I need help Teeming Millions!
Our receptionist has a large document that she needs to re-arrange the order with embedded pictures, headers and footers in the document that makes copy and pasting to a new document impossible.
She needs to change the order in which the pages print and would like to, say, move page 13 up to page 7 and page 2 down to page 19.
Does anyone know if this is possible? And, if so, how the heck do you do it?
Thanks!
Lady Venom
In the File | Print… dialog, you can select the “Pages” option in the “Page Range” box, then use a combination of commas and hyphens to print in the desired order. For your example, you would enter “1,3-6,13,7-12,14-18,2” and then 19 to whatever, etc. If this is a really big doc with a lot of pages out of order, you might want to break it up into smaller pieces (say, 20 pages or so).
Note that if you have page numbering in the header or footer, they will reflect their original position within the document, not the position they would wind up in within the printout.
As noted, Shoeless’s method would PRINT the pages in a different order, but the page numbers would remain as they are. I.e., this would be like printing the whole thing out on paper and then simply putting the physical pages in the order you want.
Is this what you’re looking for?
If you want to rearrange the ELECTRONIC order, so that the page numbers, when printed, are accurate, that’s more complicated. In fact, it’s pretty much a pain in the ass.
Word does not treat each page as a separate entity, as PowerPoint and Acrobat do (for example). Word treats each section within a document as whole, and the page separations are somewhat arbitrary. Well, at least fluid.
The only way to move page 17 (say) to where page 2 is, is to cut and paste the contents of page 17 into the spot where you want them. In a complex document this will inevitably give you PLENTY to clean up in the way of cascading issues with page breaks, margins, picture-caption proximity, etc. The more complicated the document, the more difficult it is to shuffle pages around, when you’re in Word.
One alternative is to remove the page numbers, print to Acrobat, reshuffle as required, and then use Acrobat’s page numbers. Another more baroque alternative is to remove page numbers, print out on paper, reshuffle as required, and then run back through the printer: this time, reprinting onto the first document a document that is entirely blank except for page numbers. Does that make sense?
No disagreement with what’s been said so far. Only posting to explicate something which might even solve the problem.
As lissener says, Word works with sections, not pages. Sections are divided by something called (fanfare please) section dividers. It’s actually a character in the document, just like the letter “a.” The divider is where Word stores all information about that section, including page layout, columns, headers, footers and page numbers. To move a section, you select all its text and the divider immediately following the text. It’s possible to move text directly, but more reliable to cut-and-paste. The insertion point should be the first character of the section before which the moved section is to be placed. It should not be the section divider immediately preceding that character.
Ideally, the page numbers and other format characteristics of the various moved sections will re-order themselves automatically to reflect their ultimate destination. More likely, as lissener says, it’ll need clean-up. How much will depend on how complex the document and how carefully it was set up. One last trick is to do all the moves, then go through the document. That way it only has to be cleaned up once.
Yes . . . [evil cackle] . . . “ideally.”
Word is a very buggy program. Still. Headers and footers are the buggiest thing in Word. The more complex a document, the more major changes you make, the more likely it is that header, footers, and any associated text and page numbers will inexplicably “break.” Page numbers are usually the first thing to bug out. So, in my experience, moving sections around within a complex Word document will often result in page numbers that take on a mind of their own. Then bullets and numbers start to spark and fizzle . . .
Good luck.
This probably will not help with the current document, but in the future, you might suggest she learn how to use Master documents and Subdocuments. This feature allows you to subdivide a large document into logical smaller documents–like the chapters of a book. Each of the subdocuments exists as an independent file, which has several advantages. For one thing, it means that you don’t have to open the ENTIRE ungodly book when you only want to edit one of the chapters–which sames RAM and time. For another thing, it makes it incredibly easy to rearrange the “chapters” if you decide you want them in a different order.
As an analogy, a Master document is like a large binder, and the subdocuments are papers/folders that are added to the binder. The Master document may not actually contain any text at all (although it is often used for a table of contents, and index, and/or the introduction), since its main purpose is simply to act as a Master for numbering pages, etc. when you print out the entire document.
In this case, she could, if she wanted, split the document into subdocuments. Details on this process are given at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP051870021033.aspx. But there’s a bit of a learning curve to doing this, so unless she is already used to using Outline View, this would probably not be something she could understand overnight.
One very low tech way I’ve found of doing it is to first print out the manuscript without page numbers, then create a seperate word doc that is an n page document (hold down ctrl+enter to quickly make many blank pages) that is completely empty except for page numbers.
Load the manuscript into the input of your printer and then print it again. The page numbers should ideally appear as if they were originally printed on.
Now why didn’t I think of that? 
Thanks for all the input guys!!
I think we’ll likely end up putting this doc into Acrobat and moving stuff around there.
Kiminy:
She knows how to use Master and Sub documents, but she inherited this from another person in the office who used to do our presentation binders and had set them up this way, so essentially, we are trying to fix our old co-workers mistakes.
Glad to hear you’ve settled on a fix. Do you realy find MasterDoc usable? General consensus in the Word user world, and my own experience, is that is isn’t. For example, I have a big multi-file document with a bookmark-based index. I use MasterDoc to compile the index (and master table of contents), but find it so buggy that I have to print the chapters from the original source files and maintain continuous pagination manually.
So, if you don’t mind a hijack of your own thread, for what sorts of documents are you finding MasterDoc usable?
Gods, no! Stay away from these - it’s a “feature” that was never implemented properly and doesn’t really work as advertised. I’m a technical writer by trade, and everything I’ve ever read in the tech writing world says to stay far, far away from the master document and its related commands. Going down this path seems to inevitably lead to corruption.
I know that there are people who have gotten master documents to work by closely following proscribed rules, but they’re few in number. Congrats if you’ve gotten it to work, but I can’t recommend it for a document you’re going to work with frequently or for one that’ll be passed among several people.
I love PBear’s section advice. Yes, ideally, it should work that way. But I had to laugh - I’ve never had anything but headaches working with sections. The “Same as” settings drive me batty! Hee!
Good luck - Word’s a treat!
Incidentally, you can build your own master document by using RD fields - if you must use master documents in Word, this is the way that the tech writing world recommends you build them. Create a new document (this’ll be your master), then insert an RD field and the file name of each document to include. Search the Word help (and Google) for more info on RD fields and how to use them to build a TOC and index - there’s a lot out there, and since I work with FrameMaker mostly now, it’s probably best you don’t get it from me.
Keep in mind that this way does require more knowledge about Word than the average user probably has, but it seems pretty bulletproof, from what I’ve heard. That is, the RD fields are much more stable than the master document feature and won’t lead to corruption.
I agree that the Master stuff is just headaches layered upon nightmares.
Word has become about the top heaviest program I’m familiar with. It just tries to do too much. I wish they’d find a way to compartmentalize it or something; have a simpler word processing program that can be integrated with a more complicated Quark-like program if you choose, but trying to be all things to all users is making Word a nightmare network of buggy patches and workarounds.
Sections, page numbers, bullets and numbering, all of these are very delicate and prone to breakage. Adding another layer of complication–e.g. this Master b.s.–does not solve the older (and still accumulating) problems.
I wish MS would spend some serious drawing-board time with Word.