large document help

[VAS]

I have a 416pg document that has many graphics. The graphics are maps that
are anywhere from 9 to 20mb in size. Word reduces the size of these to around
2mb or less, but the size of the document is still too large. This has caused
much corruption of the document, and much frustration.
I have divided the document into several smaller docs, but one of them is
still too large.
The maps were exported out of their native program as emf's for quality
purposes(JPEG's do not work).
Does anyone know any way to work with large graphics in large documents?
The final product will be a pdf, but that doesn't help with the word editing
and formatting process.
Thanks in advance for any help
Vikki

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Vikki

One way to solve this problem is to link the pictures instead of embedding
them in the document. Then the document stores only the link, not the
picture.

To do that, Insert > Picture > From File. Select your picture. Instead of
clicking 'Insert', click the little arrow beside the Insert button and
choose Link to File.

That will insert a field in your document like the following: {
INCLUDEPICTURE "C:\\MyFolder\\MyPicture.jpg" \* MERGEFORMAT \d }.

The \d switch means 'don't store the picture itself in the document'.

You can update any field by clicking it and pressing F9. You can update all
fields in the document with ctrl-a to select all the text and then F9.
You can toggle between displaying the codes and displaying the result (the
image) with Shift-F9 (for the selected field) and Alt-F9 (for all fields).

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[CyberTaz]

Have you considered using Linking rather than Embedding the graphics?

 

[VAS]

Thank you, this was just what I needed. I didn't know there was a "link to"
in Word.
I had tried to get an answer to this before, must have asked the wrong way.
You are all awesome, and thanks for being a resource.