Writing a paper in Word: never again
4.5.2021
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
Like so many students, I’ve had to write a large paper as part of my module in Microsoft Word. Several nervous breakdowns later, I’ve come to find: Word doesn’t just have its pitfalls, it is completely unusable.
Friday night, 9 p.m. The deadline for my paper was midnight. I had finished writing the paper the day before. I just needed to quickly create a table of contents for my 30-page paper and submit the document online.
That had been four hours ago. Since then, several rants had followed. Reading Word guides. Then resignation. But I had to keep going. The document had to be formatted according to the standards of my university. I couldn’t quit now.
My Odyssey began.
I just wanted to format headings
The table of contents hadn’t generated for some reason – probably because I’d created the headings incorrectly. There are countless instructions online for formatting titles. So I picked out the first one and started. In this guide, everything appears super simple. It just doesn’t work. Nothing happened – nothing at all. So I chose a different set of instructions and followed it step by step. Define three levels. Check. Suddenly all the text became bold and shifted to font size 14. My document created ten more pages and everything moved. The block text was also removed, mixing up the whole document. All images and tables were crisscrossed throughout the document. Cue the tantrum and anger.
Ctrl + Z to undo the error? Wouldn’t work anymore. Nothing was. So I formatted the whole document back to default. I still didn't have any headings.
Word’s pitfalls have been clear to me since I started my commercial apprenticeship. That's when I passed several Word courses with flying colours. Probably also because correct formatting with titles wasn’t part of the course. In my studies, however, I unfortunately don’t have to create a form letter or print labels, but «only» generate a table of contents. How hard could that be?
A template doesn’t help either
It did work during a previous project. Bingo! I’d just use this old document as a template! I probably should have done that from the start.
I very carefully copy and pasted section by section.
But then it just started filling in the wrong formatting. The new document was like the old one. All wrong again. A horrible idea. Alright, back again to my first document. I formatted everything by hand and just used the default headings shown above. Then I changed the font and size so that it would fit the university specifications to some extent. I needed three levels, the default heading has only two. Easy. Simply create the third by hand.
After hours of effort, I achieved the «automatically» generated table of contents. That was before I noticed that the headings kept starting over and I had several chapter ones.
FU "*çç/&/"
WHY?
Fortunately for me, headings can also be overwritten by hand. So I adjusted my 33 subtitles manually – doesn't matter anymore either way. Then I had to adapt the whole thing in the table of contents as well, which is where the counting restarted yet again and again. So much for «automatically» generated directories – but at least I had the table of contents now. I had been formatting for four hours. Whatever wouldn't fit now did – no matter the cost.
Bam. Done. Everything looked alright.
Nothing could be moved within this highly fragile document. All images and tables were meticulously placed. The text sections were exactly matched to page length. Carefully, I closed the document so that everything stayed exactly as it should.
Which is when I remembered that I needed to submit the document in PDF, not Word. A new university regulation.
The formatting monster I spawned has turned on its master: exporting to PDF messed up the whole construct beyond recognition. What a mess. Word can go do one. Never again.
Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
