Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Personal knowledge and taste should be the guideline to decide which software package
should be used to write a diploma or PhD thesis, or any other kind of long document.
The differences between LaTeX, FRAMEMAKER, WORD, and similar packages do
not matter as long as the user knows how to use the software. This article is a guideline
how to do it in WORD. WORD is often under the suspicion that it cannot handle large
documents, especially if a lot of pictures and equations are involved. This is not true, as
long as certain rules are respected.
2. TEXT STYLES
Now we already need define the fonts and styles for the headings, main text, etc.
Therefore write in your document
DANI SCHMID
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Body text blablabla
Then you highlight the first line and choose Heading 1 as its style from the
corresponding box in the icon bar at the top. Maybe it says Body Text at the moment,
which is the actual formatting. You can also define the style under FormatStyle.
Assign all other lines to their style. Most likely you are not happy with this layout.
WORD
provides
some
other
style
sets.
You
can
find
them
under
FormatThemeStyle Gallery. Just select different styles and see how your
document changes in the preview pane. If the preview is not updated when you change
the style then switch in the bottom left Preview box between Example and
Document. If you found a style that you are approximately happy with, say Ok
otherwise you can also Cancel.
Now you have to do the fine-tuning. Lets say you want your Heading 1 to be in a
different font. Just highlight the Heading 1 line and choose your favorite font from the
font menu. Then you define the Heading 1 line again as Heading 1. Now WORD will
ask you the following:
You have to choose the Update... option the change the style. Like this you can define
all styles to match your taste. You can also highlight an text line and define the style
through FormatStyleModify.
DANI SCHMID
groups. It is anyways a good practice to consult google groups and see what problems
other people have faced with WORD.
I suggest that you make a folder THESIS. In this folder you have the directories
CHAPTER1, CHAPTER2, etc. Each of these chapter folders contains only one
word file (e.g., chapter_1.doc) and always the same set of subdirectories, e.g., PIC,
PIC_SOURCES, MOVIES, MATLAB, MAPLE, DATA. It is advantageous to use such
a simplified structure without complicated names, because this assures that, for
example, burning backup CDs will be trouble free. The use of the subdirectories is to
contain all the data that was used for each chapter, so that it can be reproduced at any
time. The PIC_SOURCES folder should contain your ILLUSTRATOR/COREL etc.
files, while the PIC folder contains the actual pictures that are linked into the file (cf.
section Pictures). Like this you can, for example, have redundant file names (e.g., you
can have a setup.tif in every chapter) and you can maintain a better overview over
what belongs where. Another advantage is that if you would like to publish a chapter as
a paper you can easily save it somewhere else, change the layout, and extract the
pictures.
PICTURES
Link the pictures! To insert the pictures go to InsertPictureFrom File, choose
your file from the PIC folder, and under Link select Link to file. This avoids
WORD files that kill any computer once they are big enough. Instead, the files remain
small and whenever the picture file in the PIC folder is updated word will also update
the picture in the document (to force this click the picture one time and press F9, which
is the refresh button). Generally compressed TIFF files are suggested as the picture
format. TIFF compresses loss less and ILLUSTRATOR and any other graphic program
can write it, and WORD knows how to handle them. Dont exaggerate the resolution of
the pictures; normally 300dpi (color) or 600dpi (black/white) is plenty and should not
be exceeded (in fact much less is also ok, try it).
The picture numbering is done through the InsertCaption option. This will add
captions to the pictures and automatically update the figure number. If you need to refer
to a figure in your text go to InsertCross-reference, select
This also explains how to do any other kind of cross-referencing. The resulting crossreference is a hyperlink and will be translated as such if you make PDFs or HTML files.
You can force word to adjust the text to float around pictures and fancy stuff like this.
For example, you may be tempted to make a textbox, position it somewhere, anchor it,
and put the caption into it as well. Youll regret that you did that. Such kind of pictures
will not be counted anymore properly in the figure numbering, they will be all over the
place because the anchors dont work, and may not show up in automatic indices. Just
insert your pictures as described above, break the main text, put the caption, and
continue the main text. If you need two pictures side a side use tabs. If you want to try
something fancy, then insert a table and put the picture in there. Then you can play with
the size of the cells and put the caption into another cell and arrange it. This works
hassle free.
DANI SCHMID
EQUATIONS
Get Mathtype! And read the help file concerning equation numbering and referencing.
Its easy. However, WORD and Mathtype together can make troubles. Lets say Word
crashes. Then you have to check if the Word process is actually gone. Press Ctrl-ShiftEsc and check under processes if WINWORD.EXE is still there. If yes End Process
Tree through a right-click. Now you will have to clean up the mess that Word left in a
temp directory, which is usually under
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USER_NAME\Local Settings\Temp
Youll find a lot of files in there that you can all delete. Only if you clean up Word will
continue to work at acceptable speeds and not crash. This cleaning up may even be
necessary if you do not work with Mathtype but WORD crashes or is very slow.
Concerning this also have a look at
http://www.mathtype.com/support/TSN/tsn83.stm#remove
If you use Mathtype you may also encounter problems saving the document. Some
strange memory or Disk full message will appear. This is because some equation
codes got corrupted. This happens if you copy paste equations or inline Mathtype
expressions. Try to avoid this. If you are too lazy to retype an equation, mark the
equation, copy it, choose the insert equation button, Mathtype opens empty and you can
paste the copied equation into Mathtype, close it and youll have a fine Mathtype
expression. A sign for the mentioned problem are empty boxes instead of equations.
You can try to mark the boxes and choose MathtypeConvert EquationsConvert.
If this does not restore the equation youll have to delete the box. So, if you cannot save
the document, then look for empty boxes and try to convert them. Alternatively you can
look for error messages in the text and delete them (and the related Mathtype
expressions). If you still cannot save you may mark the entire document and try the
Mathtype convert option. However, this sometimes seems to have problems with figure
captions and Endnote references that are also field codes.
REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY
If you dont use Endnote I cannot help you!
Under Spelling & Grammar I would active the Check spelling as you type and the
Check grammar as you type.
DANI SCHMID
MORE SOPHISTICATION
The field codes used above can be used to generate automatic continuous page
numbering and related things. However, youll need to program macros for this or find
some on the net. Google found some for me, but they didnt work 100%, which is why I
dont post them here.
A very important thing to learn when working with long, complicated documents are the
special key combinations of WORD. The complete list can be found under
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q211982&
Most important are the F9 combinations, which allow you to see the field codes, update
pictures, etc.
A very good WORD site can be found under
http://www.mvps.org/word
Once you are through their FAQs youll be a specialist.