Archives for February 22, 2012

[Originally appeared 1999.]

From time to time, I have written about the distinctions in tasks and skills that should exist between the staff who use Microsoft Word to write and produce documents and the staff who support and develop the Word environment. This and the following columns will describe those issues in detail for medium and large organizations. In those organizations, each of the roles described below may be staffed by different persons. Some of the skills may be best supported by outsourcing. There are lessons, however, for smaller organizations, or even individuals, in the divisions of responsibilities. The columns will develop that perspective as well.

No matter what the size of the organization, the ultimate measure of success with Microsoft Word is the experience of the end users. However trite that statement, it should never be forgotten as developers congratulate themselves on the elegance of their dialog box or programming code. For those who have worked directly with me, I acknowledge both the lapses and the need to obey that rule.

End users should be able to employ Microsoft Word to produce their organization’s standard documents with a minimum of effort devoted to formatting, troubleshooting or other distractions from getting the words (and images) right. The tools for accomplishing these tasks should be highly visible and accessible. End users should have available a set of templates, styles, AutoText, macros and other Microsoft Word tools that allow them to write documents in final form. Training should be centered on the tasks of producing those documents and using the appropriate tools to do the job.

This perspective on the experience of end users is critical to achieving the benefits that are supposed to accrue from computer usage, including efficiency, production speed, quality control and consistency. In (this year’s) consultant’s vocabulary, they enable reduced Total Costs of Ownership.

By these statements, I am not trying to argue that general users need not be sophisticated in their understanding of Microsoft Word, or that training should be “dumbed down.” In fact, we want a user community that understands precisely how Word works, so that they will embrace its most powerful features, such as thorough use of styles. We don’t want to burden end users with the responsibility for the development and presentation of those tools. We just want them to use them correctly.

Note in this discussion that I am not drawing a distinction between authors and secretaries. In many organizations (especially outside of traditional legal practice), authors have primary responsibility not only for the words in their documents, but their production as well. Secretaries may serve a number of authors, and have significant responsibilities besides producing documents. The title “secretary” is disappearing, replaced by “assistant.” In some markets, it can be very difficult to even hire secretaries. Given those developments, this orientation to the use and support for Microsoft Word has special force.

Let’s call the next level of responsibility and skill for Microsoft Word “master users.” These users have a thorough and deep understanding of the front end of Microsoft Word. They know all of the functions relevant to their organization outside of the Visual Basic Editor. No matter how well an organization develops its standard environment for Microsoft Word, there will be documents that require special handling and skill. In legal practice, for instance, public disclosure documents may incorporate a range of formatting and features far more complex than standard briefs or agreements. Assigning such tasks to master users allows greater quality control and ease of production, while avoiding significant frustration for users who haven’t mastered such functions.

Master users need to understand and manipulate features such as complex tables. They need to understand the intricacies of the division of documents into sections, with multiple headers and footers. They should understand fully the capabilities of styles, and know when special formatting requires new styles or direct formatting solutions. They should understand the use of fields, including cross reference and style reference fields. Where an organization’s documents require it, they should understand the full set of features for graphics and images. The skills for graphics production represent an even more specialized set of talents.

In the next column, we will look at the skills required for support and development.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

We have tried in this column to cover word processing issues useful for many types of organizations, drawing on experience from the practice of law. The issue of accurate word count makes that challenging. for those who aren’t lawyers (or more specifically, litigators). Please bear with us.

In Anthony Desilva, et al. v Joseph G. Dileonardi, US Marshal, Etc. (http://laws.findlaw.com/7th/991754A.html) the court excused a party from sanctions for exceeding the limit of the number of words permitted in a brief by Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32(a)(7). The court wrote in an opinion dated July 21, 1999:

Appellants’ brief was prepared with Microsoft Word 97, and an unfortunate interaction occurred between that software and the terms of Rule 32. All recent versions of Microsoft Word (Word 97 for Windows, Word 98 for Macintosh, and Word 2000 for Windows), and some older versions that we have tested, count words and characters in both text and footnotes when the cursor is placed anywhere in the document and no text is selected. In recent versions on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, choosing the Word Count function brings up a window listing the number of characters and words in the document. A checkbox at the bottom of the window reading “Include footnotes and endnotes,” when selected, yields a word count for all text and notes. But if the user selects any text in the document this checkbox is dimmed, and the program counts only the characters and words in the selected text. Microsoft Word does not offer a way to count words in those footnotes attached to the selected text.

This complicates implementation of Fed. R. App. 32(a)(7), which limits the allowable length of a brief to 14,000 words, and of a reply brief to 7,000 words. Under Rule 32(a)(7) (B)(iii), footnotes count toward this limit, but the “corporate disclosure statement, table of contents, table of citations, statement with respect to oral argument, any addendum containing statutes, rules or regulations, and any certificates of counsel do not count toward the limitation.” To determine the number of words that are included in the limit, counsel selects the “countable” body portions of the brief—which causes Microsoft Word to ignore countable footnotes. Counsel who do not notice that the count-footnotes box has been dimmed out may unintentionally file a false certificate and a brief that exceeds the word limits. That’s what happened to appellants’ lawyers. Older versions of Word have separate columns for text and footnote counts (plus a summation column), giving a visible cue that footnotes were not being counted when text had been selected, but current versions give only a consolidated count. When the count-footnotes checkbox is dimmed, even counsel who are aware that the brief contains footnotes may suppose that the software included these automatically. … Long-run solutions to this problem must come either from Microsoft Corporation—which ought to make it possible to obtain a count of words in footnotes attached to selected text—or from the national rulemaking process. We will send copies of this opinion to those responsible for such design decisions. In the meantime, we will flag this issue in the court’s Practitioner’s Guide and in materials distributed to counsel when an appeal is docketed. Law firms should alert their staffs to the issue pending a resolution at the software level. Our clerk’s office will spot-check briefs that have been prepared on Microsoft Word, are close to the word limit, and contain footnotes. Noncomplying briefs will be returned, and if the problem persists after there has been ample time for news to reach the bar we will consider what else needs to be done. (Counsel who use Word are not entitled to a litigating advantage over those who use WordPerfect.) For now, however, sanctions are inappropriate, and the order to show cause is discharged. “

Microsoft has now released a macro solution. It can be found at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/swcmacro.htm for Word 97 and Word 2000, 137kb download.

The solution is packaged in a file called swmacro.dot. It adds a “Selection Word Count” toolbar. That contains a launch button for a macro that will report the word count for selected text, with options for including or excluding the word count of footnotes and endnotes referenced by that text. The options are enabled by default.

Installation instructions can be found on the web page and further details are included in the text of the template itself. The download contains a self-executing zipped file, the execution of which launches Word and opens a document derived from swmacro.dot. It includes macro buttons that will either copy swmacro.dot to the Word startup directory, or include its code in normal.dot. The installation instructions include descriptions of necessary temporary changes to macro security settings during the installation process.

Law practices and others who wish to enable this solution may find it simpler to have central staff extract swmacro.dot from swmacro.exe. This can be done a zip file tool. For many users, copying swmacro.dot to their Word startup directory so that it is a global template will work fine. Organizations that have already implemented a procedure for updating files in the startup directory and should use it here. This will avoid the need for individual users making changes in security settings. This also avoids reliance on normal.dot.

The word count for this column (minus the title) is 900 (with 538 words quoted from the 7^th Circuit). Only lawyers could care so much?

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

[Originally published 1999.]

 

 Word of Law No. 18  began an exploration of the tasks, skills and division of labor for effective use and support of Microsoft Word by medium to large organizations. This column continues with the responsibilities and skills of the Microsoft Word help desk and development staff.

Help desk staff assist both general and master users in the application of the organization’s standards to document creation, editing and production. They have primary responsibility for troubleshooting the difficulties that inevitably occur. It should be no surprise that the skills required for these positions include all of the skills described for both general and master users. That statement is not trivial, and we will return to it. In addition, the support staff needs to master the techniques of diagnosis and cure. For instance, if the organization’s use of Microsoft Word has embraced the Laws of Styles, the help desk staff needs to know how to examine a misbehaving document for direct formatting, and the techniques for stripping that formatting and applying proper styles.

The help desk staff needs to understand the entire range of documents produced by the organization and the solutions adopted by the organization for their formatting. This can make for some interesting staffing challenges. On the one hand, help desk staff who have grown through the ranks from general user through master user may have the best knowledge of the real life requirements for document production. On the other, the help desk staff should teach and promote the organization’s standard solutions. These may differ from the field experience, and help desk staff should be flexible enough to master the new solutions.

The help desk staff are in an especially good position to identify needs for improvement or development of the Microsoft Word environment. They can and should identify customizations not yet incorporated in the organization’s standard templates, AutoText or other customization of the Word environment. They should be encouraged keep a log of such incidents and suggestions.

For these responsibilities, the help desk staff requires yet a deeper understanding of Microsoft Word. They need to understand the role of templates, styles, AutoText, macros toolbars and menus. They need to understand what functions can be performed by each of these, even if they don’t know how to program or modify them. They need to be adept with the research tools for Microsoft Word, including the help files, Microsoft’s Support Knowledge Base, newsgroups and the library of third party books.

One way to think of trainers is help desk staff who have been released from their desk and moved to the front of the classroom. Of course, success in training requires skills in teaching and public speaking, which we need not review here. My point is that the trainers should offer most of the skills and knowledge we have just described for the help desk. Above all, they need to understand and promote the solutions the organization has developed for its use of Microsoft Word. For trainers permanently employed by an organization, this is relatively straightforward. The growth path from help desk to trainer, as outlined here, can accomplish it well. When an organization acquires its training from an outside vendor, the task becomes more challenging. The training vendor should learn the organization’s environment and tools, and customize the curriculum to incorporate them.

Developers

Developers bear responsibility for the back end of an organization’s use of Microsoft Word. They build its standards, including templates, styles, AutoText and macros. They need to master Visual Basic for Applications to enable templates to take advantage of its capabilities for customization and user input. They need to master the design and creation of forms, if used by an organization, and how to program the use of forms with VBA. They need to understand how Microsoft Word can communicate with other applications, especially Microsoft Outlook or a document management system, to obtain or share information.

The capabilities and potential of VBA as an applications development environment has made “real” programming talent an essential part of an organization’s Microsoft Word skills. Here, though, there is a significant potential for a disconnect. This staffing model has been based on an accumulation of skills, each level building on and expanding from the earlier levels. Finding staff with all of the skills we have described for help desk who can then master VBA may be challenging. Similarly, staff hired because of their programming experience may not have sufficient experience or skill in the actual document production. It may not be possible to have all of these skills in one person or group of persons, but being conscious of the issue can help.

In the next column, we will examine the responsibilities for coordinating and directing these responsibilities through the role of a system architect. We will also look at the lessons for smaller organizations and individuals.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.