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Subject:Word and crashing From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, obair <obair81 -at- comcast -dot- net> Date:Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:03:05 -0400
Paul reports: <<A translation company working on a word file (produced
from a frame file) tell me that they are having word crashes as they do
the final desktop publishing work on the file, which is 100 MB.>>
You can often solve such problems by (a) creating a new file based on
the template and (b) importing the old file into that new file
(Insert-->File). A bit more drastically, you can copy everything except
the final paragraph marker into the new file. Both solve a range of
Word corruptions.
<<The many images in the word file are embedded, because that is how
mif2go made the word file, even though the images in the frame file are
referenced.>>
This suggests that your source material is in Frame, in which case (for
future reference) you should consider using a company that has access
to Frame and knows how to use it. The more often you convert files
between formats, the more likely you are to create unnecessary
problems--no conversion is ever perfect, and creeping imperfections can
cause major problems. For example, people I trust tell me that moving
files back and forth between Word and WordPerfect is a recipe for
disaster.
I can't say how mif2go might be creating problems, but the fewer
variables you have to consider, the less likely it is you'll encounter
such problems.
You didn't mention what graphic format you're using. My recollection is
that PC versions of Word had problems with bitmaps and metafiles; my
Mac version certainly does. That suggests you might want to use a
program such as Irfanview (http://irfanview.com/) to batch-convert your
graphics files into a more modern format such as GIF or PNG. (Test
these options on a few files to see how well they work before you go to
the trouble of converting everything.)
<<I can produce instead a word file with no images, and then they can
later go in and add the images manually, although I think the crashing
would then re-appear.>>
It can't hurt to try. Among other things, if you're translating the
document, the translation company should be creating and inserting
translated graphics for you.
<<I spent 10 minutes looking for help text on how to insert a linked
image in word, as one does in frame, and found nothing.>>
In my version (Word X for the Mac, roughly equivalent to Word 2000 on
the PC), there's a checkbox named "Link to file" right below the file
list. Selet that and you're done. I assume you're using a more recent
version of Word in which Microsoft has helpfully concealed this option
to avoid confusing us? <g> Odds are good that there's an "Options"
button or one of those damned annoying downward-pointing arrows to
expand the dialog box that will reveal what you need.
In my online help, the topics "Insert a picture from another file" and
"Reduce the size of a file by linking instead of inserting graphics"
provide the text you need; try using some of those keywords to figure
out how to do this for your version of Word.
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