Layout/editing

[St.John]

I have been editing many pages of text(250), and after finishing
the job and saving, I return to the text to find that the document is no
longer as I had left it: pages slip up or down, into the empty space of the
preceding page, and descrete chapters become tacked onto the end of to the
one in front of them. How may I lock the text of each page into the page in
word 2007?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I have been editing many pages of text(250), and after finishing
the job and saving, I return to the text to find that the document is
no longer as I had left it: pages slip up or down, into the empty
space of the preceding page, and descrete chapters become tacked onto
the end of to the one in front of them. How may I lock the text of
each page into the page in word 2007?

Word is not a page-layout program with discrete pages and fixed contents. If
you need that, you should use a program such as Publisher or InDesign. Word
is a text-stream-oriented program that does continual page reflow
calculations.

That said, there are several ways to separate text on different pages. In
order of increasing likelihood of creating other problems, they are:

- If each chapter or topic should start a new page, apply a style to the
first paragraph (usually a title or heading) of that text and make the "Page
Break Before" paragraph formatting part of that style. This is by far the
best method.

- Insert a Next Page section break (Page Layout > Breaks > Next Page)
immediately before the start of the next group of material. The possible
side effects have to do with the possibility that section-related formatting
may be different from one section to the next, and deleting a section break
doesn't work the way most people would expect. See
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm for
discussion.

- Insert a manual page break (Ctrl+Shift+Enter). These should mostly be
reserved for quick-and-dirty, print-and-throw-away documents. Like other
direct (not style-related) formatting, they often cause problems that are
hard to diagnose.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[St.John]

Thank you. Is there a software available that will allow a writer to
simulate the process of writing and editing documents much as might be done
with paper and pencil: one which is relatively benign, but more effective and
efficient without a life of its own? I speed most of my time trying to
figure out the software when I should be writing, thus I feel that computer
writing might be counter-productive. I am currently trying to leard Word
2007. I like it it, but I am having difficulty making it familiar.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Have you tried using WordPad, which comes with Windows? It's much simpler
than Word, at the cost of having much more limited formatting. For pure
writing, with nothing at all to get in your way, you could use Notepad.
There are also many similar programs in the freeware and shareware download
sites, such as www.download.com.

The text produced by either program can be imported into other programs to
do any needed formatting after the text is complete. I've already mentioned
Microsoft Publisher and Adobe InDesign, and another of that sort is
QuarkXPress. All of these are expensive and relatively complex; you may find
something more suitable on the web.

If you want to persevere with Word, there are many learning aids at
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/FX100649251033.aspx. If you
previously used an earlier version of Word, a particularly helpful item is
an interactive "translator" from Word 2003 commands to 2007 ribbons:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[St.John]

I am trying to get a good copy on Word so that I can change it into a PDF
file. Can that be done from Word pad?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I'm not sure what "that" is...

You can create and edit a document in WordPad and then open it in Word, which
understands the same file format. If you've downloaded the PDF add-in from the
Microsoft site, Word will then let you save the document as a PDF file.

It's also possible to get a free PDF "printer" such as Pdf995
(http://www.pdf995.com) or to use an online service such as
http://www.pdfonline.com to make a PDF file directly from WordPad without going
through Word at all.