Tom
I work as a technical writer, and our output formats are predefined by the
customer. My longest document totaled more than 400 pages, and included front
matter (toc, lists of xxx, yyy,etc.) 6 chapters, 3 appendices, and back
matter.
Our chapter structure is
1.1 MAJOR SECTION HEADING (HEADING 1, OUTLINE LEVEL 1)
paragraphs of Body text style,
figures (graphics or tables) with two tier captions
1.1.1 Subsection heading (HEADING 2, OUTLINE LEVEL 2)
paragraphs of Body text style,
figures (graphics or tables) with two tier captions
1.1.1.1 Sub sub section heading (HEADING 3, OUTLINE LEVEL 3)
etc.
Although our structure defines up to five levels, we only generate TOCS for
outline levels 1,2,3. We type seperate lists of acronyms, and a seperate
glossary. We don't index (although I think we should).
Although, I'm not an MVP, I believe they would concur that if you want book
like structure then you should start future documents using some of the more
advanced features of word that support book like features, i.e., styles,
outlining, etc.
As for your current document, if you have major sections and minor sections
then you could at least generate a TOC. Insert a few major section title
pages, or insert tabbed divider papers and a basic 30pg proposal becomes a
little sexier and a little less wieldly.
To create your TOC, you will have to mark, or verify that the major minor
headings were associated with a heading style.
To check this, we will change a setting in the tools options settings, and
then switch to normal view. Click on tools menu, options, View tab. At the
bottom is a setting named Style area width. Set this to 1.5". Return to the
doc.
Switch to normal view. (view menu, normal).
At the left side of the document pane you should see a 1.5" wide pane that
lists the styles associated with each paragraph. If your headings are
associated with a heading style, i.e. heading 1, heading 2, etc. then you can
easily create a toc. If your headings do not show a heading style, then you
choose to apply the heading style (format menu, styles and formating. Task
pane, all available styles or styles in use).
To apply a style to a paragraph
Use the mouse to select the paragraph that is your top heading, apply
Heading 1; select heading 2, apply; etc.) If the format of heading 1, or 2
doesn't meet your needs then from the task pane modify the styles settings.
The MVP sites contain lots of detailed help for styles.
A note about Styles:
Styles are a very powerful feature for control of a document's structure and
formatting. A style definition can contain more than 150 format and other
settings that can be applied to a character, paragraph, table, or figure with
a single click.
Word contains more than 200 predefined styles and can automatically create
and apply styles to your document, via the use an intelligent (a matter of
opinion) format analyzer.
The power of styles is two fold. First the user only has to make the
formating choices once, when he/she creates the style, and secondly, if the
user changes their mind, about the styles format thye can quckly change
settings throughout the document.
For example, if a 200 pg document was created wherein the style for heading
1 used Arial 12pt bold, all caps, and the customer/boss, decides at the last
minute that they want heading 1 to use Times New roman, 14pt, italics, mixed
case; it is not a problem. The author/editor merely has to go to the style
defintion, and make the changes to the definition, and then apply the
defintion to the document. Voila, all of the heading 1 paragraphs will be
changed.
