August/September 2004

Volume 45, Number 1

Solutions, Inc.

by Ron Arner

Welcome to a new column in Technicalities called Solutions, Inc.! Solutions, Inc. has been designed as a helpful-hint-for-the-techie-style column comprised of tips that might come from the STCRMC Tech-Comm Discuss listserve, one of our chapter's gurus, or some unexpected source of technological wisdom. If you'd like to share your subject matter expertise in Solutions, Inc., please email your contribution to: news@stcrmc.org.

Some recent tips, how-to's, and advice from the Rocky Mountain Chapter Listserve:

Thread #1: Summary of a Word repagination issue

Many thanks to those who rushed to my rescue. I've summarized the solutions I received from the wonderful people in STC and BWA. If MS Word blows a repagination fuse on you, here are some possible fixes.

Some Additional Notes:
The solution that worked for me was to go to normal view and remove all the manually inserted page and section breaks. B*** B*** gave me the idea that my tables might be corrupted. Though the repagination did not cease upon their removal, I'm convinced they were a part of the problem. I had inserted an Excel table via the Insert | Object command, thinking it would insert only the print area. Not so, it inserted the whole dang thing. I immediately removed it, but maybe some gnarly code hung on.

Solutions:
I had Word create hundreds of pages in a 50 page doc this fall. It turned out to be corrupted tables. What I did to correct this was to convert the tables to text and then save a copy of the file. To be safe, save it as a Word doc and then do a second save as a rich text file. Bring the document back into Word and convert the table text back into a table. After that the extra pages disappeared (or you can delete them) and the repaginating stopped.

I'm not sure if this will help but I'd turn off automatic repagination. If you are in page layout view, switch to normal view. (page layout view automatically repaginates and won't allow you to turn off the pagination.) Click Tools. On the drop down menu select Options and go to the General tab. Remove the check mark from the box for Background Pagination.

Although I haven't had that particular tommyknocker, I have had odd difficulties with Word from time to time. The problem is that you can't see the code so you don't know where the garbage is. I have remedied these by creating a new file and copy/paste each section, but not the section break, then recreating the sections. If you don't have sections, I would copy/paste 10 or so pages at a time, navigate, and if it works ok, continue with the next 10. At least you can isolate the garbage area if the error starts up again. Hope this helps although it's the long way around.

I've had that happen with a file from someone else and it's basically corrupted...I think I saved the the file as text, then reopened and saved it as a Word doc. You lose all your formatting that way (and have to re-do your tables). Another possibility is to display formatting marks (Ctrl+*) and see if you can spot a lot of inserted page breaks (alternatively, search and replace all manual page breaks: it's possible one may be looping for some bizarre reason).

Not sure where you inherited this document from but it sounds like it has some kind of field codes in it that are causing temporary insanity. Under Tools options, use the View option to show you ALL the possible codes and hidden text. You might be able to see what is going on then.

Also you might try the old cut and paste to a new doc trick, and seeing the codes and hidden text will help you cut only what you need. I've never seen this exact thing, but I've seen Word do just about everything it can do.

Thread #2: Seeking information on Blogging

Problem:I’ve just been volunteered by my boss to lead a session on blogging at a district-wide inservice tomorrow. Besides a general concept of what a (We)blog is, I’ve not had any experience with them. Can anyone suggest some good and/or personal blog sites that I can study and/or use as examples?

Solutions:

I love LiveJournal.com - I have an account there (but haven't used it - no time!) There's another one that I looked into but didn't like it as much (and don't remember what it was). I was trying to set one up for an online writers' group but ran out of time.

Do a google search on blogs and you can find tons of them.

This is the blog of my grad school advisor: http://augustcouncil.com/~jdunlap/weblog/ Hope this is the sort of examples you are looking for...

I don't have any direct experience with blogs but I did an internet search on "educational blogs" and found this...hopefully it will point you in the direction of what you need?
http://educational.blogs.com/ http://educational.blogs.com/instructional_technology_/

Another helpful search may be "blogs in the classroom". I found this article "Using Blogs in the Classroom" which covers the effects on students who write for an authentic audience and collaborate with people outside their local community http://husd4-tr.blogspot.com/

If you have not looked at blogger.com already, you might give it a try. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog . A simple blog is http://www.cafuego.net/ Many different examples of blogs are in the right-hand column at http://design.weblogsinc.com/. The most sophisticated blog I have ever seen -- going beyond a blog to a true online community, IMO -- is www.slashdot.org.

http://www.salon.com/blogs/

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/technology/circuits/19blog.html?ex=1093933432&ei=1&en=76e239ecd4e847cb

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/technology/16song.html?ex=1093933122&ei=1&en=4c34444bf5981919

Thread #3: Information storage advice

I admit that I am an information addict and that my addiction has gotten out of control. Afraid of forgetting where on the Internet I saw a useful tidbit of information, or worse yet, that the site may be moved and I won't be able to find it, I resort to either grabbing it with Adobe as a PDF file or printing the page. My harddrive is overflowing and I'm destroying forests of trees.

I may have found a solution: http://www.furl.net—and it's free.

Furl is an online filing cabinet for useful web pages. Now, with Furl, each time you see something interesting or important online you can save it with a single click into a folder (called "topics") that you define.

Once saved, you can search your collection with a full text search tool. You can organize your collection by title, date saved, topic, rating. If you are into the group thing, you can share your collection with others as they can share with you.

If you get paranoid that all of this information you've saved might suddenly disappear or be held hostage for a fee, you can export your documents in a zipped file or save them as bookmarks for your browser.

I'm impressed with this tool and thought you might find it handy.