Repagination

[Hal]

I have a client with a large Word document that she's editing. She's using
Word X with the 10.1.2-10.1.5 updates applied and running MacOS 10.2.6.

When she deletes or adds text to the document and highlights a section to
get a word count, Word wants to completely repaginate the document. I've had
her turn off background pagination in preferences, but that's done nothing.
Is there a way to get Word to avoid repaginating every time she wants to do
a word count on the edited material?

Hal

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Hal,

Word won't paginate if you're in Normal View as opposed to Page Layout view.
Working in Normal View is also faster since Word doesn't have to display
graphics (and paginate), so it is the most efficient view to work in when
possible.

If she doesn't need to see the graphics in the document while she's working
on it, have her switch to Normal View. If she does, then she'll have to
live with the pagination.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Hal]

She's working in the Normal view and still it repaginates the file when she
chooses Word Count from the Tools menu. I suggested she activate the Live
Word Count preference and not use Tools/Word Count to avoid the problem.
FYI, the document is more than 150 pages in length.

 

[Hal]

The Live Word Count feature seems to work well (Preferences/View). There is
a limitation to this feature, however. If the word count in a document
exceeds 100,000 words, the feature disappears.

Hal

 

[REvans]

Returning the question of background repagination, is Word X designed
not to repaginate in Normal view, or is that just the way it works? I
have been using Word X for the last 9 months and features that I was
use to in my old copy of Word 97 (running in Win95) do not work in
Word X. For example, background repagination in Normal view.

I have tried everything I dare to try to get the background
repagination preference to stay on. (In addition, the "Automatically
use suggestions from the spelling checker" in the Auto Correct options
keeps turning itself on every time I start Word.) I have trashed
preferences (including the ones suggested earlier in this thread) and
wiped the application from my hard drive and reinstalled it and the
updates. Is my copy of Word special or are these two problems --
background repagination and auto spell correct -- universal?

-Robert.

 

[Hal]

First, have you installed all of the updates for Word? There are three of
them to the best of my knowledge - 10.1.2, 10.1.4 and 10.1.5.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

To address your original question: Word repaginates with Word Count because
Word Count also counts pages (and paragraphs, and etc) (at least in my Word
2001, I doubt they changed it--I'd say it's a relatively good design
feature).

But your original question mentioned selections--when I do a Word Count on a
selection, I only get a page count for the selection, not the whole
document. Is this different in her Word X? If so, that sounds like bad
design, or a bug. Complain via Feedback.

If counting pages takes a really long time with a document of 150 pages, the
problem is why is Word so slow? (I did get a noticeable pause on my test of
407 pages, and a slight one on the 47pp test, and people say 2001 is faster
with long documents than X).

The workaround, I should think, would be writing a macro that counts the
words and only the words. (Or that at least doesn't count the pages) Anyone
out there, is this possible?

(I tried to follow the directions in VBE help to modify the Word Count
macro, but since that macro consists of one line w/o separate instructions
for different statistics, it didn't work so well. Any way to *add* to the
macro to tell it not to count pages? Or to break it down into different code
for different statistics? I know very little re macros)

Workaround #2--constantly focusing on word count can be unhealthy anyhow
when writing long documents (Live Word Count drives me insane...."ooh, it
went up by 3! oh, no, I deleted 10 words"). So only hit word count when
getting up for a quick break, or paused for thought anyhow, and then the
repaginating pause will not be noticeable.

Dayo

 

[John McGhie [MVP]]

Hi Robert:

In either Normal or Page Layout Views, Word repaginates "when it needs to".
In Normal View, that is rarely, because it does not have to display the
result as a paginated document.

In Page Layout View, almost any editing change will trigger a pagination so
Word can display the result as WYSIWYG. That's why Page Layout View is so
power-hungry (and slow!) and not recommended for working in long documents.

A "long" document to Word is something in the region of 500 pages. The
ultimate giddy limit is something like 5,500 pages in a single file.

Just a word on "background repagination". The appearance of the background
pagination checkbox is actually a hangover from the days when the control
used to exist. These days, the control is ignored and pagination is always
in the background. However, when editing in Page Layout View, "some"
operations have to wait for pagination to complete before they can accept
text changes.

The Automatically use suggestions..." button should stay the way you set it:
if it doesn't you have a bad preference file.

Hope this helps


This responds to article <[email protected]>,

Returning the question of background repagination, is Word X designed
not to repaginate in Normal view, or is that just the way it works? I
have been using Word X for the last 9 months and features that I was
use to in my old copy of Word 97 (running in Win95) do not work in
Word X. For example, background repagination in Normal view.

I have tried everything I dare to try to get the background
repagination preference to stay on. (In addition, the "Automatically
use suggestions from the spelling checker" in the Auto Correct options
keeps turning itself on every time I start Word.) I have trashed
preferences (including the ones suggested earlier in this thread) and
wiped the application from my hard drive and reinstalled it and the
updates. Is my copy of Word special or are these two problems --
background repagination and auto spell correct -- universal?

-Robert.

--
All Spam and attachments blocked by Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X. Please
post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer <[email protected]>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs

 

[REvans]

Yes, in my original configuration I had installed 10.1.2, 10.1.3,
10.1.4, and 10.1.5. Since reinstalling Word, I have applied only
10.1.2, 10.1.4 and 10.1.5. I thought that the problem might have come
from the incremental updates of the OS so I reinstalled the whole
office package and applied the updates to my current OS (10.2.8).
However, the problem has existed for months now, in other words, I
can't correlate the appearance of the problems with any specific
software installation, OS or otherwise. I have Disk First Aid many
times and corrected permissions and repaired the disk. I am a
knowledgeable computer user, but I certainly am not a command line
kind of guy, so I haven't tried changing anything through the shell.

So I take it that my problem is not common, that there is probably
something wrong somewhere on my computer? Any thoughts are welcome.

-Robert.

 

[John McGhie [MVP]]

Sorry Robert:

I have lost the thread here. I am not sure which problem you are
addressing.

Did you read my earlier answer? Your repagination problem comes down to
"that's the way it works". Stop chasing repagination: the setting is fixed
and there's nothing you can do about it.

Cheers


This responds to article <[email protected]>,

Yes, in my original configuration I had installed 10.1.2, 10.1.3,
10.1.4, and 10.1.5. Since reinstalling Word, I have applied only
10.1.2, 10.1.4 and 10.1.5. I thought that the problem might have come
from the incremental updates of the OS so I reinstalled the whole
office package and applied the updates to my current OS (10.2.8).
However, the problem has existed for months now, in other words, I
can't correlate the appearance of the problems with any specific
software installation, OS or otherwise. I have Disk First Aid many
times and corrected permissions and repaired the disk. I am a
knowledgeable computer user, but I certainly am not a command line
kind of guy, so I haven't tried changing anything through the shell.

So I take it that my problem is not common, that there is probably
something wrong somewhere on my computer? Any thoughts are welcome.

-Robert.

--
All Spam and attachments blocked by Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X. Please
post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer <[email protected]>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs

 

[Will Simmons]

If counting pages takes a really long time with a document of 150 pages, the
problem is why is Word so slow? (I did get a noticeable pause on my test of
407 pages, and a slight one on the 47pp test, and people say 2001 is faster
with long documents than X).

Running Word 98 under OS 9.2.2 on a Power Mac beige G3 with 352 MB Built-in
memory.

Upon reading this post I pulled up what I knew to be a very long document
and hit Tools-Word Count. Word counted 612,798 words and 1,902 pages in
exactly 29 seconds.

So what's all the stuff in this thread about slowness and 100,000 page
limits in Word 10.X ? Don't tell me it's not as efficient as ole Word 98.

-- Will --

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

,



Running Word 98 under OS 9.2.2 on a Power Mac beige G3 with 352 MB Built-in
memory.

Upon reading this post I pulled up what I knew to be a very long document
and hit Tools-Word Count. Word counted 612,798 words and 1,902 pages in
exactly 29 seconds.

So what's all the stuff in this thread about slowness and 100,000 page
limits in Word 10.X ? Don't tell me it's not as efficient as ole Word 98.

-- Will --

Actually, Will, John McGhie has been pretty clear that Word X is slower than
2001, and that the difference mostly shows up with long documents, mainly (I
think) because Word X is not properly "tuned" to take advantage of OS X. I
and at least one other poster have decided waiting for the next version of
Office makes more sense than going to X now, based on John's comments. You
can try using Google Groups to search for some of his posts, they have lots
of great info about how Word works, but I'm afraid I don't remember any
subject lines. (I know I have some saved, but can't find them right now--or
then again, try "several issues with word", "terrible editing speed with
word-X" and "Word v.X and Slow")

Wordcount on my 407pp doc took 15 secs, running 2001 under 9.2.2 with 256MB
RAM, but I imagine how much memory you have specifically assigned to Word
also makes a difference, pre-OS X.

Dayo