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Brian Durant asked the other day about this. The following was posted
recently on microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs by John McGhie, who
knows all about using Word 97/2000 for heavy technical writing and a lot
more.
John has asked me to point out that he has no experience with Word 2001 on
the Mac; this applies only to W2000 for Windows.
HTH
John
>Don't bother fiddling with Word. Word 2000 SR-1 is
rock-solid.
>
>You can fiddle around with its internal settings using the
macros in Support9.dot, but I really wouldn't bother. I have found
that varying any of them from the standard settings decreases stability.
>
>Just make sure each user has their own writeable copy of Normal.dot, that
their computer has at least 128 MB of memory, and that they
have at least 2GB of writeable space available in their system's TEMP
location.
>
>Word will then run like a dream all day :-)
>
>BTW: It's worth the move to Windows 2000 if you have the option: it's more
stable under Windows 2000 than it is under NT4 or Win98/ME.
>
>The thing that causes most of the corruptions is master documents. Forbid
>users from using them. And as you rightly observe, Fast Saves. Make all
>users turn it off and leave it off. And saving to floppy disk. Word
>documents must never be opened on a floppy disk or disaster
> is minutes away.
>
>If you need a Word document on a floppy, save it, close it,
> then COPY it to the floppy. Never try to save it there.
>
>Now the remaining big problem is file format conversions.
>
>Tell ALL your users that a conversion from a Word version
> before 97 is one-way only. People get tempted to run Word 2000
> with Word 6/95 compatibility options and Word 6/95 set as the save format
>while their companies are transitioning. This is the kiss of death.
>It causes each document to be converted twice to a radically different
>format. Into Word 2000 object-oriented format on open, and back to Word 6
>object format on save. Three or four edits of a document with numbering in
>it and it's trash!
>
>Tell them to install Word 2000, to leave Word 2000 as their
>default save format, and stay there. If they need to make a
>document for someone with an earlier version, tell them to
>save the down-conversion under a new file
>name, mail it and delete it.
>
>Never try to work between the two formats. They should
>never need to do
>this: there is a Word 97/2000 converter available from
Microsoft as Freeware for Word 6, 95 and the Macintosh. Once the
>desktops that have yet
>to go up to Word 2000 have installed that, they can read
>Word 2000 documents directly.
> John McGhie, Technical Writer
> <john@mcghie-information.com.au>, <John.McGhie@asx.com.au>
> Ext: 7463; Direct +61 (02) 9227 0463; Mobile: 0412 091 410
> Bridge St. L4: Trading Systems, Market Operations
> Australian Stock Exchange
>
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: Thu Oct 19 2000 - 22:50:49 PDT