Re: WORD, A Word Processor. Was: The Tools Tech Writers Use

[Roy Anderson <royanderson -at- IBM -dot- NET>]

This may help. No guarantees, okay?

If you are actively making many revisions to a .doc file (especially if it
contains graphics), it may beneficial to accept all revisions made thus far.
You'll likely be amazed at how the procedure below shrinks file sizes. I've
seen actively-edited, graphic intensive .doc files shrink from 8-12 megabytes
to 750-1200K.

To accept the revisions, (1) use menu path Tools > Revisions, (2) click
Accept All button, (3) click Yes, (4) click OK, and (5) use menu path
File > Save As to cleanly save the file.

If the Accept All button is grayed out, add an extra period to one sentence
in your .doc file and then repeat the above steps. After you Accept All the
revisions, delete the extra period and then repeat the process once more.
Yes, the procedure is clumsy but it reduces the potential for so many problems
that it is worth the hassle.

On my last contract, we were forced to choose between maintaining revision
tracking or coping with many file problems. An added factor was the desired
to maintain our sanity. Revision tracking was quickly abandoned in favor of
accepting all revisions and saving the file via Save As. Worked like a charm.

Unless you have checked Tools > Revisions > Show Revisions on Screen box,
you won't see how messy your files are. The revisions keep accumulating
until you Accept all. Once you've viewed the revisions, uncheck the Show
Revisions on Screen box or the distractions will drive you batty.

Adding more RAM certainly helps. I urge you to double or triple the RAM
value presently installed. RAM is cheap but your time isn't. At least, I
hope your time isn't cheap.

GM Vick wrote:
>
> If your system didn't crash at over 20 MB, consider yourself blessed.
>
> Just this afternoon, for nowhere near the first time, I crashed out of
> Word97 while working in a particular 116 KILOBYTE file that is 10 pages of
> tables and several instances of columns.  I have 32 MB of RAM and a
> Pentium. Usually I don't have this problem unless the file is greater than
> 15 MB or so, but Word just hates this little file.
>
> G


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