Microsoft 150, freelance writer and editor 0

As I mentioned previously, a couple of weeks ago I was hired to help a client format a report. Microsoft Word had been acting up and the best way to fix the document was copying and pasting the text and slides, one page at a time, into a new file.

Tuns out that process was only part of the solution.

My client was using the Calibri font, which resembled Wingdings on my computer. Assuming this bizarre font was just another glitch in Word, I changed the text to another font and all seemed well.

It turns out that Calibri does depict numbers and letters, but only on newer versions of Word. We tried changing the font on my computer, with its five-year-old copy of Word, from Calibri to another one and then changing it back on my client’s computer, with its Microsoft Office 2008. Unfortunately that approach caused additional formatting glitches.

The solution? Spending $150 on the newest edition of Microsoft Office.

When the formatting in a Microsoft Word document goes bad, start over

If you use Microsoft Word, you’ve encountered a document like the one I just received (along with a desperate plea to fix it):

• adding a page break caused it to add two blank pages
• removing a page break deleted not just the break but also the following page
• the text was in Calibri (a font I can’t even replicate on this website), and while I was able to change it to Garamond, it often reverted back to Calibri

And I’m not even going to mention the quirks with the headers and footers.

I gave myself 15 minutes to fix the problem. As expected, I failed. Miserably.

So I gave up on that file and opened a new blank document.

I copied and pasted the text page by page from the original document into the new one. Going a page at a time allowed me to isolate the problems—and there were problems—and address them one at a time rather than trying to fix dozens of issues at a time.

All told, formatting the 68-page report (including reviewing it to ensure the author’s concerns were addressed and that I didn’t create any new ones) took three hours.

Sure that’s more time than it should have taken to format a simple document (looking at you Microsoft), but a lot less than the eight hours someone else already had spent–unsuccessfully–trying to fix it.

When fighting with a Microsoft Word document, sometimes it’s best to surrender and pick a new battle.