JISCMail - RECORDS-MANAGEMENT-UK Archives

If you want true collaborative working use googledocs :-)

In Word the key I suggest is what they never teach you in Word training - outside the US that is.

WORD IS A STYLE BASED APPLICATION

If all your formatting is done by styles, and a proper style template is supplied, and everyone understands how to, and that they must, use styles then keeping consistency is easy.

I always for example train users

to remove both the list bullet and numbering icons from the word toolbar as they must NEVER be used
all headings must be based on a headings style - yoou can have multiple levels
bold, underline, and italic must be applied directly only to the odd word
numbering must be done using pre-defined levels - if done properly it should never go wrong.

If you apply this final formatting is easy. If the MD wants top level headings in bold red type you just change the style, and all headings change.

This also helps e.g. to build a table of contents, based on the headings.

Here are some useful links to get you thinking. They may refer to older versions but the basic principles remain sound.

http://www.microsystems.com/pdfs/seven-laws-of-word-outline-numbering.pdf

http://addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm

I wondered if anyone knew of a good method for working collaboratively on large business documents - for example, MS Word documents of up to c.1000 pages long. We have a document management system which allows us to manage the version control of documents, but this doesn't necessarily help with the formatting or look and feel of the document itself.

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