Free Your Diagrams From the Clutches of Microsoft Office

4 February 2023
Microsoft Office can be used to make charts and diagrams in their office suite. While useful, it’s been traditionally difficult to free them from the clutches of Office. Your creations often end up being converted to images, leading to a drop in quality.

So, what do you do if you want to use your Charts and SmartArt in your EPUB or website? Fortunately, there’s a solution that promotes portability and flexibility in the final design.

Solution?

Inkscape, is an open-source vector image editor that saves images as SVG. An image format that:
- Is supported by 98.9% of all browsers.
- Sees wide application support, including Microsoft Office.
- Supported by EPUB Version 3.
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Word Takes Liberties With Your Images

18 November 2022
You want to insert images for print into your manuscript. Using Microsoft Word, the images are inserted, and their size and position adjusted to suit the content. When happy with the end result, you save your work and submit.

After a test print, you realise the quality is lower than expected. Furthermore, attempts to increase their size makes the image blurry, and pixelated. What happened?

By default, Microsoft Word resizes images to reduce the document’s file size. This happens to any image over 220 DPI, a limit that cannot be increased, which is a lower density than most commercial printers’ support.

What can you do?
- Disable this behaviour in Microsoft Word;
- Use Vector Graphics to skirt this issue; and
- Work within the limits;
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The Trouble With Page One

4 November 2022
Microsoft Word places a section’s Page 1 on the right side (Print Preview) for manuscripts. The application also resists attempts to push it to the left and may insert blank pages into the manuscript.

To override, consider:
- Starting the section on page 2;
- Continue the numbering from a previous section; and
- Accept that the blank page will be inserted and move on.
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Section Break Caveats

28 October 2022
While Microsoft Word offers many types of Section Break, the application makes assumptions and alters their behaviour on your behalf. It’s often best to use Next Page section breaks, even if you need to use more than one.
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Content Breaks

21 October 2022
Breaks create divisions within a manuscript. Two reasons are:
- Formatting reasons. E.g., Keeping paragraphs intact by moving them to the next page; and
- Separating content into distinct sections. E.g., Front matter, back matter, and chapters.
Breaks are preferred over the insertion of empty lines. The latter creates a cascading effect, which is difficult to manage in large manuscripts. I.e., End up with chapters starting at random points on a page.

Both types of breaks can be inserted under the Page Layout ribbon.
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Print Layout Versus Print Preview

14 October 2022
Print Layout is ideal for formatting manuscripts for publishing. However, what we see differs from reality. That’s where Print Preview comes into play, because it confirms the layout prior to submitting to the printer/publisher.
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Realistic Text Messaging in Ebooks and Print

7 October 2022
This tutorial covers methods of approximating Text messaging in Ebooks and print. The solutions outlined below use tools that are readily available.

Reference image for text messaging between two parties.
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How to Normalise Your Manuscript

10 September 2022
It’s a challenge to maintain consistent spacing within a manuscript. Iterative edits, multiple users, along with copy and paste oddities all contribute to the problem. While the manuscript may look fine on the surface, converting it to other formats can bring out unexpected quirks. E.g., paragraphs that start with a space, or create blank lines because of a trailing space(s).

This tutorial shows you how to normalise a manuscript using a series of Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace functions. This process will cut down on the time needed compared to doing so manually.
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Normalise a Manuscript in 4 Easy Steps

17 October 2021

Copy and paste these instructions into the Find and Replace function within Microsoft Word. Replace All can be used for every operation except for the last two.

FIND	REPLACE	WILDCARD	ACTION
[^s^t^32]{1,}	^32	Yes	Single and consistent spacing
^32{1,}(^13)	\1	Yes	No trailing spaces at end of paragraph
(^13)^32{1,}([!^13])	\1\2	Yes	No leading spaces at the beginning of a paragraph
(^13){2,}	\1	Yes	Removes empty lines
[!.\!\?””;,…—\*^12](^13)		Yes	Paragraphs ending without punctuation
[.\!\?””;,][!^32^13^12””]		Yes	Stuck sentences and other oddities

Normalise a Manuscript in 4 Easy Steps is available on Google Drive.

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Microsoft Manuscript Madness

13 April 2016
How to format your manuscript for print on Microsoft Word and not rip your hair out!

Microsoft Word, like most user-friendly software attempts to make your life easier by making assumptions. When using Microsoft Word‘s more advanced features, you may encounter annoying side-effects. In other cases, the application’s resistance to doing what you ask may have you ripping your hair out.

This tutorial focuses on such behaviours observed when working on manuscripts with of Microsoft Word. More specifically, the following subjects are detailed:
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Tag: Microsoft Word

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