The Connected Lawyer

Quite a while ago I made the switch to using Cambria as my default text font in my word processor. I really like the looks of it and I think that it looks good and is easier to read on both the screen and paper. Recently, however, I have been having problems printing from Word 2007 to my HP LaserJet 5 while using Cambria. When doing so, I end up with a document that looks like:

As you might expect, this is quite annoying. My initial thought was that it might be a problem with the font itself. Maybe it became corrupted. However, the same document print to my two Lexmark printers at home just fine. If I change the font from Cambria to something else (I have tried both Calibri and Times New Roman) everything prints just fine.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? I am stumped.

One question I often get from others who are frustrated with Word deals with how to fix the formatting in a particular document. Often the formatting screw ups occur because someone was not properly using styles. Somethimes, however, the formatting is screwed up because the document is imported from aonther format or because someone pasted text without using the Paste Special function.

The best way to deal with this formatting problem is to take the formatting back to square one. You can easily do this simply by selecting the text and then pressing Ctrl + Enter. This converts the formatting for the selected text to the Normal style. Once it is there, you can then reformat the document as appropriate.

I am a big fan of using styles in Word. If you understand and use them, Word becomes very powerful and, I think, more easy to use.

I understand, however, that not everyone uses or understands styles. I believe that the proper solution to this is good training. However, not everyone understands that. However, I implore everyone, whether you understand sytles or not; whether you use Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice; or whether you know how to type or not, DO NOT USE YOUR SPACEBAR FOR SPACING.

The space bar is to allow you to put a space between words and sentences (on a related note, please observe that with today’s proportional fonts you need only one space, not two, between sentences). The space bar is not to be used to add spaces to make your text line up. To do this, you use the Tab key.

Given the fact that Tab keys have been around for quite some time, I had thought that most people understood this. However, that is clearly not the case. I recently received a draft settlement agreement today from another attorney. When I started making some modifications to the document, I noticed that the formatting got all screwed up.

Once I clicked the paragraph button, I realized what the problem was. Instead of using tabs, the author has used spaces to create the illusion of tabs. Upon counting, it appears that it takes 12 taps of the space bar to simulate a 1/2″ tab stop.

I understand that some people don’t want to learn how to properly use software. That is your choice. If you make that choice, however, then hire someone to do your word processing for you. Please!!!!

A couple of days ago I wrote about the fact that many people still use Office 2003 and are unable to read documents created in Office 2007. The solution that I suggested was that if you are using Office 2003, you should download the compatability pack that allows you to read Office 2007 documents.

Of course, not everyone will download the compatability pack. Tom Mighell, of Inter Alia, has a different solution. He suggests using Scribed.

Tom explains:

Here’s how it works. Take your document and attach it to an email. Address it to the members of your team, and CC ipaper@scribd.com on the message. Scribd will take your document, convert it to iPaper, and send your collaborators a copy of the link to the online document. And if you haven’t viewed a document in Scribd yet, you’re missing out. Scribd supports a lot of document formats, too — in addition to all Office files (both 2003 and 2007), it will convert PDF, PS, .TXT, .RTF, and open document formats.

The great thing about Tom’s solution is that you are simply adding an additional email address to your message. You do not have to take the time to manually upload the file a to a service such as Scribed or Google Docs.

As always, when using a service such as this, you must be cognizant of their terms of use to make sure that you are not disclosing confidential information to third parties. However, this is a great simple solution for sharing documents with others without worrying about what software program your recipient is using.

When I got my new computer recently, it came with Office 2007. It took me a while to get used to 2007. The reality is that I was perfectly happy with Office 2003 and I felt no overwhelming reason to change. Since getting Office 2007, I have realized that many other share my opinion in this. It seems that relatively few people have moved to Office 2007.

The problem is that Microsoft changed the file format in Office 2007, and users of Office 2003 cannot read files created in Office 2007. Fortunately, there is an easy and free fix for this. Unfortunately, it seems as though very few people know about this fix.

Simply go here and download the compatibility pack. After you install this, you will be able to work with Office 2007, even though you still use only Office 2003.

I love tips that help us use MS Word more effectively. Nerino Petro at Compujurist has a great little post detailing how to take the last bit of text that appears by itself on the last page and squeeze it into the previous page. Not only does Nerino share this tip, but he also tells us how to do it in both Word 2003 and Word 2007.

I would note that you should be wary of trying this on briefs that are filed with courts that enforce strict page limits and font sizes. Word adjusts the font sizes to repaginate the document.

If you need to solve this problem, jump over to the post and see the details. I will give you a hint. The Print Preview feature plays an important role.

I have spoken on multiple occasions to attorneys about the dangers of metadata. I have found that many attorneys are not aware of the problem and do not know how to follow simple steps to manage metadata.

I was completely stunned, however, by this post which describes a business plan that was submitted to a venture capitalist with all of the tracked changes and comments intact. This is not a situation in which someone used a metadata viewer to mine the document for unscrubbed changes. No, this is one where the author never bothered to accept the changes and they they appeared when the document was opened. Some of my favorite comments:

“When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them”

“I’d delete this section since we don’t have these features on the roadmap and haven’t figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won’t catch this.”

“VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard.”

(Hat tip to mathewingram.com for the link.)

In my earlier series on formating in word, I mentioned that I would later post about how to easily create captions using tables. A few days ago, a reader sent me an email and reminded me that I had never gone back to that post.

Thus, here is my post on how to create captions using tables. For your reference, here is a screenshot of what the captions that I generally use look like. If your captions usually have a different look, you may have to adjust my instructions. Also, as before, I am using Word 2003. How you do things in other versions of Word may or may not differ from what I am doing.

To create a caption such as this:

1. Open a New Document
2. Type whaever information you normally put above your caption. In my case I have the specific court information.
3. Select Table > Insert > Table
4. In the dialog box, select 3 for the number of columns and 1 for the number of rows
5. You will now have a document with a table with 3 equal sized columns. Take your mouse and place it over the left border in the center column. Your cursor should turn to a small black bar with arrows pointing left and right.
6. Hold down your left mouse button and drag the column to the right until the little triangle in your ruler is on the 3.
7. Go to the right border in the center column. When you get the bar with the arrows, left click on the border and drag it as far to the left as it will go.
8. You should now have a table similar to the above with large cells on the left and right and a skinny cell in the center.
9. Click in the left cell. It is time to enter the party information. Enter the information here as you normally would. Keep in mind, however, that to use tabs within a cell, you must press CRTL + Tab. If you just press Tab, you will move to the next cell.
10. Now go to the right cell and enter the case number information or the other information that you typically have.
11. Once you have this, you probably want to remove most of the borders. In my case, I currently use a border that looks like a bracket (]). You can also use a simple straight line. To modify the border, place your cursor in the lower left hand corner of the table.
12. When the cursor turns to a dark arrow pointing up and to the right, hold your left mouse button and drag your mouse to the right. This will select the entire table.
13. Right click within the table and select Borders and Shading.
14. In the left hand column, select None (it’s at the top) and select OK.
15. Click somewhere outside of your table. You now have a table with no dividing lines. Let’s add one.
16. Place your cursor at the lower left hand corner of the center column. When the black arrow appears, click your left mouse button once.
17. Right click within that column and select Borders and Shading.
18. In the dialog box, look at the right column, it has a representation of your column. If you click on an area, it will add a border in that area. In my case, I click on the top, the bottom, and the right side.
19. In the center column of the dialog box, you can change the style of the line, the color of the line, and how thick the line is. I usually change the thickness of my line to 1 1/2 points.
20. When you are done, select OK.

You now have a caption within a table. Let’s save this as a template, so that you don’t have to create it again. Click File > Save As. At the bottom of the dialog box, after Save As Type, change that to Document Template. Word should automatically take you to the folder where your templates are stored. Simply give the template a name (I cleverly chose the name Caption) and save.

You are all set to go. You can now easily create a caption just by selecting the Caption template.

Of course this is only one variation on the variety of captions that you can make. I make my caption using three columns instead of two simply because I like the spacing better.

If you wish, you can download my caption template from my Files page. Please note that this template uses Cambria as the font. For an explanation of why I use Cambria, see Ken Adams’ post It’s Time for a Typeface Change. I agree with much of when Ken has to say here, which the minor quibble that I prefer as serif rather than a sans serif font.

If you have found my posts about creating styles for numbered paragraphs in Word to be confusing, or, if you just want an easier way to do it, you should check out Numbering Assistant from Payne Group. As described by Payne Group:

The Numbering Assistant is a paragraph numbering utility that allows you to quickly add, modify and update automatic multi-level numbering schemes in Word documents. The tool contains 28 preloaded schemes provided by Payne Group. Additionally, individually tailored numbering schemes can be added upon request. The Numbering Assistant uses native Word functionality (heading styles linked to outline numbering) so you can also easily share your numbering schemes with clients and others who may not use the software. You can even add up to four multi-level schemes within the same document.

I have not used Numbering Assistant, however, I have never heard anyone complain about a Payne product. Further, I have heard plenty of good things about it.

As an added bonus, if contract drafting is your thing, Numbering Assistant incorporates the suggestions made by Ken Adams in his Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. Further information about this can be found at Ken’s site. (BTW, if you are a writing geek, you should be reading Ken’s blog).

Anyway, if you are looking for an elegant solution to fighting with Word’s numbering styles, you may want to check out Numbering Assistant.

I received a comment to one of my Word Style posts that I want to elevate here and address. The commenter asked:

How do I set bullets? I have tinkered with this for a long time and can’t get it right. For some reason, Word just randomly changes my settings.

If you followed along with primer on creating a numbered paragraph style, you are already 90% of the way there. Follow those steps (except you should change the name of your style to something like Bullets) until you get to step 8 “Select the Numbered Tab.” There, instead of selecting the Numbered Tab:

1. Select the Bulleted Tab
2. Choose the bullet style you want
3. Click customize. You can also change the bullet style here if you wish.
4. In the top Bullet position Indent At, select your location for a bullet. For example, .5″
5. In the Text Position section, select the location where you want the text to start after the bullet (Tab Space After) and the location where you want subsequent lines in the same bullet point to start (”Indent at”). I typically set both of these to the same position. In this case, .75″, which gives me a .25″ space between the bullet and the text.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK.

You now have a bullet point style that you can apply.

If you find this stuff interesting and want to understand how it is that Word’s numbering works, I can recommend to you the Word MVP site. You can view his info on his website. Additionally, he has a 25 page PDF that explains how Word Numbering works. I found this article absolutely invaluable in understanding Word and its styles.