: there's no point in
fiddling around typing things you can simply assign to a mouse-click.
5) Learn to use a different template for each document type. That way, you
can make the template automatically set up all your styles, margins,
spelling languages etc for the particular type of document you are making.
Avoid basing documents on "Normal" template. You can never control the
contents of Normal template, on your computer or on anyone else's.
Documents attached to the Normal template will reformat themselves each time
they are opened or passed to a different machine.
6) Don't be tempted to customise Word to work like WP. You can, but it
will fight you every inch of the way if you do, and you will have a very
frustrating time of it.
7) Don't expect to read anything useful about Word in a paper manual. All
the information is in the Help. Suffer that damned paper-clip and learn to
use it: it's the fastest way to find anything. That's because there's too
much information and it updates too frequently to be published on paper. I
have found that anyone who has published a paper book about Word 97, for
example, either hasn't understood it, or has done it at such a trivial level
that it is not useful. Since I write books for a living, I can tell you
that it is just not possible to describe Word in less than 1,800 pages, and
it's just not possible to economically keep a book like that up-to-date.
8) Resign yourself to the fact that it will take six months of daily use to
really tame the brute, but once you have, you won't go back.
Hope this helps.
John McGhie <jo...@mcghie-information.com.au>
Consultant Technical Writer
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Melbourne, Australia (GMT +10 hrs) +61 (04) 1209 1410
Margaret Aldis
<jmc...@bigpond.com> writes
>The problem is the "paradigm shift" between Word and WP. Read what Bill
>Coan sent you, three times, slowly.
Between them, Bill and John have written something much more useful than
a 1800 page book, and something of relevance to a much wider group of
people than Ex-WordPerfect Users.
Could I suggest a repost, in all the NGs new (and wizened) Word users
tend to happen upon, with a change of Thread title ? :-)
--
Margaret Aldis, Syntagma, e-mail marg...@syntagma.demon.co.uk
"Civilisation advances by extending the number of important
operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle - they are
strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must
only be made at decisive moments." A N Whitehead
Bill Coan
We've been wondering where you've been. You're back just in time! Thanks for
a great message. You've given me a crystal -clear understanding of
WordPerfect's document architecture and added to my understanding of Word's
document structure.
--
Bill Coan
Microsoft Word MVP
Neenah, Wisconsin USA
http://www.wordmacros.com
John McGhie wrote in message ...
Terry Farrell
I'll second that too. I'll be using that again and again (but will ensure
that you get the credit for it). Thank you.
Terry
Bill Coan <bill...@wordmacros.com> wrote in message
news:#spybK2b#GA.262@cppssbbsa03...
Bill Coan
Thanks very much, Terry. I'm glad you found it useful and I appreciate you
taking the time to let me know.
The next time I update my website I'll include this thread, including John
McGhie's contributions (assuming he grants permission).
It occurs to me that the real question is, did any of this prove useful to
the person who posted the original question?
--
Bill Coan
Microsoft Word MVP
Neenah, Wisconsin USA
http://www.wordmacros.com
Terry Farrell wrote in message
<#Ad6zb$b#GA....@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com>...
Nick Doe
first-class advice that, although Jerry had no way of knowing it,
looking at the reveal codes of a document translated to WP from WORD has
to be about the worst way of figuring out how WORD works. It's sort of
like somebody familiar with algebra, but not geometry, trying to
understand geometry by using a machine to translate all those neat
diagrams into algebraic equations. As John says, you have to go back to
being a beginner again if you're learning one or the other, no matter
how proficient you are in one. When you become bilingual
(biprocessorial?) you can sometimes gain some valuable insights as to
what as going on, just as you can with say a geometric interpretation of
an algebraic equation, but that comes later.
Reading thro' Bill's admirably economical description of WORD makes me
regret that WORD never got around to introducing "section styles". As
someone who spends a lot of time editing documents generated by other
people, it sure would be nice to get all those globals (page margins,
etc.) settled by slapping on a section style. Not only are there the
Page Setup attributes to watch, but also those odds and ends in
Tools|Options|Compatibility (compatible with what?).
Thanks for the good "to be filed for future reference" material guys.
N.
--
Nick Doe
1787 El Verano Drive
RR1,S21,C32 Gabriola Island BC
Canada V0R 1X0
Phone: 1 (250) 247-7858
FAX: 1 (250) 247-7859
E-mail: nic...@island.net
DG Technical Documentation Specialists
(same address)
Nick Doe
Bill Coan
I like your idea of section styles. If this ever were implemented, it would
probably lead to another improvement that I'd like to see, namely, that all
section attributes be visible in a single dialog box, just as all paragraph
attributes are visible in the Format Paragraph dialog.
It doesn't bother me that the attributes are scattered all over the place
right now. Fine, if that helps new users. But why not give the rest of us a
convenient place to view/edit and conceptualize the attributes.
--
Bill Coan
Microsoft Word MVP
Neenah, Wisconsin USA
http://www.wordmacros.com
Nick Doe wrote in message <36F0244A...@island.net>...
Jerry Litt
particularly Bill Coan and John McGhie. I will try to follow the
reasoning and do my best to learn the system but it "ain't gonna be
easy". The thing that really bothers me the most, I guess, is that
WordPerfect did absolutely everything I ever needed , it was all
intuitive to me and I could learn and do new things quickly. It's the
rest of the world who apparently see something in Word that I cannot
at present fathom but we'll see.
Thanks again
Jerry
rich
rich
wrote:
> The thing that really bothers me the most, I guess, is that
>WordPerfect did absolutely everything I ever needed ,
Jerry,
Just curious as to why you would switch.
Regards,
-rich
Riverside, CA
ri...@usaserve.net
SKelly
I made the Great Switch nearly a year ago, simply because everyone else in
the world seemed to be using Word. I still loathe it. I suspect I always
will. But I do accept that, in fact, I must grudingly admit, if I really
have to, only because it's the weekend, Word can do all kinds of things that
WordPerfect couldn't do.
My suggestions, based on about 9 months of agony, are:
1. Don't translate your WP documents to Word or vice versa. The conversion
of all but the simplest of stuff isn't worth the pain. Continue to use WP
for your existing WP documents, and use Word for all your new documents. I
moved from WP5.1 for DOS. For what it's worth, I renamed a whole lot of my
WP documents with a .wp extension, and created a file type for them in
Windows so that they'll open automatically from Windows Explorer.
2. Paste the Coan and McGhie EMails on the wall over your computer and read
them daily for six months. Keep reading them, because It will take six
months to really learn the implications of what they say.
3. Read this newsgroup (and the other microsoft.public.word.*) newsgroups
daily. These guys really know their stuff. If you start reading now, you'll
know to turn off fast saves and abandon all thoughts of entering a master
document _before_ they corrupt your documents.
4. In Word, turn off Help for WordPerfect Users _and_ Navigation Keys for
Word Perfect Users. I've no idea what they do, but they certainly don't
mimic WP behaviour and they'll only drive you crazy.
5. Use the help files to learn how to use Tools | Customize | Keyboard. For
example, the number one thing that drove me bonkers was that, in Word, the
page up/down keys did not take me to the top of the last/next page; so I
changed the action of the keys. And I wrote a tiny macro to mimic WP's
ctrl-Enter. This kind of contradicts John McGhie's advice (don't customize
Word to make it feel like WP), and one would be a very brave person to do
that, so maybe this isn't a good idea.
6. Select Tools | Macros. In Macros Available in, choose Word Commands. Now
select ListCommands. It prints out all the keyboard assignments. Sticky tape
that on the wall next to Coan's and McGhie's contributions.
7. Don't read the help screen that purports to provide a table showing
Word's equivalents to WP's keystroke combinations: it will only make you
angry!
7. Accept that you've lost F4 and (sigh!) F6 for ever. Read a book on
bereavement if necessary.
8. Read Bill Coan's thorough explanation of page numbers at
http://www.wordmacros.com/word_faqs/headersfooters.html. (I hope it's OK
netiquette to refer someone to someone else's web page, but I found this
very very useful.)
Hope this helps.
Shauna Kelly
Melbourne Australia
Jerry Litt wrote in message ...
>I'd like to thank all of those who responded to my plea for help,
>particularly Bill Coan and John McGhie. I will try to follow the
>reasoning and do my best to learn the system but it "ain't gonna be
>easy". The thing that really bothers me the most, I guess, is that
>WordPerfect did absolutely everything I ever needed , it was all
>intuitive to me and I could learn and do new things quickly. It's the
>rest of the world who apparently see something in Word that I cannot
>at present fathom but we'll see.
>
>Thanks again
>Jerry
>
Jerry Litt wrote in message ...
>I'd like to thank all of those who responded to my plea for help,
>particularly Bill Coan and John McGhie. I will try to follow the
>reasoning and do my best to learn the system but it "ain't gonna be
>easy". The thing that really bothers me the most, I guess, is that
Bill Coan
>8. Read Bill Coan's thorough explanation of page numbers at
>http://www.wordmacros.com/word_faqs/headersfooters.html. (I hope it's OK
>netiquette to refer someone to someone else's web page, but I found this
>very very useful.)
That's what the website is there for. Feel free to refer others to it. (I
know nothing of netiquette but it's my site so what the heck!)
Suzanne S. Barnhill
to WP for Windows users; those commands are now F7 and (assuming you mean
Alt+F6, i.e., Flush Right) Alt+F7. But what I really don't understand is
your remark about Ctrl+Enter. In every version of WP I've used (AFAIR),
Ctrl+Enter enters a manual page break, just as it does in Word. What am I
missing here?
Great advice about List Commands, though; I need to do that right now. I've
got the helpful Tech-Tav list, but it doesn't take into account my
customizations.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
SKelly wrote in message <#yvole3c#GA...@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com>...
>8. Read Bill Coan's thorough explanation of page numbers at
>http://www.wordmacros.com/word_faqs/headersfooters.html. (I hope it's OK
>netiquette to refer someone to someone else's web page, but I found this
>very very useful.)
>
SKelly
Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote in message <#Gdsze7c#GA.266@cppssbbsa03>...
>But what I really don't understand is
>your remark about Ctrl+Enter. In every version of WP I've used (AFAIR),
>Ctrl+Enter enters a manual page break, just as it does in Word. What am I
>missing here?
Using manual page breaks in WP was apparently a sensible thing to do. From
reading this newsgroup and others, I've learned that manual page breaks are
not the best way to force a page break in Word. Many people seem to
recommend formatting the relevant paragraph with a Page Break Before. So I
re-mapped Control + Enter to format the paragraph with a Page Break Before.
So the keystrokes my fingers "know" give me the new, appropriate,
functionality in Word.
Shauna Kelly
Suzanne S. Barnhill
and large they do not cause any problems that are not also caused by Page
Break Before. The main problem with both these settings is that you may add
or delete a chunk of text and as a result find that you have an unnecessary
page break in the middle of a page. The usefulness of Page Break Before is
seen chiefly in tables, where you can use it to force a table to the next
page without "breaking" it, thus ensuring that the headings are carried over
to the next page.
The only good reason for a manual page break is to start a new portion of a
document on a new page (in a case where a new section is not required). For
this purpose a manual page break works just as well as Page Break Before.
But many users use manual page breaks to keep text together when they would
be better advised to use the "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together"
attributes of paragraphs. The built-in heading styles in Word are by default
formatted as "Keep with next" so that a heading won't be orphaned on the
page before its following text. Although WP users will undoubtedly miss
"block protect" (though that can be as much of a curse as a blessing),
astute use of "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together" will achieve the
same effect.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
SKelly wrote in message ...
Margaret Aldis
<sbar...@zebra.net> writes
>Just to clarify, there is nothing wrong with manual page breaks in Word. By
>and large they do not cause any problems that are not also caused by Page
>Break Before. The main problem with both these settings is that you may add
>or delete a chunk of text and as a result find that you have an unnecessary
>page break in the middle of a page. The usefulness of Page Break Before is
>seen chiefly in tables, where you can use it to force a table to the next
>page without "breaking" it, thus ensuring that the headings are carried over
>to the next page.
>
>The only good reason for a manual page break is to start a new portion of a
>document on a new page (in a case where a new section is not required). For
>this purpose a manual page break works just as well as Page Break Before.
>But many users use manual page breaks to keep text together when they would
>be better advised to use the "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together"
>attributes of paragraphs. The built-in heading styles in Word are by default
>formatted as "Keep with next" so that a heading won't be orphaned on the
>page before its following text. Although WP users will undoubtedly miss
>"block protect" (though that can be as much of a curse as a blessing),
>astute use of "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together" will achieve the
>same effect.
>
All good stuff, Suzanne, but there is one difference between Page Break
Before and manual page breaks that can cause a lot of grief if, as would
at first sight seem A Good Idea, you attempt to use manual page breaks
for 'last minute tidy-up' formatting (with the idea that you can search
and remove before the next edit).
If you insert the manual page break in the natural way, with your cursor
at the start of the heading, then the page break will be taken into any
existing cross references you have to that heading text, giving you
spurious page breaks in some funny places. If you have cross references
to page numbers, these will also be wrong (the cross reference will be
to the page the page break falls on). The problem seems to be in the way
Word works out what to do with insertions at the beginning or end of a
bookmark (including its own cross reference ones), since if you put your
cursor at the start of the bookmark, whatever you type falls inside the
bookmark, while if you put your cursor at the end, it falls outside.
This gives the reverse of what you want when amending headings and
hoping the cross references will follow!
Even though I understand the mechanism, this one is always catching me
out, so I post it here in case other people find the same :-)
Margaret
>
>SKelly wrote in message ...
>>
>>Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote in message <#Gdsze7c#GA.266@cppssbbsa03>...
>>
>>>But what I really don't understand is
>>>your remark about Ctrl+Enter. In every version of WP I've used (AFAIR),
>>>Ctrl+Enter enters a manual page break, just as it does in Word. What am I
>>>missing here?
>>
>>
>>Using manual page breaks in WP was apparently a sensible thing to do. From
>>reading this newsgroup and others, I've learned that manual page breaks are
>>not the best way to force a page break in Word. Many people seem to
>>recommend formatting the relevant paragraph with a Page Break Before. So I
>>re-mapped Control + Enter to format the paragraph with a Page Break Before.
>>So the keystrokes my fingers "know" give me the new, appropriate,
>>functionality in Word.
>>
>>Shauna Kelly
>>
>
>
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
difficulties. If you have the bookmarks displayed (with those ugly big
brackets), is there some way to position the insertion point inside or
outside them as needed?
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Margaret Aldis wrote in message ...
Margaret Aldis
Barnhill <sbar...@zebra.net> writes
>A useful point, which I hope I will remember when I encounter these
>difficulties. If you have the bookmarks displayed (with those ugly big
>brackets), is there some way to position the insertion point inside or
>outside them as needed?
>
Not as far as I can see, but displaying bookmarks is helpful in making
it very clear when you've gone wrong :-) No use for the cross reference
problem, though - no big fat brackets here.
As far as stuff falling off the end is concerned, the workaround is
always to start inserting at least a character before the end - if I
wanted to change 'Add a character' to 'Add a character in the heading',
for instance, I would put my cursor before the last r, retype r,
continue with the rest of the text and then delete the extra r at the
end - hardly slick or intuitive.
Similarly, whenever I have new text to enter or paste before a heading,
I always put my cursor _before_ the last para mark before the heading,
press return, and start there - but to do this for a manual page break,
you then have to get rid of the extra paragraph that would otherwise
appear at the top of the page, and that's not easy without losing the
style of the heading ...
I find this feature really annoying because I like to set up cross
references as I go on the basis of early structure, and have them follow
any later changes to the title of that heading. As far as I recall, I
never had any problems with this in FrameMaker (which also has some nice
features for styling cross references so you don't have to enter e.g.
section number, title, page number and formatting individually).
Anyway, I've tried to train myself to keep the cursor out of the danger
areas, and to give a last visual check to cross references before
sending docs out. I also work with field codes shaded, which tends to
show up the fact that you've got a cross reference several paragraphs
long ;-)
Ever onwards
Margaret
Suzanne S. Barnhill
minefields as well as the buried treasures!
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Margaret Aldis wrote in message <6KOtqBAip$92I...@syntagma.demon.co.uk>...