Changing Word's Memory Allocation

Editors are often afraid to work on big documents in Microsoft Word. I routinely work on documents larger than 300 pages, so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. I do believe in having plenty of RAM (random access memory) on a computer (at least 256 megabytes), so that helps. Also, most of my documents don't include graphics, which I know can bog things down in Word.

If you need to work on big documents with lots of graphics and find that Word often runs slowly or locks up, you may appreciate a tip from Word guru Woody Leonhard:

http://www.wopr.com

On page 270 of his book "Word 97 Annoyances," Woody explains how to change Word's memory allocation. Here are the basic instructions:

1. Run Regedit (Start > Run > Regedit).

2. Find HKEY_CURRENT-USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice8.0WordOptions. [You might have a different version number, such as 9.0.]

3. Double-click on the key and back it up by clicking Registry > Export Registry File. If something goes wrong, this will let you restore the existing settings later.

4. Click Edit > New > String Value. Type in the name "CacheSize" and hit Enter twice. Type in 2048 and hit Enter.

5. Click Edit > New > String Value. Type in the name "BitMapMemory" and hit Enter twice. Type in 2048 and hit Enter.

6. Click File > Exit to leave the registry and save your changes.

What this does is tell Word to reserve 2048 KB of memory (instead of the meager default of 64) for documents (CacheSize) and graphics (BitMapMemory).

You don't have to use 2048, either; you can use lesser amounts, such as 1024. It's up to you. But the more you use, the less memory will be available for other programs that are running.

Don't mess with anything else in the registry. Doing so can cause all kinds of problems. And even for these settings, you change them at your own risk.

Macintosh users should simply be able to change the memory allocation for Microsoft Word.

Interested in learning more about Woody Leonhard's classic book "Word 97 Annoyances"? You can check it out here:

http://www.woodyswatch.com/l.asp?1565923081

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READERS WRITE

After reading the article "Show Me the Menu," Michael C. Coleman wrote:

Another trick for viewing the full menu is to double-click the menu headings.

Terri Svilar wrote:

My question has to do with publishing a document created in Word that contains color. Is there a way to separate the color from the text? I work at a small community college, and every semester we publish a course schedule. Most of the text is not highlighted, but there are certain entries that are highlighted with a light yellow so that students can easily find them.

It takes the person who gets this ready to be sent to the publisher a considerable amount of time to convert from Word to a format the printers can use. What takes her the most time is the highlighting, and then sometimes the highlighting doesn't match the printed words.

I responded:

The best way to approach this, in my opinion, is to use character styles to format the words that need to be in color. If you don't know about character styles, Word's Help file will tell you about them. You could create a character style named something like "Highlight" and apply it to the words in question. Then, when the file goes to the printer, it can be imported into QuarkXPress (or some other typesetting program), and the character styles can be formatted in color as needed in the typesetting program.

If your files currently use Word's built-in highlighting rather than character styles, you can use Word's Find and Replace feature to find highlighting and replace it with your character style.

Many thanks to Michael and Terri for their messages.

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RESOURCES

A few weeks ago this newsletter included a notice for a presentation by expert word whacker Hilary Powers to the Bay Area Editors' Forum. The notes and tipsheet for the presentation, "Electronic Editing: With Your Computer, Not Just On It," are now available online here:

http://www.editorsforum.org

Click "Forum Index" (on the right) and "Work Support & Tools (on the left)," and you'll see the titles in the alphabetical list (in the middle).

Don't miss this incredible resource! Hilary really knows her stuff, and the notes and tipsheet include tons of truly useful information that can save you hours of work and frustration.

While you're there, check out the other resources and articles available from the Bay Area Editors' Forum.

From Word 2K to 2003 Part 1–Looking up the Mountain

[Editor's note: This week marks the first installment in a series of reports by Word expert Steve Hudson on Word 2003--installation, features, and much, much more. If you're thinking of upgrading, you won't want to miss it. Next week, we'll return to our regularly scheduled feature articles and include the rest of Steve's installments in his own column as they become available. Many thanks to Steve for making them available!]

I've got a stack of research to do on using all these new Word objects (that's "features," for those who don't understand VBA-speak) that have started appearing so we've all got some idea of what's there. So I organised a free copy of Office 2003 to review. When I say free, I do NOT mean pirated--being a Word guru occasionally has a few tiny advantages.

I thought I could knock this article over in a few days. Fortunately for us, unfortunately for the article, there is a lot of new stuff available. So this is going to be a multi-part series for a little while to come. These articles do NOT go into using the new features all that much; it is more meant to give an overview of the changes to expect and help prepare you for the different ways you can work, or not, in Word 2003.

Installation

Before you can play, you have to build the ballpark. So we spent hours installing the suite of Office products I use or require. The much-anticipated "perfect install" was far from that.

First problem was it does not upgrade Outlook 2000, nor allow its dual existence with Outlook 2003. We stupidly believed the dialog and thought it would be OK to continue with the other stuff--but the install went belly up fairly quickly. Shutdown restart just to be sure to be sure. Back up Outlook PST's just in case of splat or regression. Removed Outlook and reran the install of the Office core components--Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Publisher all come bundled in tightly together. This worked OK.

To be specific, we only asked to keep the old Word 2000 and delete the rest of the old components.

Components

Visio, OneNote and FrontPage all came separately. The new 2003 Outlook features are pretty good, but it's a bit cluttered and reduces the number of messages on screen at once so you have to scroll around more to find stuff. The blurb annoyingly refers to this in the opposite, "Less scrolling with our new Bulldust!" Installing the patches took a fair while--there are quite a few already. Everything worked as planned, and the Office Update site provided the last, only four days old, patch. Started up the different products--you only have to load one from the core set, not each one--and their online activation with the supplied serials worked like a treat--quick, automatic and seamless.

OneNote is quite cool, a post-it note manager with some extra cool features--it is way more than Outlook's notes. I am sure it will creep into the workflow for many users, being more than a clipboard but less than a Word document. But that's enough about Office--these articles are about Word!

Plug-ins

I found a few add-ins available on the Office site already for Word 2003--a remove metadata tool--don't know how far this goes, but it does address some common, difficult metadata problems--and a smart tag add-in for dates and phone numbers.

Duelling versions--but both die at once

The dual running of Word 2000 and 2003 is already painful--the office installer almost re-installs each one when you open a new session. Spell "wait state" for me please. However, do note that I AM currently running both versions at the same time even, with NO problems or conflicts. A huge step forward. As I tend to load up a Word session for many hours, I can live with that. Also, if you don't load the other version in between sessions, the 're-install' doesn't trigger. WHEW!

The only down side I discovered is cascading failure. Crash one Word session, the other comes tumbling down as well. This could be limited to the type of crash, can't tell as yet. It was incredibly satisfying seeing each error report actually loading with Microsoft rather than the quick "OK, we already know about this one" response. Yet again, I manage to stuff things up in new and amazing ways--the power of the guru!

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READERS WRITE

Melissa L. Bogen wrote:

For one client, I have to insert coded text at the top of each file. I want to write a macro (or find some other fast way) to add this big chunk of text. Up until now I have been copying and pasting the chunk of text from an old manuscript and updating it for the ms being edited. I think automating this step will speed things up. I'd like to write a macro that will go to the top of a file and insert the copy. Then using your MultiMacro program, I can run that macro along with some other macros I've written.

I'm a tad rusty on recording macros. I tried to write a macro that searched for a character string (this client always inserts the same character string at the top of every file) and replaced it with the desired basic chunk of text. However, I crashed Word twice now. Maybe MS Word doesn't like that the "insert what" field in my search and replace that I tried to run while recording the macro had a lot of "^p" for hard returns. (The chunk of text includes about 8 lines of text.)

Can you point me to a place where I can find a solution to adding a chunk of text to the top of every file?

I responded:

The number of times you use ^p shouldn't matter. The ^p code should work fine.

Are you really writing the macro, or just recording it? If you're just recording it, you should be able to:

1. Go to start of document (CTRL + HOME). 2. Replace [character string] with [your chunk of text] (CTRL + H).

And then run the macro.

But that reminds me: The longest chunk of text you can have in the Replace With box is 255 characters. So if your chunk of text is longer than that, that could be the problem.

The sneaky way around this is to:

1. Select and copy the chunk of text to the Clipboard. 2. Find [character string]. 3. Replace with ^c (which is the magic code for "whatever is on the Clipboard."

Melissa replied:

Yup, the chunk of text is long. I tried your sneaky way around it (recorded that as a macro) and it worked great. So now I have a macro, but there needs to be something on the clipboard for it to work. Thus I also saved the chunk of text as AutoText, using Brad Hurley's instructions you provided in this week's newsletter. Now I can insert the AutoText into one document, highlight the inserted boilerplate and hit Ctrl + c to add the boilerplate to the clipboard, then run the macro with a bunch of others using your MultiMacro. All the files in a folder have the text inserted.

Many thanks to Melissa for her questions and tips.

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RESOURCES

Want to see Microsoft's overview of Word 2003? You'll find the official party line here:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/word/prodinfo/default.mspx

Show Me the Menu!

In the 1996 film Jerry McGuire, Tom Cruise shouts "Show me the money!" I know the feeling, but right now I want Microsoft Word to show me the *menu*--all of it! In Word's default state, many menu items are hidden until you click the little arrows at the bottom of a menu. For example, if I click the Format menu, only five items show up. If I click the little arrows down south, I get about four times that many. I'm really tired of having Microsoft decide what I can and can't see. If you are too, here's how to remedy the situation:

1. Click Tools > Customize. (If you can't see "Customize," try clicking the little arrows at the bottom of the menu. Heh.)

2. Click the Options tab.

3. See that check in the checkbox labeled "Menus show recently used commands first"? Get rid of it.

4. Click the OK button.

Now when you click on a menu at the top of your Word window, you'll see all of the menu items it contains.

Of course, Microsoft Word includes many more commands that aren't on *any* menu. You can learn more about that here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707791786

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READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article on inserting boilerplate text, Mary L. Tod wrote:

How is the use of a boilerplate file with bookmarks different from or better than using Word's built-in AutoText feature?

I responded:

Good question. It's different in that the entries aren't stored in a template but in a specific document. But is that an advantage over AutoText? Probably not. Is it better than AutoText? Probably not, since with AutoText you can pick and choose the entries you want to insert. However, it is one more item to include in your bag of tricks, and sometime it may come in handy, which is why I thought it might be worth mentioning in the newsletter.

David King also wrote to suggest using AutoText:

The boilerplate article is a nice trick to get text inserted. What I use often is the auto insert feature which when attached to the normal template is always available. Or you can select a template to store it. I do not know how much text it can hold, but the nice feature is you have the option of storing formatting information by including the paragraph mark.

Brad Hurley wrote:

I use AutoText to insert boilerplate, it's very fast and efficient.

First I type the boilerplate in a Word document and select the text.

Then, with the text selected, I go to Insert > AutoText > New

I give the entry an easy-to-remember and descriptive name, like "disclaimer."

From then on, whenever I start to type the word "disclaimer" in a document, Auto-Text pops up and suggests the boilerplate text; to insert the whole shebang all I have to do is hit the Enter key.

If I have a lot of different boilerplates for different purposes and can't remember all their names, I can quickly find and select the right one by going to Insert > AutoText and reviewing the entries in the menu. It stores any entries you've created according to the style of the original text. So if you were using Normal style when you created the boilerplate text, you'll find your AutoText entry in the Insert > AutoText menu under "Normal."

Many thanks to Mary, David, and Brad for their messages.

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RESOURCES

Microsoft Word MVP Shauna Kelly provides particularly lucid and helpful explanations of Word and its features on her Web site, "Making the Most of Word in Your Business":

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/index.html

She has a number of articles for beginners, along with terrific discussions about styles and formatting; sharing documents; and numbering, bullets, headings, and outlines.

Check it out! You'll be glad you did.

Insert Boilerplate

Boilerplate is text you can use over and over again as needed. For example, the Fine Print section of this newsletter is boilerplate. Here's a little-known but useful way to create boilerplate in Microsoft Word:

1. Create a new document to hold all of your boilerplate text.

2. Paste your boilerplate text into it (obviously enough).

3. Select each chunk of boilerplate text and apply a bookmark to it (Insert > Bookmark). Make the bookmark names short and easy to remember. You may even want to keep a list of the bookmarks for reference. (You'll see why in just a minute.)

4. Save your document with a name like "Boilerplate" in an easy-to-find folder.

Now, when you're working on some document and want to insert some boilerplate text, here's what to do:

1. Click Insert > File.

2. Navigate to your Boilerplate file and click it.

3. Click the "Range" button.

4. Enter the name of the bookmark for the chunk of boilerplate you want to use. Unfortunately, Word won't give you a dropdown list of the bookmarks, which is why you should use short, memorable bookmark names and keep a list of what they are.

5. Click the "Insert" button.

The boilerplate for the bookmark you entered will be inserted into your document.

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READERS WRITE

Answering the question "How many pages per hour should someone be able to edit on-screen?" expert word-whacker Hilary Powers wrote:

"Should" is a hard word to apply, as the work varies so much according to the condition of the manuscript and the skills of the editor. But one thing I can say: pages-per-hour production should not be lower than the equivalent paper speed.

For the purposes of pricing, paper speed expectations remain the standard, much as 250 words remains the standard page decades after the demise of the 10-pitch typewriter.

For doing the work, I find that I'm reliably between 150% and 300% of the paper speed expectations--but I've been counting keystrokes and squeezing electrons till they scream for ten years now. It'd be a very reasonable first goal to try to match paper speed on-screen--without rushing. Rather, look for ways to get the effects you want as easily as possible . . . and keep looking after you get back to your paper level, as by that point you'll probably have no more than scratched the surface of what's possible.

A job I finished a bit ago--a near-300-page manuscript in very good shape, well written and with a charming subject--had a net thruput of 14.5 pages per hour. That's close to the top I've achieved thus far for straight editing, but not the absolute max if memory serves.

------------------------

Hilary also wrote:

Here's another wrinkle on the title-case macro:


Sub SentenceTitle()
' Macro written 3/20/2004 by Hilary Powers
Selection.Range.Case = wdLowerCase
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.text = ":"
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=2
Selection.Range.Case = wdNextCase
End Sub

It's for converting two-part title-case titles to sentence case: Select everything but the first word and hit the hot key, and it all goes lowercase except the word following the colon. . . . A godsend for a 50-page reference list with mixed formatting that needs to go to APA. (A refined version would let you select the whole title and then uppercase both the first word and the word after the colon, but I got lazy.)

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can find out here:

Many thanks to Hilary for her terrific tips.

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RESOURCES

Where does the term "boilerplate" come from? You can find out at World Wide Words and The Word Detective, both wonderful sites for those interested in words:

http://www.quinion.com/words/index.php

http://www.word-detective.com/index.html