No matter what your current authoring environment is, the influence of Word 2003 is somewhere in your present or future.  This article should give you a glimpse at the “gotchas” to expect, point you in the right direction and answer the all- important question: “What are other law firms doing?”

The good, the sad, the indented:  Many of the “gotchas” introduced in Word 2002 remain in Word 2003 – “Char” Styles and the migrating indents in outline numbered paragraphs, to name two.  And while Word 2003 introduces a few new “gotchas” of its own (see changes in the converter pack), its new offerings are certain to please these users:

• Attorneys – “Compare Side-by-Side” window, “Research Task Pane” and “Remove personal information” upon save
• Help Desk and Document Center – “Open and Repair” and elimination of excess ListTemplates
• All Power Users – Multi-Select and “Select Text with Similar Formatting”

Adoption rates:  What we currently know about the adoption of Office 2003 in legal is that several of our clients well on their way from Office 97 to Office XP made a switch midstream to go to Office 2003 instead.  Nearly half of our clients plan to skip Office XP and move into Office 2003 in the latter part of 2004 or early 2005.  Those currently in Office XP are predominantly holding at that level, at least for the time being, primarily based on the newness of their XP implementations.  And those currently in WordPerfect plan to move to Office 2003.

With this kind of momentum afoot in the legal community, anticipate some expanded challenges.  We’re on the receiving end of any one of six active versions of Word now in the marketplace.

“We’re moving.  Where do we start?”:  Planning is critically important for a move into Office 2003, particularly when moving from as far back as Office 97 or converting from WordPerfect.  Our clients have allocated a minimum of nine to 12 months to their planning, design and testing endeavors.  While every organization has its unique requirements, there are some common steps to take – not to mention a few to be avoided. 

“We’re staying put.  Will 2003 influence my documents?”:   Absolutely!  You need to know more than just the “gotchas.”  Knowing the capabilities of the latest version of Word enables you to speak intelligently to your clients and collaborators who will have it and to leverage its broadened feature set, even when your enterprise-wide implementation isn’t yet in the works.  Plus, imagine how ready you’ll be when an upgrade does occur.

Redesign initiatives:  Most organizations moving from Word 97 into Word 2003 intend to refactor something in their move.  The prevailing redesign trend is towards total simplification of the Word authoring environment.  Many firms must also ensure that existing automation is 2003-aware and obsolete or redundant automation is removed.  Other initiatives might include:

• An “interfacelift” (e.g., fewer toolbars, simpler menu choices, cleaner and more accessible features, on either the right-click or Task Panes)
• Exchanging “hidden paragraph markers” for the new Style Separator
• Style consolidation (removing, renaming or relocating styles into globally-accessible templates)
• Designing and supplanting metadata for upcoming XML or content management initiatives
• Mergers or rebranding requirements to reflect a new entity
• “Know-how” or precedent document cleanup and reformatting

The introduction or acceleration of Smart Documents, InfoPath or PDF strategies to automate document assembly and workflow.

Pulling the ‘Perfect’ plug:  You won’t be able to File | Save As WordPerfect any longer!  Although most of us finished our WordPerfect conversions awhile back, you may have occasional needs to produce a WordPerfect edition of your work.  With the release of Office 2003, the new converter pack does not include an export method to WordPerfect.  The import or File | Open side remains for both WordPerfect 5.x and 6.x, but you can no longer File | Save As WordPerfect 5.x.

Should you need to go back to WordPerfect, we recommend the File | Save As | Word 97-2003, & 6/95 RTF filter for this purpose.  WordPerfect 9, 10 and 11 more faithfully convert RTF files than do previous versions of WordPerfect, but please note that cleanup and reformatting are required.

A bad move, “Disable Features: Introduced After Word 97”:  Whatever you do in Word 2003 (or Word 2002), resist the temptation to set Tools | Options | Save | Disable Features Introduced After Word 97) to “On.”  While it may seem like a good idea to maintain compatibility during transition, you’ll regret having to retract the setting later.  We repeat, don’t disable!

Migratory indent:  The ListTemplate, while far more stable than in previous versions of Word, still misbehaves in 2003.  Microsoft Knowledge Base article 812637 confirms an issue whereby the indent position on customized outline schemes “collapses” upon opening a Word 97 file in Word 2002.  Although the issue is resolved in 2002 with the hotfix indicated in the article, the issue unfortunately resurrects itself in Word 2003, and a fix is not yet available.

Gratuitous and Linked Character Styles:  Word makes them up!  If you’ve seen your documents spontaneously populate with random styles whose names end in the word “char,” you’ve stumbled upon a new Word feature: Linked Character Styles.  While there is no known means of disabling the “char” styles feature, we can tell you how to spot and fix them in Word 2002/2003:

1. While pressing the Shift key, drop- down the Styles list on the Formatting toolbar.
2. When present in a Word 2002/2003 document, they’ll be revealed in a special view of the Styles list

To spot “char” styles in VBA:

1. Launch the VBA Editor with Alt-F11, then the Immediate Mode Window with Ctrl-G.
2. Enter the following in the Immediate Mode window:
3. Press Enter.  The linked style name should return: “Heading 1 Char.”  (Note: Paragraph styles to which no character style is linked display “Normal” in response to this question.)

To fix the “char” style problem:  Because, by definition, “char” styles are linked to another style, they can be troublesome to eliminate.  When you delete them, they’ll delete all applied formatting, too.  If there are only a few of them in the document, you might consider renaming them to more appropriate names, however they will remain “linked” to their governing paragraph style.  In some circumstances we’ve seen these styles become overly populous, or “chain-linked,” such that many paragraph styles are affected.

Our Solutions Center perfected this native Word method for judiciously deleting rampant “char” styles, and we share the technique with you here:

• Open the document in Word 2000 where linked styles are not supported
• Create a new character style or styles with the desired character formats
• Replace all “char” styles with your new character styles
• Delete the extraneous “char” styles, and Save
• Reopen in Word 2003 to verify the result

Bonus points:  Turn a template into a document!  Since the macro viruses of the Word 6/9-era, when templates masqueraded as documents, we’ve been denied the ability to open a template, then File | Save As a document.  You’ll be happy to know that Word 2003 gives us this capability (2002 does as well).  It serves as both a quick way to exorcise AutoText entries from a template, and to turn an inappropriately saved template back into the document it should have been all along.

Browsing through restricted content:  Office 2003 unveils Information Rights Management, a method for restricting or granting permissions for both content and formatting changes.  When using earlier versions of Word where IRM is not understood or when posting Office 2003-produced content on your intranet or Web and IRM, you may have need for the Rights Management Add-On for Internet Explorer.  Check it out from Microsoft’s website, www.microsoft.com, from the “Downloads” link.

About our author ...

Sherry Kappel is Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Microsystems.  She plays an integral role in the design and delivery of Microsystems products and services and is a recognized expert on document production problems and solutions.  Sherry has been a featured speaker of ILTA’s Right Clique series.  She can be reached at sherryk@microsystems.com.