Printing from Word: summary

[Irene Wong <wongword -at- OZEMAIL -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

My question was:

I have a long document (about 90 pages) in MSWord 97 for Windows 95. It
is tagged to a template but also has some "manual"
formatting/finetuning. If the template is attached to it, it is fine. It
can be moved from pc tp pc and looks like the author intended.
How can I send this electronically to a printer?

ANSWER 1---------

Select Tools->Templates and Addins. Unmark the Automatically Update the
Document Styles check box. Now you can ship the file without the
template.
Background:
- When you create a file, all the styles in the template you base it on
are
copied to your document. So there are now two copies of the styles.
Automatic Update synchronises the styles in the document to match the
attached template. If you change templates, the new template styles are
copied to your document.
- If you send the file to someone else without the template, with
Automatic
update on, Word tries to open the attached template and update the
styles.
When it can't find it, it updates the styles from Nomal.dot (and creates
a mess).

ANSWER 2------------

What do you mean by a "printer." I will assume you mean an offset press
or
Docutech.

>>>Can it be sent in Word (presumably with a copy of the template)?

Yes. I have done this. It doesn't work well. The pre-press department at
your service bureau needs to be skilled in Word, and they typically
aren't.
They will also charge a pretty penny (and deserve it) for this kind of
work.
Plus, you are likely to suffer style changes, in that special,
unprompted
Word way. Further, font spacing and pagination will be subject to minor
changes due tot he change in printer. Bottom line: don't do it this way.

>>>Can the formatting be "frozen/unlinked" so that the template isn't
>>>needed?

Yes. Here's how I'd do it. Find out from your service bureau what
printer
driver you need to use. Create a PostScript print file from your Word
document. Supply the print file to your service bureau. You should be
all
set after that. Creating the print file also has the benefit of freezing
pagination and preventing those on-the-fly, unprompted, style changes
(it's
a feature, I swear <vbg>.

As an alternative, you could print out camera-ready copy at your site
and
supply that for offset printing or scanning into a Docutech.

>>>Can I send a pdf of the document to the printer?

You could, because all you would need to do is Distil the PostScript
print
file you make above. Certainly, this is one way you can inspect the
print
file, however, you should work with your service bureau on what their
needs
are. Some vendors will take PDFs, I just am unsure why the extra step is
necessary--and you must set up Distiller correctly.

ANSWER 3--------------
 would suggest talking to your printer first to find out how they want
to
handle getting the file. I suspect that creating a PDF and either
emailing
it to them or delivering on floppy will be the preferred choice. The
nice
thing about the PDF file is they can open it in the PDFReader and then
print
it using the driver they find most compatible with their way of doing
things. And you are assured that all of the formatting stays where you
intended it.

ANSWER 4------------------
The easiest and most reliable way to get a Word doc to the
printer is to get a copy of the printer driver the printer
will use (for example, the postscript driver for the docutech
printer), install it on your machine, and "print to file"
from Word. You can send the resultant .ps or .prn files to
your print vendor and everything should come out okay.


"ANSWER 5" from  Barry <with a Big Dopey Grin>
Send it electronically?
You have an alternate delivery method that is not electronic?
Please share it with us.
I would love to get some of the dang wires out of my office.


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=