Documents: structure and assembly: watch
Two files of the same contract look identical until someone edits them. The film shows what lies under a Word page and why one document rebuilds itself while the other has to be fixed by hand.
Exercises and files are in the text version.
Part 1What lies under the page
Two contracts that look the same. Under the page their structure differs, and it shows when you change the heading style or insert a new clause. The last shots show what travels with the file.
Exercises and details for this part · The film on its own page
Check yourself
As text
The same as the films: every shot and its text. You can copy the text and give it to your own assistant along with your question.
What lies under the page
A long document is rarely written from a blank page: more often you edit one sent by colleagues or the other side. Two files of the same contract may not differ by a single character on the page, yet after one clause is inserted the numbers and references in the first go wrong, while the second rebuilds itself. The reason is how the author put the document together: by hand or with Word's tools. There are three such differences, and you can spot them before the first edit.
In the first file the author typed the clause numbers on the keyboard, and the reference “cl. 3.2” in the penalty clause as well. To Word these are ordinary letters and digits: the program does not know that “3.2” is a number or that “cl. 3.2” points to another clause. So when a new clause is inserted, nothing shifts. The contract now has two clauses 3.2, and the reference ties the penalty to the wrong deadline.
In the second file the author set up the same clauses as an automatic list. The author typed no numbers but marked each paragraph as a list item, and Word counts the number from the paragraph's place among its neighbors. Such a number is easy to recognize: click it, and every number at that level is highlighted in grey, while the cursor will not go inside. After a new clause is inserted, the following ones become 3.3 and 3.4 at once.
The author did not type the clause reference in the second file either. The number in it went in as a field: a place in the text where Word shows not typed letters but a value it calculates itself or takes from somewhere else. Page numbers, dates and tables of contents work the same way. A field showing the number of another clause in the same document is called a cross-reference. Click it and it turns grey, which sets it apart from typed text.
Where a field gets its number from is stated in its code. The code is a short instruction Word follows to produce the result you see on the page. Alt+F9 shows codes instead of results throughout the document. A cross-reference code holds the name of a bookmark, an invisible marker Word itself places at the target clause, and a switch to show that paragraph's number. So the field remembers the clause itself, not the digits.
A list renumbers at once, while a field changes its result only when it is updated. So after the clause is inserted, the reference still shows the old number 3.2, although the report is now clause 3.3. To update fields, select all the text and press F9; Word does it by itself before printing if the options say so. Fields in headers, footers and footnotes are updated separately, because selecting all the text does not reach them.
The third difference concerns appearance. A style is a named set of settings: the document stores the font, size, color and spacing once, and the author assigns the style to paragraphs. In the second file all headings have the style “Heading 1”, so changing the color in the style changes all four at once. In the first, the author formatted each heading separately, and they will have to be fixed one by one. Word highlights the style name on the Home tab when the cursor is in a paragraph.
Non-printing characters help you see the structure before the first edit. These are characters that take up space in the text but never reach the paper: a space, a tab, a paragraph end. The button with the paragraph mark on the Home tab makes them visible. In the first file there are typed spaces after the number, and the author made the gap between clauses with an empty paragraph. In the second there is a single tab arrow after the number, put there by the list.
On the page both files are identical, because the page shows only the result. They behave differently because in the first the author typed and formatted the numbers, references and headings by hand, while in the second a list, fields and styles hold them. Before editing someone else's document, a minute is enough: click a number and a reference, glance at the style name, turn on non-printing characters. Then it is clear what will rebuild itself and what will need fixing by hand.