Multiple Page Breaks

[Gandalf]

My brother is using a Powerbook G4 with Tiger installed. He also uses
Microsoft word 2004, which I also use. He gets files from authors
around the world. When he opens the file he will see sometimes hundreds
of page breaks with as little as one word per page. He then sends them
to me. I have Panther installed and do not see these page breaks at
all.
Has anyone seen this problem and fixed it?!
I could send you one of his files and see if you can duplicate the
problem.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Gandalf:

He is opening the files using the wrong format. Tell him to start Word,
then use File>Open from the MENU, and change "Enable" to "Word Document
Format".

Cheers

My brother is using a Powerbook G4 with Tiger installed. He also uses
Microsoft word 2004, which I also use. He gets files from authors
around the world. When he opens the file he will see sometimes hundreds
of page breaks with as little as one word per page. He then sends them
to me. I have Panther installed and do not see these page breaks at
all.
Has anyone seen this problem and fixed it?!
I could send you one of his files and see if you can duplicate the
problem.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Gandalf]

John,

We tried what you suggested, it did not make any difference. We are
going to see if his normal document template is corrupt. Any other
suggestions?

Chris

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Gandalf:

No: This problem is VERY characteristic of "wrong character set". Since
the internal character set of a Word document is always Unicode, that's not
it.

If YOU can open the same instance of the same file correctly, then it's a
valid Word document. Check this carefully: ask him to send YOU the same
original file as he is using, and explain to you how he got it. Explain how
to do this extremely painstakingly: It may turn out that he is opening a
different file from the one he is sending you, or that he's doing something
strange with it.

So somehow he has got the program into a condition where it is using the
wrong input converter to open the document.

I still think that a user who does not recognise this condition is using the
wrong file format in File>Open. Ask him to go back through the instructions
I just sent, and try to watch him, or have another knowledgeable Word user
watch him, while he does it.

You may discover that he is opening a compressed file (.zip, .sit, .sitx or
one of the others) without realising it. Users frequently hide their file
extensions in the Finder, then have no idea what type of file they're
actually trying to open.

The ONLY other suggestion I would make is "Ensure he's actually using WORD
to open the file. " Users who double-click things out of email programs can
get themselves into a deal of trouble if their file associations are
incorrect and they don't know enough to spot the fact that the document is
opening inside the wrong application.

Your description of "as little as one word per page" is utterly diagnostic.

There is a different problem: "Page Break Before defined as part of the
paragraph properties of Normal Style" which produces a similar condition,
but in that case you get one page per paragraph, no variations.

Hope this helps

John,

We tried what you suggested, it did not make any difference. We are
going to see if his normal document template is corrupt. Any other
suggestions?

Chris

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410