Have you ever re-checked your table of contents page numbers, table of authorities page numbers, or cross-references in a complex Word document, only to find they weren’t quite right? One page number off here, a cross-reference pointing to the wrong paragraph there?

Were you mystified? Were you mad enough to spit? Did you end up manually fixing the document so it could get out the door on time?

I’ve been there, and I expect anyone who’s used these features of Word has been there at some point. Here are the keys to solving the mystery and getting those documents to behave.

Step 1: Turn off Show/Hide

It’s that button on the toolbar that looks like a paragraph symbol (¶). When it’s depressed, you see all your paragraph markers. Your spaces appear as small dots centered vertically on the line, and your tabs as arrows. Many of us work with Show/Hide turned on by default, because it’s easier to find our way around the document.

The one time you never want Show/Hide on, though, is when you’re finalizing a complex document. Why? Because all those helpful paragraph markers, dots, and arrows — not to mention your table of authories and/or table of contents markings and any hidden text — take up a lot of space in the document. Thus, the pagination you see on-screen isn’t the same as the pagination of the printed document.

You’d think that by now, Mr. Gates would have figured out how inconvenient that is, and Word would be able to compensate for this “spacing effect” and show the true pagination of a document regardless of display mode. But, alas, this issue has yet to be addressed. (At least not up to Word 2003. Any Word 2007 users have updated info?)

So, for now, at least, your first step in the document finalization process is turning off Show/Hide. Simply press the “¶” button to deselect it.

Step 2: Update Index and Tables

Once all those space-hogging codes and symbols are eliminated, the document appears paginated as it will when printed. Now you can generate an updated, accurate table of contents and table of authorities. This step will also update any cross-references, auto-dates, StyleRefs, or other field codes in the document.

• Press Ctrl-A to select the entire document.
• Right-click anywhere in the shaded area, and select “Update Field.”

The resulting dialogue will ask whether you want to “Update entire table” or “Update page numbers only.” Updating the entire table is the best practice, especially if you’ve added any last-minute case citations or inserted a new cross-reference. The only time you wouldn’t want to do this is if you’ve made manual changes to tables, cross-references, or some other text that was generated by a field. Those manual changes would be eliminated by a complete update. If you have made manual changes to fields and are sure you haven’t added any new fields since the original tables were generated, then play it safe and select “Update page numbers only.”

It’s not quite the same as a chair massage, but faithful implementation of the two steps above is guaranteed to reduce your stress level.