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How to reformat a complete document.
Okay, I was missing the "unformatted text" issue. I could do that if I had
hard copy of the doc so that I can see what the authors intended wrt italics, bold, special spacing, etc. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "AnnieB" wrote in message ... Those darned WP Typographic Symbols!!! Argh! Here's how I've tested the copy/paste unformatted text process (very unscientific test!) Once the doc is in Word 2003 ... save it ... then open in Word 97. If the WP Typographic Symbols still exist - they will appear in Word 97. I don't know about Word 2000, they do not appear after the above copy/paste unformatted text process in Word XP or 2003. (I keep Word 97 around on an old laptop because so darn many attorneys still use it. What are they waiting for???) I think the key to this is to paste unformatted text. Insert, File never did enough "cleanup" to make it worth leaning on, at least for the work I do with legal secretaries in small firms. YMMV! Give it a whirl, I'll do the same with Insert, File, and we'll se what we discover! "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Thanks for the tip! I'll have to try it the next time I'm forced to deal with a WP doc. Although fortunately this happens less and less frequently in my business, I'm about to begin a project that involves having a couple of dozen writers submitting short stories, and inevitably at least a couple of them will still be using WP. Now that I think of it, though, this is the method I use for these short stories: I have a template for the anthology that I use to (as a first step) create a separate file for each story (later they're assembled into the finished ms using Insert | File). I use Copy/Paste to dump (most of) the author's doc into it, and it seems to me that I'm still cleaning up the WP Typographic Symbols in some of those. FWIW, does Insert | File to operate the same way as copying and pasting without the final paragraph mark? I would expect it to. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "AnnieB" wrote in message ... Nope - opening the WP doc in Word works just fine. Done this for year's in firms where WP has gone bye-bye. Believe me, if it hadn't worked, I would've been strung up by groups of stressed legal secretaries! (Scary thought!) "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: If it does all that, it's definitely worth trying, but I would guess it would works well only if you could open the doc in WP and copy. I don't see how such a copy/paste would get rid of the section breaks after the document had been opened in Word. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "AnnieB" wrote in message ... IME it does get rid of the dreaded plethora (*lots* is an understatement!) of Section Breaks (continuous) and otherwise) left over from WP. Otherwise I couldn't have counted on using this process over the years. My experience is with Word 2000, XP, and 2003 vs. WordPerfect docs of much dubious heritage, age, and funkiness of their own. And ... it often gets rid of those nasty WP Typographic Symbols (is that the correct expression?) "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: The final paragraph contains *formatting,* not corruption; that's why you don't copy it. But this approach won't help if the WP document contains section breaks, which Word will think it does if the margins or header/footer change between pages; a converted WP doc will contain *lots* of section breaks. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "AnnieB" wrote in message ... Wanda, If you have a number of WordPerfect files which you expect to use in Word, here are a few ideas: 1) Investigate Levit & James (www.levitjames.com) product named CrossWords. This product does an incredible job converting WP documents to Word. Many law firms use this product. I've used it in many conversions from WP to Word. They provide excellent service and assistance in fine tuning the conversion for your set of WP documents. 2) Investigate MicroSystems (www.microsystems.com) - they also provide WP to Word conversion capabilities. Their approach is different from Levit & James. I have never used Microsystems WP to Word conversion product/system. 3) If neither of the above is a possibility, here's a taste of the approach I take at law firms who cannot or will not use the Levit & James product (CrossWords.) The approach works because it is based on the way Word works. Create a template containing a standard set of styles relevant to your documents. (This is usually done by the consultant working with the help desk or the "Word" person at the firm.) Make sure this template's page layout is as you desire. To improve Word's justification ( which is pretty crappy), go to Tools, Options, Compatibility and choose "Do full justification like WordPerfect 6.x for Windows". This template will be your "container" for the text in the old WP doc. (One other thought - I have seen way too many Normal templates with screwed up page layout, compatibility, etc. I am almost tempted to say close Word, blow away your Normal template and then open Word. It regenerates the Normal template.) It is helpful to print the WP document, so you can refer to it for formatting. Maybe your documents are not as long or rigidly formatted as some legal documents, so you may not have to print the document. Open the WP document in Word. Select all text EXCEPT the last paragraph mark. As far back as Word 1.1 we knew that this last paragraph mark can contain corruption and it can be helpful to not copy it. Open a document based on the template discussed above which contains your standard set of styles. The choose Edit, Paste Special, Unformatted Text. Now you have unformatted text in a Word container. Before you fixate on formatting paragraphs, words, etc. you should continue to work in a "top down" fashion. Insert Section Breaks where needed. Start at the first section and make page layout changes for that section as desired. Set up your page numbering in this first section, as desired. (BTW - Insert, Page Number from the menu is to be avoided. I have seen (and read) that the "frame" (what is it called nowadays?) in which the page number is placed can cause comparison problems when using, for example, a comparison product like DeltaView. There are other issues as well with that damned Insert, Page Number.) Proceed to the next section and make page layout changes, set up page numbering; continue on this way. Now you have a Word container whose sections are properly formatted, containing unformatted text. Now you can apply styles, and then proceed to formatting words (characters.) If you need to generate a TOC, TOA, or set up automatic paragraph numbering; or you need tables, etc. you can proceed in those directions, knowing the container for your document is nicely set. Maybe this helps ..? Or might have been overkill! AnnieB "wanda" wrote: I have a document in word office - document was transferred from an old word perfect program. After downloading the document, the format is wrong. |
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