Document Corruption Renders Program Unusable
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But Font Issues can cause problems
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/fontweeding.html
http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/font-management/
And for Mountain Lion this might help
http://www.phillipmjones.net/Font_Book.html
Also Track Changes on Mac is a Killer It adds more complexity to document. the more complex a document the more likely a document will corrupt. Accept changes turn off Track Changes, save the document. Close document and reopen and turn back on Track Changes if you need them Use compare documents instead if possible.
To recover documents If they will open.
Do a "Maggie" on the document:
1. turn on hidden characters the ¶ button.
2. click at beginning of document.
3. scroll to end of document
4. click just before the last ¶.*
5. now do a copy (⌘-C)
6. open a new blank document
7. now do a Paste (⌘-V)
8. now save document with a slightly different name (example: letter.docx would become letter1.docx
This should correct any corruption.
* example:
John hit the ball out of the park.¶ ⬅copy to here
¶ ⬅not here.
Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.
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Hi Gerrie,
Since the question is marked Answered I don't know whether or not John will see your reply, so I'll pop in and try to elaborate. John is a technical writer. I have authored books using Microsoft Word. We're both pretty well versed in the application.
#2) Tracked changes. This feature has been problematic in Word 2011. See John's rule #1 - keep things up to date. Even the latest update has fixes for Tracked Changes. It's nowhere near as bad as it was when 2011 came out, but it is not perfect yet. I used tracked changes with my co-author for my Office for Dummies book, which was written in Word 2011. So it is possible to use tracked changes successfully. There is a brand new way to share documents now called coauthoring. I've not seen a single problem reported with the new way to share documents using coauthoring. If you haven't tried co-authoring, then give it a whirl.
#3) Use styles. This is a best practice recommended by professional writers. One of Word's most powerful tools is Styles. For example, styles is what lets you use Word's built-in Table of Authorities feature used by legal professionals, automatic tables of contents, and more.
#4) Drag 'n drop editing. John is the only person I know who has ever had problem with this feature. I don't recall any complaints about drag n drop editing in 2011.
#5) File formats - we're getting close to a decade since the open XML file formats came into being. By now you should have migrated all your documents to the new format IMHO.
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Getting everyone to use styles instead of applying direct formatting is just good practice for Word, whether it's Mac or PC. You'll never get everyone to think about the styles in all their documents (I certainly don't), but for important documents where formatting is important, it's definitely worth the trouble to use styles.
Track changes works fine on the PC version of Word. As I said, the latest update of Word 2011 for mac addressed some (but not all) known problems with track changes. Keep backups and do frequent saves. If it's practical, every so often accept or reject all changes, turn tracked changes off and then save the document. Most of the time this is not a good idea in people's workflows. Try the latest update and see how it goes for you. Most of the time you'll probably be OK with track changes now. Give coauthoring a try as a replacement for track changes.
