Microsoft Word: The Worst Word Processor Ever?

I am currently in the final stages of revising a book manuscript for publication. During the process I've been quite surprised at how little technical assistance I have received from my publisher. I know that many places are cutting back (or already have) on copy editors (I opted to hire one myself using my own money for this project), but the amount of work shifted on to the shoulders of authors is pretty remarkable, especially when it comes to the minutiae of formatting. Furthermore, not everyone is on the same plane technologically speaking. Much of this, I found after poking around the internet and experimenting. Nothing seemed to answer the precise problems I encountered.

Most people will use MS Word for a writing project, not because it's the best, but because it's the industry standard. Here are a few issues I faced when compiling my final MS for publication. Keep in mind that when writing this I had each piece saved in a separate file. All told I had twenty files that I needed to combine and tweak into a single MS Word document. Now mind you, all of this could be done in PDF VERY easily, but I am required to submit everything as a single Word document, not the easier to work with PDF format. (Note: I'm working on a Mac, so the controls might be slightly different on a PC.)

Problem #1: Combining files into one big file.

Solution: This one is actually pretty simple. Create a new MS Word document and set the Layout according to your publisher's specifications. (Note: to make #2 below easier, when setting up the document go to Format > Document, and click the box to "Suppress Endnotes.") Go to the menu bar and select Insert > File... Select the first piece of your document when prompted and insert it. From here I recommend, inserting a page break. Once you are on a new page, insert a Continuous Section Break. Once you have added in both breaks, repeat the insert process. Continue to do this until you have inserted all of the pieces of your document.

Problem #2: Endnotes

There are actually a number of issues with Endnotes and MS Word. Here's what I faced and how I solved them. (These issues just reiterate why I prefer footnotes. Also, if Word simply had an option to Place Endnotes in section X, that would solve the entire problem. That way users could create a blank section and just have the endnotes there and none of this other trickery would be necessary.)

Before I ever combined all my files, I copied and pasted the endnotes from each document into a new, separate document. The biggest pain here is twofold: 1. You will have to manually renumber all of the individual references because once they are removed from their original document they do not maintain their reference number. If you have 100+ references in a chapter this can be a bit of a bear, but in all honesty that would take 2-5 minutes tops so it's not that bad. It sounds much worse that it is. 2. The endnotes in the new document don't auto-update. If you make a change to an endnote in the original document during subsequent editing you will have to make sure to update the corresponding endnote in the separate file you created. Again, not a huge deal, but something to stay on top of as you progress.

#2.1: Inserting items after Endnotes

If you set up your document to suppress endnotes this may not be as huge of an issue. But make sure that you have your end notes set to the end of the Section NOT the end of the document. If you have them at the end of the document, you will be unable to insert anything after the endnotes, i.e. Bibliography or Index, because Word interprets the end of document as just that and Word won't even give you the option to insert a page or section break at the end of the endnotes.

Once you have all your chapters/piece that contain endnotes inserted into the new document highlight all of them. Go to Format > Font (or simply Command-D), and click the box for "Hidden" under the Effects section. This will hide everything that you had highlighted. You should now be able to insert the separate notes section you prepared, as well as the bibliography and index with their proper formatting. You may think to yourself, if I hide everything that is of the Style "Endnote Text" I can accomplish the same thing. Well, I tried that and it hides the endnotes just fine, but it hides the in-text references in the rest of the document as well. If you just hide selected text, the in-text references should be preserved and will align with the endnotes prepared separately.

#2.2: Removing the black endnote separator

This one is actually very simple. Go to View > Draft. Then, go to View > Footnotes. A window will pop up at the bottom of the screen. Select "Endnote Separator" from the drop down menu. You will see a black line appear in the text box of the window. Simply highly and delete the bar. You can then close the window and return to whatever view you usually use (I opt for print layout).

That's all for now!