VERY strange Word behavior-text boxes

[dfritzin]

I am trying to prepare a small grant proposal, which has much text, and
3 graphics with associated text boxes as figure legends. I started this
proposal by having 4 separate documents (Specific aims, Significance,
Preliminary Results, and Research Plan and Methods), which I have just
joined into the final document for final editing. At this point, I
won't mention my problems getting the figures to go, and stay, where I
want them. What I will bring up is another, very strange behaviour I am
seeing. Two of the text boxes have, for some reason known only to Word
(2004) become joined at the hip, as it were. One shows up as a text
box, while the second shows up as body text. If I try to edit the one
that shows up as body text, the text box also gets edited, so that the
two text boxes remain identical. What have I done to have this happen,
and, more importantly, how do I stop this stupid behavior.

BTW, PM G5 (Dual 2.0, RevA, 1 Gig RAM) running OSX.4.4 with all
updates. In addition, Office has all updates as well.

Thanks in advance,

Dave Fritzinger

 

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

Hi Dave:

What you have "not" done is understand the concept of graphics anchors in a
Word document. Chances are, you were not even aware that "Text Boxes" are
'actually' graphics objects -- little pictures...

So you can't just hack and chop with impunity when joining up such
documents. You have to first carefully construct the documents so that you
know what objects are anchored to which paragraphs, then ensure that you
carefully select not just the text box but the paragraph it is anchored to,
and that the margins of all of the documents are set to the same dimensions.

Basically, we are yet again victims of a mechanism that "looks" simple on
the surface, but behind the scenes is quite complex.

Let's start by reading a few Help topics:

" About positioning text and graphics"

" Position an object in relation to page, text, or other anchor"

" I can't keep an object on the same page as its accompanying text."

" Comments, footnotes, and some fields don't work in linked text boxes."

One of the more important things to remember is that, when producing a
complex document like this, you really should operate with Show/Hide turned
ON so you can see all of your nonprinting characters. Without it, you are
editing blind and you will get these "accidents" and strangenesses.

It would sound as though one of your problems is that you have pasted one
text box inside another. Cut it, then re-paste it outside the first text
box, then drag it into place.

Your larger problem is that you are not clear about the difference between
inline and floating graphics, and have not carefully controlled which
graphics need to be floating and what they are anchored to.

I normally avoid floating graphics, because they are very difficult to
control in a Word document in which the text is designed to flow without
constraint. I set 99.99 per cent of my pictures to be "inline with text"
and use the properties of the paragraph containing them to position them. I
commend the strategy to you.

If you really need floating graphics with text wrapping around them, then
you need to become an expert at graphics anchoring. Having read the help
topics above, have a look here:
<http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/DrawingGraphics.htm>

Ignore the fact that the site is written about PC Word: they're pretty much
the same program, with slightly different keystrokes. Just about everything
you see there will work in Mac Word (except some of the macros).

There's a bug in Safari that makes it struggle to load that site: hit
"Reload" until the text appears, or use a different browser.

Cheers

I am trying to prepare a small grant proposal, which has much text, and
3 graphics with associated text boxes as figure legends. I started this
proposal by having 4 separate documents (Specific aims, Significance,
Preliminary Results, and Research Plan and Methods), which I have just
joined into the final document for final editing. At this point, I
won't mention my problems getting the figures to go, and stay, where I
want them. What I will bring up is another, very strange behaviour I am
seeing. Two of the text boxes have, for some reason known only to Word
(2004) become joined at the hip, as it were. One shows up as a text
box, while the second shows up as body text. If I try to edit the one
that shows up as body text, the text box also gets edited, so that the
two text boxes remain identical. What have I done to have this happen,
and, more importantly, how do I stop this stupid behavior.

BTW, PM G5 (Dual 2.0, RevA, 1 Gig RAM) running OSX.4.4 with all
updates. In addition, Office has all updates as well.

Thanks in advance,

Dave Fritzinger

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[dfritzin]

Hi Dave:

What you have "not" done is understand the concept of graphics anchors in a
Word document. Chances are, you were not even aware that "Text Boxes" are
'actually' graphics objects -- little pictures...

So you can't just hack and chop with impunity when joining up such
documents. You have to first carefully construct the documents so that you
know what objects are anchored to which paragraphs, then ensure that you
carefully select not just the text box but the paragraph it is anchored to,
and that the margins of all of the documents are set to the same dimensions.

Basically, we are yet again victims of a mechanism that "looks" simple on
the surface, but behind the scenes is quite complex.

Let's start by reading a few Help topics:

" About positioning text and graphics"

" Position an object in relation to page, text, or other anchor"

" I can't keep an object on the same page as its accompanying text."

" Comments, footnotes, and some fields don't work in linked text boxes."

One of the more important things to remember is that, when producing a
complex document like this, you really should operate with Show/Hide turned
ON so you can see all of your nonprinting characters. Without it, you are
editing blind and you will get these "accidents" and strangenesses.

It would sound as though one of your problems is that you have pasted one
text box inside another. Cut it, then re-paste it outside the first text
box, then drag it into place.

Your larger problem is that you are not clear about the difference between
inline and floating graphics, and have not carefully controlled which
graphics need to be floating and what they are anchored to.

I normally avoid floating graphics, because they are very difficult to
control in a Word document in which the text is designed to flow without
constraint. I set 99.99 per cent of my pictures to be "inline with text"
and use the properties of the paragraph containing them to position them. I
commend the strategy to you.

If you really need floating graphics with text wrapping around them, then
you need to become an expert at graphics anchoring. Having read the help
topics above, have a look here:
<http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/DrawingGraphics.htm>

Ignore the fact that the site is written about PC Word: they're pretty much
the same program, with slightly different keystrokes. Just about everything
you see there will work in Mac Word (except some of the macros).

There's a bug in Safari that makes it struggle to load that site: hit
"Reload" until the text appears, or use a different browser.

Cheers

Hi. Thanks for the useful information. I think the problem turned out
to be that the file was corrupted. My evidence for this is as follows:
1. It couldn't be opened by Word on a PC.
2. Getting rid of the graphics and trying to save the file repeatedly
resulted in Word crashing (MS has multiple crash messages from me).
What I have done is to resurrect thte file by pasting all the text into
a new file, then pasting in the graphics. Now things are acting as they
should.

As I stated in my original post, the problem wasn't so much the
anchoring of text boxes and graphics, it was the fact that I wasn't
able to have seperate text boxes for two different graphics. When I
typed text into a text box that was the figure legend for one figure,
the same text was typed into a "phantom" text box (meaning the text
appeared, but I was unable to select the text box, and selecting type
and changing it changed the type in the first text box as well). In
hindsight, that probably should have told me I had a problem with a
corrupted file, as should the fact that Word was crashing more often
than normal (Having said this, usually Word 2004 is pretty stable on my
system). So, putting all of this together, especially the fact that
Word was crashing repeatedly, told me the file, or some of the graphics
in the file, were corrupted.

Thanks again,