Exploring Office 2007: Cutting Long Documents Down to Size Working With Long Docs in Word 2007 Helen Bradley
Any time a document exceeds a page or two in length, issues arise with the document that don't exist with shorter documents. With a long document you have a greater chance of losing your work, the tools that you need to give you reader to help them navigate your document are more diverse, and you need to ensure you don't waste time needlessly formatting the document. In this article I'll show you some of the new tools in Word 2007 that will help you work more efficiently and painlessly with long documents.
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Quicker Formatting
When working with a long document you don't want to waste time formatting the document if changes are likely to be made at a later date. The simplest way to manage formatting is to use styles — not only are styles easy to apply but they are quick and easy to change.
If you set your body text to, for example, Calibri and later change your mind and want to use Times New Roman, the change is as simple as making a change to the Normal style. If you don't use styles and if you format paragraphs one-by-one the task of reformatting a long document could take you hours, if not days, whereas if you use styles it can be done in a matter of minutes.
To apply a style in Microsoft Word 2007 click in the paragraph to format and click a Style from the Styles area on the Home tab. If you plan to use Themes then choose your theme — select the Page Layout tab and click a Theme to apply it &mdsah; before applying styles.
When you change Theme or Theme Fonts, the styles shown on the Home tab in the Styles area change too, so you want to select the theme first if possible. There are also Style Sets that you can use by clicking the Change Styles button on the Home tab. Choose Style Set and select a set to use.
Once you've made your selections, if you still don't like the way a style looks, right click the Style in the Styles area on the Home tab and choose Modify. Edit the style and every paragraph formatted using that style will update automatically.
Use the Normal style for the text in your document, use Heading styles for headings, and so on. One effect of using the Normal style for your basic text is that other styles inherit elements from this style so that any changes made to the Normal style will cascade through the other styles that you have used.
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Cover Page
Most long documents require a cover page and Microsoft Word 2007 has a handy new Cover Page tool accessible from the Insert tab. Select Cover Page and select a cover page to use. The cover page design uses the theme colors and you can replace a photograph or clipart element on the cover page as you would change any image in a document.
You will also need to number the pages in your document and in many cases add headers and footers to the pages. These elements give the document a professional look. Plus it's easier to reorganize the document when the pages are numbered.
On the Insert tab, click the Header dropdown list, and select a header to use. There are plain headers and more complex ones to choose from. Use the Footer option to add a footer to your document — footers come with page numbers already included in them. Select the same style footer as your header so they match.
If you have a cover page the cover page will be numbered page 1 and the first page of your document will be page 2. To change this, click in the footer where the page number is and from the Header and Footer > Design tab, select Page Number > Format Page Numbers, set the page numbering to start at 0 and click OK.
As the cover page doesn't show a page number, the first text page will now show the number 1.
