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Help me with MS Word styles

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AndyM:
Oh yeah, biggest no-no in Word:

Empty paragraphs.  You don't hit the Enter key to skip a line.  You use the Space After (and/or Space Before) settings for the paragraph.  Which is cumbersome if you don't use styles.

2nd biggest no-no:

Manual page breaks.  Use the PageBreakBefore and KeepTogether settings to control pagination when you have to override the automatic paging.

AndyM:
PPS  If it's really important that everyone sees the exact same thing when they are reading your document, distribute it as a .pdf.

Word formats a document wysiwyg for the current printer.  When the document is opened on a machine with a different printer, the margins, number of pages, page breaks, and a bunch of other stuff can look different.  But a pdf will always display the same. 

superboyac:
I need to make a glossary.  What is the best (or most stable) way to do it in Word 2007?  I tried finding articles, but nothing was clear to me.  I'd like to have two columns, the terms on the right left in bold, and the definitions on the right in normal style.

kfitting:
I only really have experience with styles, but in general searching for Word MVP sites for information is a good idea.  Shauna Kelly's site is still one of the best.  She gives a bunch of different options... some are very interesting. 

Glossary

AndyM:
I need to make a glossary.  What is the best (or most stable) way to do it in Word 2007?  I tried finding articles, but nothing was clear to me.  I'd like to have two columns, the terms on the right left in bold, and the definitions on the right in normal style.
-superboyac (May 17, 2010, 11:36 PM)
--- End quote ---

I'd use a two-column table with no borders (show gridlines while you are setting it up).  Set up the first column to be bold, the second column not bold, etc.  Good way to learn about tables.  Watch out for the paragraph settings for SpaceBefore and SpaceAfter, can be very confusing for tight tables.  Usually easiest to start with zero before and after - you can also control vertical spacing with the table row settings.  The key here is to have one Style for the first column and a second Style for the left column.  

You can sort on the first column.  Use the OutlineMoveUp and OutlineMoveDown commands to manually move rows up and down with keystrokes (works with any paragraphs).  Then when you see how handy that is, write a macro to do the same thing in Excel (or ask me for mine) - move a row/rows up or down with a keystroke.

(anything I say is based on my experience with Word/Excel 2002,2003.  Other than the interface, almost everything works the same in 2007 as far as I know)

On the advice of the wise geeks, I never use the Normal style.  I have several sets of styles independent of each other.  Each set's style is based on one main style for that set so changes to the main style only ripples thru that set.  The ones I use most often are BT (bodytext) and all it's derivatives (different spacing, indents, tabs, etc), and my numbering/list styles (Num, Num1, Num2, NumPara, NumPara1, NumPara2, etc).

I also have a few styles I use in table cells (TabCell, TabCellTxt, etc).

The styles live in my normal.dot file.  When I use them in a new document, if necessary I modify them for that document.  You have to learn how to import a style from your template (normal.dot or something.dot) or another file into someone else's file if you want to use your styles in that file (either copy a paragraph or use whatever Word 2007 uses for an Organizer).

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