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The following 'Word workaround' articles were written by Margaret Aldis for Communicator, the journal of the ISTC. They address problems technical authors have with using Microsoft® Word for manuals and similar 'long documents'.
 The articles are in PDF format and require a PDF reader or plug-in.
| This first article gives an introduction to the customization possibilities in Word, explaining how to cut out the superficial - and, for most professionals, intensely counter-productive - automation features and adopt a more systematic approach. Published in Communicator Winter 2002 issue. |
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| This article covers the page design requirements for long and rapidly changing technical documents, and outlines how they can be implemented in Word. It includes advice and macro code to overcome the difficulties of working with Section Breaks. Published in Communicator Spring 2003 issue. |
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This article describes the basic design process for a table of contents and figure list in a formal, style-based document, and gives some examples of how to customize the TOC field and styles to meet specific House Style requirements. Published in Communicator Summer 2003 issue. |
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This article was co-authored with Adrian Young, as a follow-up to the workshop he ran at the ISTC 2003 conference. It looks specifically at the problems delegates voted 'most troublesome', giving advice and web references for Word numbering problems, crashes and corruptions, taming Word, graphics, and getting UK English to 'stick'. Published in Communicator Winter 2003 issue. |
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This article explains some of the problems technical communicators have with Word's table formatting, and suggests various workarounds. Published in Communicator Spring 2004 issue. |
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The final article in the series gives some examples of the use of fields in technical documents, and includes macro code snippets to update fields in text boxes and in headers and footers. Published in Communicator Autumn 2004 issue. |
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© 2002-2004 Copyright Margaret Aldis
All articles in Communicator are copyright and are the property of the authors, who have asserted their moral rights. For permission to reproduce an article, contact the author directly, or through the Editor.
The Autumn 2003 Word Workaround article, Automating your Word indexes was written by
Mike Unwalla, TechScribe, and is available from the Tools and techniques section of the TechScribe Resources page.
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See also:
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Syntagma