TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Mark Emson wonders: <<Does anyone know of a fix for MS Word documents that
just keep on growing? E.g. you create a document and save it. Its size is
100K Later, you open the doc again, add something and the size increases to
105K. Later still you decide to take the addition out and stick with the
first draft but when you save it, it has grown again to 110K. WHYYYYYY!>>
The most common cause is that someone switched on "fast saves" in the
preferences (under the Tools menu, select Options and open the Save tab).
That's a recipe for disaster, so if you happen to have fast saves enabled,
turn it off now and never use it again. If you're using "versioning" (under
the file menus), the problem sometimes arises because all those previous
versions take up space and everyone forgets that they're there; open the
File menu, select Version, then select and delete any old versions that are
stored in the file. (If you need to keep a "paper trail" of previous
versions, make a backup copy of the old file first.) I do know that using
revision tracking also adds to the length of a file, and may leave its own
debris behind even after you've accepted the revisions, but I haven't
confirmed whether there's anything you can do about this.
<<I've just reduced a 2000K file down to 190k by cutting and pasting it to
notepad, back into word and then re-applying the chosen styles. Similarly if
I copy the doc and then past it into a new blank template the file size
reduces by a few K. It carries on shrinking each time the action is carried
out.>>
Word seems to accumulate junk, even when you do a "save as" under a new file
name. Don't waste your time cutting and pasting into Notepad; do "select
all", then copy and paste the result into the new template. That way, you
don't have to reapply the templates. I don't know why this cleans up all the
detritus, but it does. One thing that might help would be to delete the
graphics and reimport them once you've saved the new version of the file;
Word has never been particularly good about handling graphics, so it
wouldn't surprise me if much of the source of the problem is accumulated red
tape related to handling the graphics.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is
by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause
accidents."-- Nathaniel Borenstein
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by Information Mapping, Inc., a professional services firm
specializing in Knowledge Management and e-content solutions. See http://www.infomap.com or 800-463-6627 for more about our solutions.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
