Collaboration with Word files

[George Thompson]

Hi all,
I am the supervisor of a design shop that produces market
research questionnaires using Word 2000. We follow strict
design standards with regards to fonts, formatting, line
spacing, checkbox spacing, etc.

The problem that I have is exchanging Word documents with
our clients. Although we send them the original Word
document our client make changes that cause us many
headaches when the document is returned.

We find that fonts, spacing and formatting get changed and
becomes very difficult to correct. In some cases our
Normal.dot files seem to get corrupted and need to be
deleted. In other cases we can't print the documents as
they appear on screen.

Is there a way to lock formatting in Word? Is there a way
to filter the returned documents through a template? Are
there guidelines that we should be following for better
collaboration with our clients?

Any suggestions or leads would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

George

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you are using a protected form, users should not be able to do anything
but insert their answers. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm and especially
the forms tutorials by Dian Chapman that this article links to.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi George,

One question you need to ask yourself is whether Word is the
correct tool for the job. If you're basically creating forms
that people fill out, then you might want to consider
converting them to PDF format?

Word 2003's new protection features would probably help a
lot, but using them would mean everyone working with the
document would have to use that version.

Barring the above, I'd say your best chance might indeed be
some kind of template (macro) that does a basic cleanup
(restores style definitions and removes direct formatting,
for example). You might also want to consider forms
protection. And possibly providing a toolbar making it
"easier" for the recipients to do the right thing.

I am the supervisor of a design shop that produces market
research questionnaires using Word 2000. We follow strict
design standards with regards to fonts, formatting, line
spacing, checkbox spacing, etc.

The problem that I have is exchanging Word documents with
our clients. Although we send them the original Word
document our client make changes that cause us many
headaches when the document is returned.

We find that fonts, spacing and formatting get changed and
becomes very difficult to correct. In some cases our
Normal.dot files seem to get corrupted and need to be
deleted. In other cases we can't print the documents as
they appear on screen.

Is there a way to lock formatting in Word? Is there a way
to filter the returned documents through a template? Are
there guidelines that we should be following for better
collaboration with our clients?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun
8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[George Thompson]

Cindy,

Thanks for the good input.

We produce mostly hard copy printed documents that we
sent to respondents via snail mail so there isn't so much
a need for document protection. The clients that we work
with are another issue. They line to work directly with
our original Word documents to make changes / revisions to
the work that we started.

The features that you suggested - e.g. restores style
definitions and removes direct formatting. Are these
actual Word procedures? Or is this basically selecting the
text area and reapplying a style?

We have attempted to use some of these but have had only
limited success. Since everyone has their own methods of
getting work done in Word it often gets difficult to
determine what the client did to change the formatting.

 

[Jill]

George,

I don't have a suggestion for locking the format in Word, however, I can offer a viable solution. Sending a PDF version of the document will allow you to lock the format and send as a "Read Only" document.

There are many options available in PDF Writer Programs from free to fee. I downloaded a free version PDF995 suite and paid an additional $20 to get rid of the advertising.

 

[Mark]

If you are using a protected form, users should not be able to do anything
but insert their answers. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm and especially
the forms tutorials by Dian Chapman that this article links to.