Large Word doc--why?

[Charles]

I have a Word doc that is 624 KB but only one page long.

Any idea as to why it might be so large? There don't appear to be any
images in it.

Charles

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Charles -

Without anything more to go on its hard to say, but bloated files can be
caused by any combination of numerous factors, such as:

Extensive revision using direct formatting
Allowing Fast Saves
Saving Preview Picture
Using Word's Versions feature
Using Master Documents
Continuous use of Tracked Changes
Objects (not limited to images)
Saving as RTF rather than .doc
Macros & other customizations
Using many fonts
Content copied/pasted from other sources
Plus any number of other possibilities as well as corruption.

Depending on your version of Word (which should always be mentioned) try one
of the first 3 steps on this page & see if that helps:

http://word.mvps.org/mac/documentcorruption.html

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Charles]

Depending on your version of Word (which should always be mentioned) try one
of the first 3 steps on this page & see if that helps:

http://word.mvps.org/mac/documentcorruption.html

I am using Word 2008. (I also have 2004.) The document in question is a
..doc and was probably created with Word X or whatever Macintosh OS
9-compatible version of Word preceded that.

I opened the document in TextWrangler and see that before and after the
text that appears when the document is opened in Word, there are very
long lists of names, in no apparent order. It looks as if they probably
came from an address-book application.

My question is how they got in there in the first place and why they
don't appear when the .doc is opened in Word.

Charles

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Charles -

Open it in Word. Turn on the non-printing characters (¶) and you may be able
to see that content. You can then select & delete it if you didn't already
do so in Text Wrangler. It showed up there because most text editors don't
observe that character formatting attribute.

I'm guessing that the stuff has been formatted as Hidden. I'm further
guessing that someone pasted content from elsewhere without realizing what
was going on.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Charles]

Open it in Word. Turn on the non-printing characters (¶) and you may be able
to see that content. You can then select & delete it if you didn't already
do so in Text Wrangler. It showed up there because most text editors don't
observe that character formatting attribute.

I'm guessing that the stuff has been formatted as Hidden. I'm further
guessing that someone pasted content from elsewhere without realizing what
was going on.

The document already had the non-printing characters turned on, but the
extra text is still hidden. If I delete the last paragraph mark and open
the document in Text Wrangler, the hidden text is gone and the document
size goes down from 624 to 32 KB.

I would have thought this pasted content too but since it's a mish-mash
of a few e-mail messages and a giant number of address-book names, I
suspect it is probably the result of some kind of macro interacting with
an e-mail program--it doesn't look like anything you would copy and
paste.

Charles