I am working for a relatively large typesetting company. I am in the position of having to convert MicrosoftWord files into formats compatible with the proprietary software we employ to create our final product.
Now, general text type files are easy to convert, but we keep getting overly-elaborate Word files with all sorts of embedded bells and whistles and strange formatting that will not convert easily.
My employer seems fixated on the idea that everything we need to know about MSWord we can pick up at one-day “general” seminars (which tells you something about the mindset of my employer). What I want is a comprehensive guide book to MSWord that I can refer to when I encounter problems that are not covered in those silly generalist courses. Can anyone recommend an exhaustive reference work on Word? The MSWord “help files” (and that stinking paperclip icon that goes with them) are useless… I need a well-indexed guide that I can use to deal with all those exceptions that keep coming up.
Hoping someone who uses the program on a regular basis might come up with a few suggestions.
I don’t have specific experience with a particular book - so I can’t make any direct recommendations.
My first answer to computer book questions is normally to start with what is published by O’Reilly - they generally do a pretty good job. However, their strengths are more in operating systems, programming languages, networking, etc. I don’t know if they have very much that would be helpful for you.
It looks like there is something of a niche market for books with titles like “Desktop Publishing with Word 2000”, and I would guess that you might well be better off with something like that than a general Word reference (I really doubt you are going to need to know the ins and outs of mail merge, shared documents, and the other things that will fill an awful lot of the general books).
Alternatively, go to the bookstore, and see which Word reference book has the best discussion of Styles - if they cover that in much detail, the book should cover most of what you would be looking for.
If I may ask:
What proprietary software do you use? How are you currently converting the Word files to your (other) proprietary format? Would a conversion tool perhaps be of more use to you?
There is a chance that some doper out there knows of a conversion program, or can help you find a conversion program, that will do enough of the conversion that you need only clean up inconsistencies and small conversion errors in your software.
Another possibility would be using Word to convert the file to some other file type that your software can read. Can your software read postscript files? If it can, then you could use Word to print output for a postscript printer into a file and read that into your typesetting program.