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#1
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Very large Word files
Hi,
Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
#2
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Very large Word files
Sorry, of course I meant 4GB of RAM, Core2Duo processors as well. Windows XP.
"Bob Arco" wrote: Hi, Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
#3
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Very large Word files
You may find something that is of use to you in the following article by
fellow MVP, Daiya Mitchell: http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm -- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com "Bob Arco" wrote in message ... Hi, Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
#4
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Very large Word files
I hope this message gets through. I keep getting a "Service Temporariliy
Unavailable" message. I feel for you, Bob. Our tech writing group thinks 600 pages is big, but 6,000? Wow. Does your final document need to be published as a Word file? What we do is break "big" documents up into individual chapters or sections, and then generate a TOC that spans all the documents. (For creating a TOC that covers multiple documents, see http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=148 .) Then, when we're ready to publish the final report, we create PDFs of each section/chapter/appendix and then use Adobe to create one PDF that contains the entire document. For my latest big document (about 700 pages), the Word files added up to about 80 megs, but the PDF was a little under 6 megs. Good luck with your 6,000-page monster. Fred "Bob Arco" wrote: Hi, Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
#5
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Very large Word files
I hope this message gets through. I keep getting a "Service Temporariliy
Unavailable" message. I feel for you, Bob. Our tech writing group thinks 600 pages is big, but 6,000? Wow. Does your final document need to be published as a Word file? What we do is break "big" documents up into individual chapters or sections, and then generate a TOC that spans all the documents. (For creating a TOC that covers multiple documents, see http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=148 .) Then, when we're ready to publish the final report, we create PDFs of each section/chapter/appendix and then use Adobe to create one PDF that contains the entire document. For my latest big document (about 700 pages), the Word files added up to about 80 megs, but the PDF was a little under 6 megs. Good luck with your 6,000-page monster. Fred "Bob Arco" wrote: Hi, Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
#6
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Very large Word files
Okay, so when it finally went through I got two copies posted. Better than
none, I guess. I just wanted to add that we always create our TOC using the "RD fields" described in the article I linked you to. Those flelds went at the back of our "Front Matter" section. You need to update the RD fields whenever you rename your chapters for a new draft. For example, in the 700-page DSA I mentioned, the RD codes for Draft 6E looked like this: { RD "Chapter-01_Rev6E.doc" \f }. If I updated from Draft 6E to 6F, I needed to update the RD codes to reflect the exact file names for each document that formed the final document. Fred "Idaho Word Man" wrote: I hope this message gets through. I keep getting a "Service Temporariliy Unavailable" message. I feel for you, Bob. Our tech writing group thinks 600 pages is big, but 6,000? Wow. Does your final document need to be published as a Word file? What we do is break "big" documents up into individual chapters or sections, and then generate a TOC that spans all the documents. (For creating a TOC that covers multiple documents, see http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=148 .) Then, when we're ready to publish the final report, we create PDFs of each section/chapter/appendix and then use Adobe to create one PDF that contains the entire document. For my latest big document (about 700 pages), the Word files added up to about 80 megs, but the PDF was a little under 6 megs. Good luck with your 6,000-page monster. Fred "Bob Arco" wrote: Hi, Our Tech Writing group uses Word 2003, and they work with very large files. These are scientific reports, which have to be strictly version controlled once they are complete, and as such it is most convenient to contain the entire report, often in the neighborhood of 500 pages with lots of embedded charts and tables, in a single file. They are usually over 20MB. One particular client who is very demanding and likely to insist on a single file is currently requiring a 3000 page document, over 128MB in size, and this is nearly impossible to work with. The tech writers can break it into pieces for draft and review, but the final document needs to be whole, they say. Now they are looking at doing a study for which the report will be over 6000 pages, including embedded tables and charts, and I have no idea how they can possibly do it. They already have the latest hardware, with maximum RAM addressable by a 32 bit application (4MB). Any suggestions? How do other people deal with these very large documents? Can anyone point me to a best practices document? I can upgrade the whole group to Word 2007 if it would help, but I don't want to do that yet unless it will make a significant difference - the learning curve will just kill them. Thanks, |
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