[Originally appeared 2001.]
The arrival of the new year provides a good excuse to take stock of the major theme of the Word of Law columns, share some thoughts about putting these concepts into practice, and look ahead to the subjects deserving coverage this year.
This column is devoted to the art of successful use of Microsoft Word by medium to large organizations. Drawing and focusing on this author’s experience in the practice of law, technology and the combination of the two, we trust that the concepts and guidance have benefit for many organizations.
THE key theme of these columns has been the central role played by styles in Microsoft Word formatting. In this space and in our client work, we urge organizations to design and deploy a set of templates that allows their user community to prepare documents consistent both in appearance and underlying structure. Thorough use of styles allows documents to be CONSISTENT in appearance, with easily REUSABLE and INTERCHANGEABLE text, TRANSFORMABLE to the variety of formatting requirements of different authors or groups of authors within the organization.
However appropriate this statement may be as a goal, putting it into practice remains the test. We continue to hear of challenges to getting users to adopt style-based formatting.
I especially welcome your reactions to the following questions. Some of you have been kind enough to share your thoughts on these issues in the past, and I welcome updates.
Has your organization been successful in designing, deploying and using a set of Microsoft Word templates based on a thorough and consistent set of styles?
If you have been successful in promoting style-based formatting, what works best to teach it and sustain its use?
Besides troubleshooting problem documents, have you adopted any quality control procedures to examine and review formatting “in the wild?”
If you are successful in your organization, how do you deal with documents exchanged with other organizations?
Looking forward to the Word of Law in 2001, at least two subjects stand out for coverage. Document assembly is a very important part of our work. Many documents have standard content, portions of which contain predictable information and other portions of which should be selected for inclusion based on definable rules. As with other topics, we will consider the tools available, the roles of different members of professional and support staff in developing and maintaining document assembly systems, and the elements of design for construction and sustaining the systems. We will look at strategies using the tools of Microsoft Word, as well as third party programs that work with Word.
Assuming Office 10 arrives as expected later in the year, we will have an opportunity to revisit several topics, especially styles and numbering. From a relatively brief look at Office 10 Beta 2, there are new features in these areas that deserve careful coverage. There may be some suggestion that these new capabilities allow the benefits of styles without the “trouble.” I don’t expect to retreat from the advice given here, and trust (and will test) that it works as well or better in Office 10.
We look forward to continuing to intrigue and challenge you. Please keep reading.
This 2001 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.