[Margaret]

It was my first week in a new Tech Writing job at a large consulting firm.
I was given a 260+ page Operational Manual that 4 prior authors had worked
on. Some had very limited knowledge of WORD.
I spend 3 days making edits and , of course, saving it each night.
On my fourth day coming to work, I was not able to open the document.
The IT Dept researched it and said it could only be retrieved by someone who
'knew XML'. They had no one and I don't know XML.
I happened to explain this to an admin asst.
She said I ought to send the doc to her. I did. She saved it as a 97-2003
ver and then it opened up ( at least this is what she told me, I didn't see
what she did).
But, WORD is not downward compatible, so formatting got screwed up.
My boss was convinced that the formatting was SO screwed up that I needed to
go back and start all over editing the original doc before any of my
editing...
Since I don't wish to have this happen again, what are the lessons learned
here?
Meaning, are these kinds of things common w/ WORD 07?
How badly was the formatting altered and how likely would I have been able
to reinstate/reformat the 'saved in 2003' version?
This document has a lot of hyperlinks to websites, embedded VISIO flow
charts, an index, TOC, etc.
ALso, the prior 'tech writer' made a TOC by making a bookmark out of each
heading in the TOC and NOT doing it using the right styles for creating a TOC
using the built in WORD TOC feature. I 've never seen someone do a TOC this
way.
Is there some sane reason someone can explain to me why that would have been
done?
THanks!
--
Margaret in Maryland (work in VA)