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I believe you can coax Microsoft® Word into being a powerful and
obedient documentation tool. But I also think we can train our new kitten
to walk on a leash, and everyone tells me that's impossible.
At our company, we use RoboHelp as a single-source tool to create Online
Help. We generate five printed books in Word from the same source as
HTML Help. We use conditional text and customized contents to generate
each book. The largest book is 300 pages long.
Frame Wars
Around STC, I've noticed some animosity toward Microsoft Word. Many
technical writers compare Word with FrameMaker-with FrameMaker coming
out way up on top. I've learned that technical writers have been
fighting the Word vs. FrameMaker wars for years.
On the Techwr-L Web site, I searched for "Word vs. FrameMaker,"
and it served up a list of 300 entries. Here are a few quotes:
- "Frame, <shudder> Word"
- ". . . FrameMaker is better-suited than Word for large documents
and for creating a single-source documentation set."
- ". . . Can you imagine anything more ghastly, more pathetic,
than a technical writer forced to use Word when a perfectly good desktop
publishing tool like FrameMaker is available? Need I say more?"
Okay. The last quote came from a humor column in our own newsletter,
and the author may have exaggerated slightly to make a point.
One article was fairly neutral:
"Asking, 'Which is better: Word or FrameMaker?' is the same as
asking, 'Which is better: a fork or a spoon?' Obviously, the task at
hand has some bearing on the answer."
I did find one lonely author who had something good to say about Word:
"With some coaxing, Word can handle books of several hundred pages.
I have been using Word to create documents up to about 500 pages for
years, including 3+ years at MS."
Top 10 Methods for Coaxing Word into Good Behavior
- Use F9 to update fields.
Press CTRL+A and F9. This selects the entire document and updates
all fields-including the TOC.
In the last month, two managers have asked me the same question:
how to get a TOC to include the new sections they just added. Unfortunately,
Word doesn't make this an intuitive choice. I tell them to use the
keyboard shortcut (F9), or right-click in the TOC and select Update
Fields. Most folks don't know that the Table of Contents is a type
of field.
- Use keyboard shortcuts for formatting.
- CTRL+SPACEBAR: Reset to default character settings.
- CTRL+Q: Reset to default paragraph settings.
- Avoid manual page breaks. This is the type of page break you insert
by pressing CTRL+ENTER or by clicking the Insert menu > Break >
Page Break. Using a manual page break can wreak havoc on the TOC and
cross-references. Instead, use paragraph format options. You can use
Keep with next or Page Break before.
- Use templates. Create them and use them. If you have standard styles
for bullets and numbers, you can avoid some of Word's nasty auto-numbering
problems.
- Insert fields. These are really useful in templates. Tip: Turn on
field shading so you can always see where the fields are. For example,
a couple of useful fields are:
- StyleRef. When inserted in a header or footer, the STYLEREF
field prints the last text formatted with the specified style
on the current page.
- SaveDate. Displays the date when the document was last saved.
- Keep it short. Keep documents fewer than 100 pages if possible.
RoboHelp splits our books into separate chapters, each in its own
file. RoboHelp uses RD fields in the index and TOC to make this happen.
- Insert graphics. Never paste an image from the clipboard. Word won't
compress it, and you'll end up with a huge file. Instead, save the
image as a file. Then use Insert > Picture.
- Format graphics. Size the file using Format > Picture. For a
shortcut, double-click the picture. Never drag the handles. That can
distort the proportions of your image.
- Create macros. Create your own, and use them for repetitive tasks.
- Show formatting marks. Leave them turned on so you won't delete
something critical like a section break.
If you can avoid some basic problems in Word, your next Word experience
may be more pleasant. Even if you use FrameMaker exclusively for long
documents, you may need to switch utensils for a special project, like
helping an engineer with formatting a spec, or helping your manager
write a report. Next time someone asks you how to update a TOC, you
can smile and say, "Press F9."
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