Should I be making the case for document stability?

[Ulodesk]

I would like to invite anyone with experience who cares to, to weigh in on the following issue.


I see an erosion of DTP standards proceeding at my workplace, despite my years of efforts to institute proper practices with respect to styles, breaks, etc., for document stability. I deal with corporate proposal documents. While I recognize that Word is now more stable than it was in the 2003 days, I prefer to “err” on the side of caution and best practice rather than accept the argument, “Well, the document is holding up so far,” or “Well, we did this in another document and it was fine…”
Examples include local deletion of numbers in auto-numbered headings (that is, in some of them) so as to type out-of-sequence numbers in their place; bringing in whole documents from other custom (or utterly wild Normal) templates, thus increasing the styles list from around 60 custom corporate styles to 200 or more, ending up with, for instance, two sets of numbered headings, several “Body text” styles, and, of course, numerous styles that have blended into monsters like “NExhibitCaption,ec,KExhibitCap,KExhibit ActionCap,KExhibit Caption,kea_ec” along with the inevitable “char”s from older documents, and so forth.
From my nearly ten years of corporate proposal experience, and everything I have read, this is Russian roulette, with the proverbial filled chamber just waiting to fall into place in a 350-page document 1 hour before the deadline for the document to go to print, throwing numbering off, altering point-sizes, and any number of other surprises I have witnessed more than once in years past.
Aesthetics aside for the moment, however, perhaps I am out of date with Word’s stability upgrades, stability constituting my primary concern and argument. If I shouldn’t be worrying about it, so much the better.
I would be grateful for any MVPs and knowledgeable others to offer their views on this matter.
Thanks.

[fumei]

What exactly do you mean by "stability"?

Newer versions of Word may be, in themselves, more stable, but this in no way alleviates problems that arise from people using Word badly. Using best practices - and of course good design - is the way to keep corporate documention clean. Unfortunately again that does not prevent people from screwing things up.

It is true that say 2010 does have a bit more control over how much users can alter existing documents.

[Charles Kenyon]

I am also a bit confused by the term "stability." Other than numbering and the Master Documents feature, Word documents have been very stable since Word 2003. Numbering can be made stable but the buttons on the toolbar/ribbon don't help.

A multitude of styles does not make a document less stable; it may make it harder to edit. Multiple numbering lists are sometimes needed because you can have two lists that are really intermingled. Having those lists attached to styles, though, is vital if you want to be able to edit them in the future. How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in Word 2007 and Word 2010
Changing the start of numbering is sometimes done to indicate that certain parts have been deleted; you keep the original numbers from the original document so references to that document elsewhere make sense.

Style-based formatting is far preferable to direct formatting.

Under no circumstances should the Master Documents "Feature" be used routinely or on documents that are going to be further edited.

The problem "char" styles do not develop in Word 2003 and later but may be inherited.

Documents should not be used as the source for new documents. Period. Templates should be developed for proposals. The chance of error rises exponentially basing documents on other documents based on other documents.

New versions of Word allow limitation on styles to be used. See Chapter 50 of Herb Tyson's Microsoft Word 2010 Bible. Note that this also limits ability to add section breaks. This is on the Review Tab (Restrict Editing) or the Developer Tab.

A key thing is numbering. That is most likely to raise problems in documents that go through heavy editing when the numbering is not properly based on Styles.

One option on numbering is to use SEQ fields that are incorporated in AutoText entries. This is essentially bulletproof.

You may want to modify the Ribbon in your templates to completely remove the bullets and numbering buttons (or attach them to SEQ fields and AutoText in some fashion). Removing the buttons is relatively easy. These modifications, though, are done using XML editing, not through the Modify the Ribbon commands in the user interface. Customize the Ribbon (It doesn't take rocket science).

With these modifications, you can also limit access to other Word features from most users.

Probably the biggest cause of document corruption in the last five years is people trying to edit (or save) documents on flash drives and DVD-RW. Word does not work well with mobile media; never has.

[Ulodesk]

Thank you both for your thoughtful responses.
The nature of the business I'm in involves documents going through a number of hands in a rather uncontrolled environment. For instance, for any given five or six authors on a proposal, three may be working in 2007, the others in 2010, or perhaps one or two in 2013, all on their personal computers out in who knows what hinterlands here or abroad. Thus, there are practical limits to what we can do to make Word set-up on them all the same. I have only met one person in a major corporation of our type so far, who successfully implemented a style-limited template process, using a custom toolbar in a self-extracting-installation template in W2003, and his proposal authors weren't constantly changing.
Although we have a template which goes out to be used for authoring, one carefully created with Ms. Kelly's expert directions and other such expert advice, we inevitably deal with documents returning, at various iterations of the extended process, with text and tables pasted directly from a wide range of sources by folks who simply don't know better. When we can, of course, we move everything cleanly to a new template-based document, but that is not always possible. The erosion to which I referred, is acceptance of bad practices and their effects continuing until too late in the process to rectify. If one author, for instance, has automatic style-updating checked and doesn't notice it's effects...
As to stability, I refer to my repeated experience of receiving documents in which some kind of corruption has been introduced through such uninformed assembling of documents (we do not use master documents in our process, only template-based ones), which may manifest itself in the form of auto-numbering problems, extended tables carrying a host of persisting "ghost styles" with them, and similar things, which can simply make fixing them a long process in a multi-hundred-page document when no time is available for it. I am aware that a long style list is not a problem per se.
Yesterday I had to send out a 350-page "finished" document into which eight older documents had been inserted, each with its own TOC and styles list, some of which styles had the same name but different font and paragraph characteristics, along with numerous instances of Normal text with different formatting, etc. Frankly, I was worried about what might happen each time it was opened.
So, I was just probing, in my post, for whatever consensus there might be on the consequences of bad practices. I will continue to make my case here against them.

[fumei]

So, I was just probing, in my post, for whatever consensus there might be on the consequences of bad practices. I will continue to make my case here against them.

Oh I think you have total consensus. We can ALL agree that the consequences of the bad practices you mention can be disastrous.

It is a good thing you at least start off with templates, but...they are no guarantee that things will not go sideways.

Obviously the more people who use bad practices that have input, the more chances of the document going sideways.

Unfortunately while there some things that can be done to help - Charles mentions most - the environment you describe does not help. Alas, also unfortuantely, the main route to preventing things going sideways is not likely to happen.

A dedicated full-time document editor.

Good luck with that. This is the result of documentation moving to everyone. AND the somewhat badly thought out collaboration scenarios that many (Microsoft in particular) envisioned as the future.

by folks who simply don't know better

As long as that is the case, you WILL have issues. I understand your pain. I worked for 30 years (until I retired) for a large (25,000 users) entity, doing documentation. I strived for years to educate on how to use Word properly. I strived for years to deliver well-designed templates to people.

All I can say is that it worked to a limited degree. Interestingly, the WORST offenders were the intelligent managers who thought they knew better.

As an aside, the best success I ever had was to finally get agreement from senior techincal management that NO technical support would be given to anyone who messed up their computers. If it was not easily fixed, the machine was blown away and reimaged. Boom.

So if someone effed up Word...BOOM.

I did get all actual legal documents go through ONE editor. To try and stop exactly what you are talking about. This is not always practical.

I can not really improve on what Charles wrote. Templates and restricted styles are the way to go.

[eNGiNe]

I don't know what environment you're working in, Ulodesk, but I'm wondering whether, in an ideal and impossible world, you'd be better off abandoning word processing and going for XML-based structured authoring … I have the impression many of your problems may essentially result from people tinkering with formatting and lay-out rather than providing content. I'm experimenting with this in a software/hardware development environment, and most of the developers quite like the idea.

"Ideal and impossible" includes, of course, needing people with the right perception of content, supportive management, time to get up and running, foresight, budget … but we can dream.

[Ulodesk]

Thanks again to all responders.
On the last one, re: XML, yes to the tinkering, but coded structuring is for another generation, as far as what I can see for the corporate proposal business around Washington, DC, i.e., federal and state contracts. There are a few folks in my line with a command of coding, but even use of field codes is generally quite limited in the proposal docs in all the major corporations where I have worked. One is fortunate to work, as I do, in a shop with fulltime proposal staff as opposed to skilled or not-so-skilled temps often hired for a few days or weeks at a time, and one concerned with improving its processes to avoid perennial slipped-deadline-all-nighters.
I had begun teaching myself InDesign years ago after being told that if I wanted to get serious work in Desktop publishing, that was the avenue. Well it may be, but none of the government agencies I am familiar with want proposals submitted in anything except MS Office, sometimes PDF. As for the XML side of things, undoubtedly potentially advantageous, but there is no momentum here for that kind of staff training at present.

[fumei]

Not too surprised to hear that. Education is key, but as stated, I did years of trying to educate users, with limited success.

[eNGiNe]

Ouch … yes, it's regrettably rare to come across companies that actually want things done better <g> I'm very fortunate to have been recruited by one. Better yet, one of my managers asked me to discuss options with two new consultants _before_ they started their documentation project: structured XML (DITA) to .pdf was the option they liked best. My preferred DITA IDE will ouput DITA source as .rtf and .pdf (among other formats); drawback if "tinkering" may occur is that the DITA elements are not used as style names.

Let's keep on trying! In the meantime, we can dream about Sharepoint with DITA Exchange … [no hyperlink, to underline the fact I have absolutely no connexion with either product]

[fumei]

My goodness....you ARE fortunate. I could only dream of something like that.

But to reiterate back to the posted subject, IMO it is not a stability issue. Other than viewing management as being ruthlessly stable about insisting on standards being maintained by ALL possible authors of documentation.

Freedom (in this case, the freedom represented by the ability of multiple authors having the freedom to alter documents on thei own) is only a good thing if those with it also accept and apply responsibility.

To put it more bluntly, authors can only have freedom to do what they want with CONTENT, if they also accept and comply with PROCESS.

[Ulodesk]

Well put, both in principle and practice.