Re: Word v.X freezes up when handling bullet points

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From: John McGhie (john_at_mcghie.name)
Date: 11/25/04 

Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:47:38 +1100

Hi Gareth/Nathan:

Nope, it's not a font problem, and there's nothing wrong with Word.

Welcome to the world-wide federation of Corrupt Document Owners. Your local
chapter meets every Tuesday in your city's largest football stadium.

First, I will explain how to fix it, then I will tell you what's wrong.

There are two ways to fix documents like this:

1) In Word 2004, save the document as a Web Page. Close it and re-open it,
and save it back as a document.

2) In Any version of Word, create a new blank document. CAREFULLY copy
everything EXCEPT the last paragraph mark from the old document to the new
document and save. (This is known in the trade as "Doing a Maggie" after a
charming lady named Maggie who has now explained how to do this 3,428,726
times...)

Saving as a web page is simplest, but it will convert any embedded pictures
into raster graphics (PNG...) if they were not already in that format. Most
people won't notice, but if you are printing to a laser printer or going out
to PDF later, your pictures will be fuzzy.

Warning

Your bullets and numbering (or some of them) are likely to change
formatting. That's where the problem was, and to fix it, Word has to
substitute default list formatting. Interestingly, the corruption usually
occurs in a list format that is no longer in use in the document, so you
will never be aware that it has gone.

There is a very small possibility that this process may delete some text.
You need to inspect the document afterwards to make sure that it hasn't.
Places to look carefully include inside tables, and in notes, end-notes and
headers and footers.

The problem is that some of the internal code in the document is corrupt.
During a save or a Maggie, Word completely rebuilds the internal code of the
document. In doing so, it discards anything it can't understand. It's
theoretically possible that you may have had some text in the bit it
discarded. Very unlikely, but it can happen. If it does, for god's sake
don't paste the missing bit in from the old document. If you do, you will
paste the problem back into your new document. Type it...

NOW FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF...

What's Wrong?

The List Templates are stuffed!

What's a List Template?

It's a collection of formatting. It contains all the measurements needed to
create a bulleted or numbered paragraph. The measurements are listed in a
table at the end of the document. Each paragraph that has a bullet or
number contains a pointer that indicates which list template to use to
format the bullet or number.

Why are you talking about Numbering?

Because to Word, a bullet is simply a special case of Number. It *is* a
number, but Word knows not to try to increment it.

Does this happen often?

Yes.

What causes it?

You do.

How?

We don't know... :-) Careless editing will cause it in minutes. Careful
editing may not cause it for years. Leaving tracked changes turned on but
hidden is almost guaranteed disaster. Copying text from a document with
different list formatting can do it. Copying from documents whose list
formatting is already bad will certainly cause it. Dragging and dropping
list text within tables is likely to cause it. Using Format>Bullets and
Numbering instead of Styles is likely to cause it. Customising
Format>Bullets and Numbering bullets or numbers is even more likely to cause
it.

Why doesn't Microsoft Fix it?

Because they're stubborn. Because they won't admit they were WRONG with the
design of this mechanism. They were wrong in 1986 when they designed this.
And they're still wrong!

When they designed the output mechanism for creating web pages, they solved
the problem by adopting a different format and a different structure.
That's why Save As Web Page fixes it: the internal structure of the file
automatically corrects the problem.

Notice that they call it "Save as Web Page" and not "Save as HTML"? That's
because the result is NOT HTML. HyperText Mark-up Language is great for
making lightweight web pages suited for the Internet of yesteryear when
Modems for real people ran at 1,200 bps and I looked enviously at people who
could afford the 28.8 kbps speed-demons. But HTML does not contain a wide
enough vocabulary to describe anything anywhere near as complex as a Word
document.

The output of "Save as Web Page" from Word is XML. Actually, WordML, which
is an eXtensible Mark-up Language application. Because XML is -- well --
"extensible", it will correctly describe anything you like. Including a
Word document.

And if you insist on opening the document in BBEdit and looking at the code,
you deserve your grizzly fate. Word ML was designed for Word to read, not
you! And "puhlease" spare us the whining about how Microsoft and the Forces
of Evil have corrupted or bloated HTML. A Word web page is not HTML.
That's not the language they're using. They don't say it is HTML. It's
XML, which is a different language. End of story :-)

If you really have an appetite for this stuff and trace the code, you will
find that a Word HTML document is full of compiler directives that enable a
modern web browser to deconstruct it and pull out only the HTML statements.
Some browsers can't interpret XML, so they will ignore it. Internet
Explorer can, and will use most of it. A modern browser on computer with
Word installed will recognise the code for what it is, and hand it off to
Word which will open it as a document. Very neat and convenient for users,
but it requires a lot of ugly code to do it :-)

Hope this helps

On 26/11/04 2:53 AM, in article
862c0e57.0411250753.5bfe9eb@posting.google.com, "Gareth"
<gareth@garethjordan.com> wrote:

> nathan.fitzpatrick@gmail.com (Nathan Nelson-Fitzpatrick) wrote in message
> news:<fba0eb70.0411241600.51134e47@posting.google.com>...
>> Yesterday I noticed that Word v.X was freezing up (necessitating a
>> force quit) when I opened up any document that had bullets in it.
>> When I open word back up it offers to open up the lost version of the
>> document that just caused it to crash, the document comes up missing
>> any bullets it had. Word appears to function normally until I try to
>> put bullet points into any new document I'm making. Any help with
>> this problem would be most appreciated.
>>
>> Here's a bit of my system history. I'm using OS 10.3.6 on a 4 month
>> old powerbook. I had installed the new iCal update the day I
>> encountered the problems and installed Acrobat Pro about 1.5 weeks
>> before (I had used acrobat and Word successfully since then though,
>> until yesterday). After experiencing problems I repaired permissions
>> on the disk and updated office, but the problems were not solved. I'm
>> a bit of a Mac noob, but I hope I've given all the required
>> information.
>
> Yes,
> I have just noticed the same thing - I assumed it was a font problem,
> but it also happens when standard fonts are used such as Times :-(
>
> I am using 10.3.6 and the latest auto-updated version of Office 2004.
>
> I deleted all old prefs from Office 2004, and then it seemed that no
> bullets appeared when I clicked on the 'bullets' tab in the menu bar.
> The only way I have managed to get bullets onto a new Word 2004
> document is to click on the text that you want to make into bullets,
> and then click on the 'Numbered Bullets' in the toolbar. This will now
> give you a 'numbered' list.
>
> Next, double click on the numbers that precede the text, and you
> should be presented with the 'Bullets & Numbering' dialogue box.
>
> The tabs at the top allow you to change the type of bullets - so click
> on the first tab that allows you to make the numbered bullets into
> 'proper bullet points'.
>
> From here you can select different types of bullet points and apply
> them to the selected text.
>
> This really is a lengthy workaround for something that should already
> work - I am sure it is a bug and only seemed to appear after the
> latest 'auto-update' from Microsoft.
>
> btw - I am also getting an error message when quitting Excel
> "Compile Error in hidden module: AutoExec"
> It doesn't seem to affect the Excel doc, but wondered if this was at
> all related? 

-- 
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.  Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

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