Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 13:33:36 -0700
From: Frank Vahid <vahid@cs.ucr.edu>
To: csteachers@cs.ucr.edu, shodan 3000 3999 <csgrads@cs.ucr.edu>
Cc: Frank Vahid <vahid@cs.ucr.edu>, Dalton <dalton@cs.ucr.edu>,
	farrell@ee.ucr.edu
Subject: A tip on Microsoft Word figures

Hi everyone. Thought I'd comment on a problem in Word that many of us
seem to encounter -- working with figures. Having worked quite a bit with
figures in Word over the last year, here's what conclusions I've come to:

   * Put figures in a frame. You can create a text box, then format it
     and select the convert to frame option. If you're lucky, your
     Insert menu already has a Frame option; but normally it doesn't.
     Then put all your drawing objects in the frame.
   * Insert captions in the frame.
   * Avoid figures larger than half a page. Whatever algorithm Word uses
     to place figures, it's terrible for larger figures.
   * Format the frame (right click), set text wrapping to none (unless
     you want it to wrap), and unless you know what you are doing, 
     deselect move with text and lock anchor. Otherwise, you'll wonder
     why the figure keeps jumping around or why you can't move it off
     of a page.
   * To resize or move a frame, you have to have the drawing object select
     tool (the little white arrow on the drawing bar) deselected. Otherwise,
     you can click on the frame border, but you can't do anything with it.
   * Anchors: anchors are really important. By default, you don't see them.
     Make them visible by going to Tools--Options, and on the view menu
     select the object anchors box.  Then:
      -  Make sure that your frame is anchored to a paragraph on the page you
         want the frame to appear.   
      -  Ever wonder why your drawing object keeps jumping outside of its
         frame? Probably because it's anchored outside the frame. Make sure
         to drag the anchor inside the frame.
      -  Ever have the problem of figures getting numbered out of order?
         Figure 2 is clearly placed before Figure 1, but no matter how you
         update the fields, it stays at 2. The reason -- anchors. The 
         numbering is based on in what order the anchors appear, not the
         figures themselves. Just move the anchor for Figure 1 before that
         of 2, and update fields.
      -  Even wonder why sometimes, no matter how many backspaces or deletes
         you try, you can't get rid of a blank line between paragraphs or
         you can't pull a paragraph up to the previous one? Again, anchors.
         There's probably a figure anchor there. Just drag the anchor to
         the preceding or following paragraph.
      -  Ever wonder why a large figure won't stay on a given page? Probably 
         because there is no paragraph that BEGINS on that page. You can
         only anchor to the beginning of a paragraph. Change your text so
         you have a paragraph beginning on that page (even a blank one!).
   * Create a font style called FigureText (start at Format--Style). And
     use it consistently when you create figures -- do NOT use Normal font
     in figures. Otherwise, any change you make to normal paragraphs (like
     indenting the first line) will also occur in your figures -- causing
     all your text boxes to be indented. This also explains why cutting a
     figure and pasting it into a new document often wildly changes all the
     text in the figure. In fact, it's a good idea to not use Normal at
     all (define your own style for everything else too -- Body, BodyAfterHead,
     EquationText, etc. -- but that's another story).
   * Once in a while, the Word data structure gets confused with a figure
     and starts crashing. Try saving as RTF. As far as I can tell, RTF keeps 
     all the information, it just doesn't save the data structure in a 
     compressed form. So a 1.2 Mb file might grow to a 10 Mb file. But then 
     you can read it back in and save as a Word doc again -- the data 
     structure is created fresh and shouldn't crash.  Sometimes you can't 
     even save as RTF -- my suggestion is to then cut-and-paste into a 
     brand new document. It's also a good idea to keep regular backups of 
     earlier versions of a document, so you can always back-track.
   * Be sure to configure your text boxes and autoshapes to have no fill
     (unless you really want fill), and to have internal margins of 0. 
     Otherwise you'll wonder why you can't shrink a box further, or why
     things are missing from the figure when they are actually covered.

O.K., that's all I can think of right now. Hope this helps prevent problems
for some of you.

Frank