Formatting Techniques for Large Text/Graphics Documents

These methods describe techniques learned in the process of writing and formatting my dissertation which included many graphics from various sources. Windows software used: MS Word 2003, Adobe Acrobat 7, Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2, Arcmap 9.1, SPSS, MS Excel 2003. Many of these methods apply to Macintosh as well, though the commands may be slightly different.

Tips for working with graphics in large documents in Word 2003

Learn to use Auto Captioning

This is a lifesaver if you have more than a handful of figures or tables. The command is under Insert > Reference... > Caption. The captions will update if you move them around, and if you use Cross-references (Insert > Reference > Cross-reference...) these will update as well. An example of a cross reference is the following "As shown in Figure 3-21" where Figure 3-21 is a live field that updates if Figure 3-21 becomes 3-22 for example. You must select the document (or portions of it) and click "Update Fields..." (F9) to keep the numbering current.

On a related note, the maintaining numbered chapters and header paragraphs is extremely easy using the Format > Bullets and Numbering... > Outline Numbered tab.

Master Documents in Word - Danger

See this article "Why Master Documents Corrupt", and are liable to ruin your work at a critical time.

Also see this article: How to use Master Documents safely, but you must follow these instructions exactly or you're on thin ice. 

Use Picture Placeholders in Word

This command is a checkbox under Tools > Options... > View tab. Shows a box instead of the figure itself so that performance is not sluggish but formatting and pagination are accurate. When producing a PDF from word using PDF Maker (Acrobat) these will be converted to the real figures. In fact, you will probably have better results if you are in Picture Placeholders mode because more RAM is available and the software only deals with one image at a time.

Red X and the Cache in Word for Windows

Word has a problem with loading large images and when "resources are compromised", be it for limitations in RAM or in hard drive space, a red X will appear in a box rather than the figure you expect. One method for alleviating this problem is to clear out the temp files that Word uses to free up memory. If you are getting a lot of red Xs instead of your expected images try quitting Word and rebooting your machine. Next, return to the folder where your word document is located and search for the following string: ~*.*

Throw out the invisible files that are revealed in this search.

Page Breaks and formatting

Page breaks can be extremely frustrating because they can break up tables, separate figures from captions, and break bibliographical entries apart. The worst way to deal with this is to put in a bunch of empty lines to force something on to the next page. This is bad because if you make minor formatting changes your page breaks will change and all your empty spaces are now in the middle of a page.

The second way most people deal with this is to put in forced page breaks with the Insert > Page Break... command. While this is useful in some places, for example before a figure or table that takes up a whole page. However in a bibliography, for example, this is a bad way to solve the broken references problem because it forces a break and if the document is paginated the break will likely fall in the wrong place.

The most flexible way to deal with the page break problem is to select the lines in question and use the "Keep with Next" and "Keep Lines Together" commands in the Format > Paragraph > Layout... tab.

With figures and tables the "Keep with Next" should be checked, and the Caption line itself, below the document, should be "Keep Lines Together".

With bibliographical entries the "Keep Lines Together" option is usually enough.