It wasn't really until Word 2003 that I used the terms List Templates with a complete understanding of what that actually meant. By then I had become very familiar with Word's problem with multi-level numbering including all the methods and work-arounds as to how to resolve issues when list numbering went bad. Prior to Word 2003, every time you added a bullet or a list number to your document, in the background code Word would record a list template - these templates were never removed from the word document - the problems began when the list templates started numbering over 200 in the document - then there would be instability, and eventually corruption would occur and the document would not open.
The main reason behind this "flaw" was that the geeks at Microsoft didn't really understand how Document Production actually worked. They assumed, rightly or wrongly, that whenever users wanted to create a new document they would click on the File menu and choose "New Document". They didn't realise that the majority of users out there would be daisy chaining their documents in that they would find a document already in existence that resembled their new file, then save this file as a new document and edit it. Sometimes documents remained in use as semi-templates for decades.....
As well as Daisy Chaining, the other problem was simply copying and pasting. By pasting the contents directly (i.e. formatted) into another document, users were invariably copying the document's history along with the text and formatting - and certainly they copied in all those list templates! So doing something as simple as copying a few paragraphs from one document to another could easily send a document along the path to corruption land.
Document Production quickly rose to this challenge and began to utilise the now infamous "paste special - unformatted text" method - those that failed to meet the list template challenge ended up losing their multi-page documentation. I once got a job at a major American Law Firm solely on the premise that I would be able to create, maintain and supervise their documentation, particularly the large offering circulars that often grew into documents of several hundred pages or more. Prior to my appointment, the firm had lost a multi-million contract because an OC had crashed and the client had opted to go with another firm (one with stable documentation). Now I've come across thousands of documents showing signs of instability but probably only fifty or so that were actually, really, truly corrupt since those heady Word 2000 days. Ever since Word 2003, Microsoft made a massive effort to ensure that documents created using this new package were stable. We used to remove list templates from Word 2000 documents simply by converting to MS Word 2003, and then saving them back down again as Word 2000. Boom! All the un-used list templates in the document were deleted by doing a simple Save As. Now we've come to the xml days. Microsoft have told us that corruption issues are a thing of hte past - xml files don't go bad, they just.... well.... go awry (and 99% of the reason they have gone awry is that the users cannot find the relevant functions in the new ribbon setup with context sensitive menus popping up and disappearing just as quickly). Okay, so now the little history lesson is over - how do you create and utilise list templates in Word 2010? Well, probably the best overview of this I have found is Shauna Kelly's instruction guide - you'll find that here and I hope you commit it to memory.
You really cannot be calling yourself an office geek without knowing this kind of stuff backwards.
Picture this - it's 1965 and my mother is working in the typing pool. A director asks her to pull up a file from a few months back as he would like to use an agreement as a precedent for a similar deal that he is pitching for. My mother dutifully tipples over to the typing cabinet (on her sensible 1.5 inch heels) and pulls out the file to copy - but to her horror (and slight bewilderment) the filing cabinet has managed to shred the letter so all she is left with is a small heap of paper scraps. Now as far as I'm aware the above scenario never happened and probably never could have happened - maybe sometimes files got lost but most of the time if you had it in a hard copy format then you pretty much had it for as long as that hard copy lasted and even then chances are somebody had used some carbon paper to create a copy. So why, fifty years later, am I still dealing with corrupt files? Files that look fine and dandy on the outside but as soon as you try to open them to view their contents, the big bad message appears stating that:
Now the Show Help > > button in the diagram above actually does give you some pretty helpful hints (Microsoft Help has come a long way since Clippy!) and some of these I will include in my favourite "how to fix" list of methods below, but first let's talk about the difference between a file being "corrupt" and one that is showing signs of instability.
Signs of Instability
The numbering in your document won't restart as it should - you've checked everything and understand list templates (or got the Geek to check these for you) and styles are correctly placed, but the numbering still won't behave as it should.
You update your Table of Contents (TOC), save your document and upon reopening it your TOC has not updated at all!
Your apply a style to your document that should change the font and paragraph settings but nothing happens.
Signs of Corruption
You attempt open your word file and a dialog box appears as above.
You open your word file, it opens, you start scrolling and suddenly when you navigate beyond a certain point in your document, Word crashes and restarts. You try to open the file again, and the same thing happens..... (you can keep doing this for a very long time....)
You open your Word file, it opens, but what you're presented with is a bunch of gobbledigook text that your would only recognise as resembling JAVA or C# if you happened to have learnt how to code in those programming languages....
Now I'm not saying you don't have to worry about a file if it's showing signs of instability (quite often a word document that shows signs of instability means it will very soon become corrupt) but there is a big difference between your auto numbering not working within a file and losing all the text within that file. Don't start telling people their documents are corrupt unless they actually are because if somebody truly understands the terminology they will brand you an idiot quick smart if you feed them the wrong information. So what's my favourite method of fixing those unstable documents? Well, if I'm not using third party macros (or my own macros) to get to the root of a problem, I tend to first and foremost rely on Word's built in repair function called "Open & Repair". See the little video below for how to do this in Word 2010 which has been produced by KnowVidz.
It's possibly one of the best ways to fix a file, you even get a little messagebox telling you what word has fixed (although actually translating what some of the messages are or attempting to locate the areas fixed doesn't work quite so well....). Another easy way of removing "instabilities" is to upgrade your document to the latest (or a later) word version - so converting a Word 2003 document to Word 2010 will often fix an unstable file. If that doesn't work, then recreating the Word file is probably your best option - and we'll get to how best to do that within my next few posts.
It's not always easy to find things in Word 2010 for a legacy user. I could easily write a "how-to" for every function that was formerly available under Word 2003's extensive menu network to give it's Ribbon or DBL (Dialog Box Launcher) equivalent.
We'll see if I ever get a need to do that. Right now, whenever anybody asks me a question that I don't immediately know the answer to, then I'll assume that I'll need to blog on it. So it turns out that if you cannot find what you're looking for on the Ribbon then it will be living under the File Menu in the Options section
Now normally when I head here I am straight away clicking on the advanced tab and I scroll through the tremendously long list until I find what I'm looking for however in the case of templates you will need to select the tab named "Add ins"
Once you've located the correct tab, at the Drop Down Menu at the bottom type in or select the menu option "Templates" and then click on the Go Button.
As soon as the next dialog box appears, you recognise that you're in familiar territory - namely it's a Word 2003 dialog box. The currently attached template is listed at the top of the Templates tab, and you click on the attach button to attach a new template.
My secret is out! Yes, it's true, I admit to being a massive fan of televised adaptations of trashy teenage horror themed novels, especially if they have vampires in them. Please do NOT misunderstand me, I never finished the Twilight series in any format and will probably go to my grave doing so..... a girl agonising over which hunky young supernatural boy will be her lover is NOT enough to drive a plot as far as I'm concerned, which is why I like Vampire Diaries, because at least we have more than one girl wringing herself out over multiple lovers..... .... but I digress....! The reason why I bring all that up is because early on in the series it was fairly obvious that the show was endorsed by Microsoft because at every given opportunity people were using Microsoft products.... and at one stage somebody actually says something that up until that point had never been said before in the history of the Internet.... they say the words "I binged it"
Binged it? Really? Now there has been much hype as of late about whether Bing is better than Google but even if it does turn out that Microsoft have developed a faster, better, groovier browser I really cannot see the phrase "binging it" catching on. I mean, ANYONE who has used the Internet EVER pretty much immediately knows what it means when somebody says that they've "Google" something - sorry Microsoft, but your Open Sourced rivals have well and truly won the nomenclature war.
Now I know that there are still firms out there that severely restrict their employees internet usage (although most of the time this is just ensuring that they don't spend over 50% of their time trawling through Facebook or other social media websites) and even if you are restricted from using the Internet at work, most of us nowadays have access via our smartphones. Ask any of our friends, but those "I wonder what happened to...." questions all receive answers in a matter of minutes in our social gatherings because one of us has got Internet access on at least one device (phone, tablet, e-reader.... the amount of devices one can pack in your handbag nowadays can be quite large indeed. I tend to carry around at least 3)! Similarly I am often perplexed that folks in the workplace think it is more convenient for them to ask a colleague how to do something on their computer when they are sitting in front of a machine that would probably facilitate the take over of a small country if only they knew how to use it properly. The Internet has come a very long way since it was first made available to the general public in the early 90s but of course, like computing in general, the technology has been there for all to use from the creation of the very first browser. However, few of us know how to use the tools effectively and for maximum gain. The best entry that I have found regarding how to Google (or how to Bing.... no, nobody but Helena's aunt Bings, everybody else GOOGLES!) is here by Josh Catone (from Mashable), so I won't be reinventing the wheel for you like Microsoft seems so desperate to do with every wheel in existence.
How did I find it? Easy. I just googled "how to google" and it happened to be the very first hit in my return list.....
