Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
|
|||
|
|||
Changes to manual
Thank you so much for your valuable advice!
Ricki "Robert M. Franz (RMF)" wrote in message ... Hello Ricki Ricki Miles wrote: I am using Word XP and need to maintain several manuals ("Emergency Preparedness Plans" and "Operation, Maintenance and Surveillance" manuals) for generating stations. There are essentially two levels of updates: simple and comprehensive. The simple updates cover changes to names and contact info, org charts, and responsibilities and these can be (should be) carried out at least annually. The more comprehensive updates involve more significant revisions to and rewriting of the text and take a fair bit more time to complete. The pages all have a date of when the manual was issued in the footer. The manuals have a log or revision record in the appendices to track changes. You might want to read up what John McGhie writes in the following article (you might want to read up the whole article, in fact): Creating a Template (Part II, by John McGhie) http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customizat...platePart2.htm quote Look up Longford Disaster, Esso and Melbourne on the web and read all about how Exxon (Esso’s parent company) managed to send a thousand million dollars and several of their staff up in a puff of smoke doing this. /quote If your manual is really about "Emergency", then don't even consider going the "page" way. Users hate to complete manuals with their respective correction pages, usually don't do it at all, and will more likely sit in front of an outdated manual once the alarm bell is starting to ring. [Even the Swiss Army stopped handing out correction pages; these consisted of paragraphs which you had to cut out and glue over the old sections -- and that was for bookkeeping manuals! -- Actually, it was a good excercise having to do this because then you had at least seen every updated rule :-)] What is a reasonable process for making minor updates (i.e., replace only a few pages of the manual) so that we don't have to reprint the entire manual every time a revision is made? I would think that the revised pages having the new date of revision in the footer, replace the old page, and that those pages are identified in the revision log. The title page (cover page) also contains a date that would need to be updated. How do you minimize confusion when some of the pages in the manual have differing dates from one another and from the title page? What about the major revisions? [..] If you really have to work page-oriented like this, consider using another product. Word is notoriously bad at this sort of task: it's used to laying out all content anew each time you look away, in any case each time you delete a paragraph or even a word. Even though it has become better with each version (if the right compatibility options is set), it is even worse when you try switching printer (drivers); so, if you cannot guarantee to always use the same printer throughout the lifetime of your document (something which you normally cannot do at all), don't try it with Word: you would be forced to treat each page as a separate section, possibly. You then loose all the benefit of a word processor. I suggest reprints in whole. With a writer's section at the start or end indicating all changes of each revision, going back a couple of years The manuals are also provided on a company intranet. Should the electronic manual be identical (with respect to varying dates in the footers) as the hard copy? In what form: HTML, PDF, ...? You don't have a footer in HTML (at least not comparable to a paper footer). 2cents Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS \ / | MVP X Against HTML | for / \ in e-mail & news | Word |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
create an Instructor's Manual with notes | Microsoft Word Help | |||
Headings for Manual | Microsoft Word Help | |||
maintaining and updating multiple languages of a huge manual | Microsoft Word Help | |||
Manual duplex printing and reversing print order on reverse side | Microsoft Word Help | |||
Finding/removing an "obascure" manual page break | Tables |