Category: MS Office

Embedding fonts in a dissertation or thesis is a requirement for ProQuest and the Graduate School.  We recommend using Adobe Acrobat to embed fonts for files created in Microsoft Word.  If you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat, this alternative method will allow you to embed fonts directly from Microsoft Word.

Step 1. Click the file tab at the top of the page and select the “Options” menu from the bottom left.

Step 2. On the left side of the Word Options window, click “Save” to open the save options. At the bottom of this page, make sure the “Embed fonts in the file” is checked and the sub-options are unchecked as shown below.

Step 3. To create the PDF file, select the File tab, and then select “Save As.”  Select “PDF” in the “Save as type” drop down menu. Navigate to the desired file location. Click Save to create your PDF or continue to Step 4.

Step 4. (optional) To create an accessible document with bookmarks, click on the “Options” button in the “Save As” window to click the bookmark selections as appropriate for your document. Click “OK” to return to the “Save As” screen and then click “Save” to create your PDF file. Please note that Word sometimes includes bookmarks that are not headings and do not appear in your table of contents.  Please proofread your bookmarks and edit the PDF for maximum accessibility.

Creating high quality images and embedding all fonts are two requirements of creating a thesis or dissertation.  These two requirements will ensure that your document is presented at the highest quality and that the document appears the same on any computer, regardless of the fonts that are available.  This tutorial will show how to check and select the conversion settings in Word to make sure your document meets the requirements.

When creating a PDF file, there are many options that can be selected.  It’s similar to printing to a printer – you can select double sided or single sided, with a staple or without, color or black and white.  To access the PDF settings, click on the “Acrobat” tab in Word, and then on “Preferences.”

In the “Conversion Settings” drop down menu, you can select a variety of pre-installed settings.  For this example, we will select “High Quality Print”

Click on “Advanced Settings…” to see the detailed settings for the option we have selected.

Click on “Images” in the left hand panel to see the image settings.  When we downsample images, we don’t want any images lower than 300 pixels per inch. Check that the number in the boxed areas below is no less than 300.

Click on “Fonts” in the left hand panel to see the font settings.  To embed all fonts, the option “Embed all fonts” must be checked and the “Never Embed” box in the lower right must be empty.

On a networked machine, you won’t be able to change any of the settings.  It’s good to know how to check them, though, just in case something was not installed properly.  The most useful built-in settings are:

• High Quality Print – will embed all fonts and maintain high quality graphics. This is good for a thesis or dissertation submission.
• Press Quality – will embed all fonts and maintain high quality graphics.  This is good for a thesis or dissertation submission.
• Standard – will downsample images to 150ppi, and embeds unusual fonts.  This is good for standard documents that don’t require high quality graphics.
• Smallest file size – downsamples color images to 100 ppi, and greyscale images to 150ppi.  Does not embed any fonts.  This is good if you want to e-mail your document and the initial file size is large.

Keep in mind that within Adobe Acrobat, you can take a large PDF file, and use the “Save As” command to save it as a reduced file size document. You can’t take a low quality PDF file, however, and improve the quality of graphics.

Having bookmarks that replicate the table of contents (TOC) – and include the TOC – is one requirement of the procedures to submit a thesis or dissertation.  Bookmarks allow the reader to see a TOC wherever they are in the document, and navigate easily to that section of the document.  This tutorial will show you how to create bookmarks using Word and Adobe Acrobat on the PC.

To start, use styles consistently throughout your document to create a structure in your document.  If you are  using a numbered style for your outline, suggested styles are shown below for a generic document structure:

Table of Contents (Heading 7, not included in Table of Contents)

List of Figures (Heading 6)

List of Tables (Heading 6)

Acknowledgements (Heading 6)

Abstract (Heading 6)

1. Introduction (Heading 1)

1.1 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.2 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.3 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.3.1 Sub-section (Heading 3)

2. Hypotheses and Goals (Heading 1)

etc.

Heading styles are numbered 1-9.  The use of Heading 6 and 7 in the above sample is arbitrary.  If you only have one sub-section in each chapter, you may use Headings 3 and 4, for example.  If you are not using Word to number your chapters, you may use Heading 1 in place of Heading 6 in the example shown above.

In Word, go to the Acrobat tab, and select “Preferences.”

On the “Settings” tab, make sure that the “Create Bookmarks” box is checked.  Click on the “Bookmarks” tab.  Mac users will not find these options in Adobe Acrobat X.  They should either use the web based converter or a PC to convert their document.

On the “Bookmarks” tab, check the styles that you would like converted to bookmarks, and click on the “Level” number to select the appropriate level with the drop down menu that will appear.  Note that since Heading 6 and 7 are main sections, they are assigned Levl 1, along with Heading 1.

In Adobe Acrobat, click on the “Bookmarks” icon on the left hand side to display the bookmarks that exist in the document.

It’s nice to let your reader know there are bookmarks in the document by formatting the bookmarks panel to open automatically. In Adobe Acrobat, select “File…Properties…”  Select the “Initial View” tab, and in the “Navigation tab” drop down menu, select “Bookmarks Panel and Page” and then save your PDF file.  The next time you open your PDF file, you will see the bookmarks panel and the first page of the document.

Having a table of contents (TOC) with hyperlinks is one requirement of the procedures to submit a thesis or dissertation.  Hyperlinks allow a reader to click on any part of your table of contents and navigate directly to that page.  This tutorial will show you how to create a hyperlinked table of contents using Word and Adobe Acrobat on the PC.

To start, use styles consistently throughout your document to create a structure in your document.  If you are  using a numbered style for your outline, suggested styles are shown below for a generic document structure:

Table of Contents (Heading 7, not included in Table of Contents)

List of Figures (Heading 6)

List of Tables (Heading 6)

Acknowledgements (Heading 6)

Abstract (Heading 6)

1. Introduction (Heading 1)

1.1 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.2 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.3 Introduction sub-section (Heading 2)

1.3.1 Sub-section (Heading 3)

2. Hypotheses and Goals (Heading 1)

etc.

Heading styles are numbered 1-9.  The use of Heading 6 and 7 in the above sample is arbitrary.  If you only have one sub-section in each chapter, you may use Headings 3 and 4, for example.  If you are not using Word to number your chapters, you may use Heading 1 in place of Heading 6 in the example shown above.

In Word, put your cursor where you would like the TOC to appear, go to the “References” tab in Word, and click on “Table of Contents.”

Select “Insert Table of Contents…” from the drop-down menu.

Make sure that a tab leader of periods is selected, and that the page numbers are right aligned.  Click on “Options…”

Check the box “Styles” and scroll down to find the Heading styles.  Heading 1 will be level 1 in your table of contents, Heading 2 will be level 2, Heading 3 will be level 3.  Heading 6 is also a level 1 heading for your table of contents.  Click “OK”

The resultant TOC will include all relevant sections.  Edit the TOC 1, TOC 2, etc. styles to meet your formatting preferences.  Note that the items shaded in grey are field codes.  This text can be edited, but if you update the entire table of contents, it will revert to the original text.

Convert your document to PDF using the “Create PDF” command on the PDF tab in Word.  Check in the preferences that the “Add Links” box is checked.  Mac users will not find these options in current versions of Adobe Acrobat.  They should either use the web based converter or a PC to convert their document.

In our previous posts, we’ve shown how to apply, edit, and create styles.  This tutorial will show you how to display the styles used in your document in draft and outline view.  This can help you easily troubleshoot why incorrect items are appearing in your table of contents, for example.

First, click on the File Button and select “Options” from the left hand menu.

Select the “Advanced” tab from the list, and scroll to the “Display” section of the options.  Type a number in the “” box – 1.15″ is a good place to start.

Using the View tab on the ribbon, select “Outline” or “Draft.”  The screenshot below shows the outline view of a document.  Note that the left hand panel now displays each style that is applied to the text.  When you roll over the vertical line, your cursor will change so that you can click and drag to make that area larger or smaller.

Thanks to Word Tips for this excellent tip.

Microsoft Word has a “feature” that compresses your images to 220ppi after saving.  This saves file space for your documents, but images at this resolution do not meet Graduate School requirements for printing.  This tutorial will show you how to turn off this feature for a single document.

We recommend doing all image editing in a program dedicated to that purpose, such as Photoshop, before inserting images into your Word document.  Images must be at least 300ppi unless they are screenshots.  Screenshots are only allowed when absolutely necessary to convey the information.  All images must also be clear and readable.  Increasing the resolution of a low resolution image to 300ppi will not be acceptable.

First, click on the File Button and select “Options” from the left hand menu.

Click on “Advanced” tab from the word options and check the “Do not compress images in file” option as highlighted below in red box.

Delete the pictures that were compressed, and reinsert them using the “Picture” command on the “Insert” tab of the ribbon.

When the built in styles don’t meet your needs for formatting paragraphs in Word, you will need to create your own styles.  In this example, I will create a style for my paragraphs that contain equations.

To begin, format the paragraph to your specifications.  In this case, I have added tabs (boxed in the figure below) at 3.25″ so my equation will be centered on the line, and at 6.5″ so my equation numbers will line up on the right side of the page.  See our previous post to learn more about tabs.  Click on the circled icon to display the Styles window.

Click on the “New Style” button in the Styles window. This button is circled in the figure below.

Give a name to the style.  I sometimes create names with my initials in them, so I can see which styles were created by me and sort them easily.  Change any of the options you wish in this menu, and click OK when you are done.  The other options here are:

• Style type: by default, you will create a paragraph style, but there are other choices, including character styles.
• Style based on: any changes to this style will affect the style you create.  If you change, for example, the font of “Normal” to Arial, the font of this style will also change to Arial.
• Style for following paragraph: by default, this will be the name of the style you create.  If you want a different style to follow this paragraph, for example, Normal, you can define this here.
• Format: Use the format button or any of the tools in this window to change any other formatting.

I named this style “ddc-equation” so I recognize this is a style I created for my equations.  It now appears in the Styles window, and I can select it for any of my paragraphs that contain equations.

Styles apply a common set of formatting to a paragraph within Word.  In a previous post, we showed how to apply a style to a paragraph.  This tutorial will show two ways to edit an existing style.

First, edit the text as you desire.  In the example below, I have edited the text “Introduction” to be a different font (Adobe Garamond Pro Bold) and size (24 point) than the original Heading 1 style.  We can tell Heading 1 is applied to this text because it is outlined in orange in the Style section of the ribbon.

Right click on “Heading 1” to display a contextual menu, and select “Update Heading 1 to match selection.”

After the style is updated, the preview text for Heading 1 will now match the text you edited.

The style can also be updated from within the Styles window.

• Click the circled icon to display the Styles window.
• Right click on Heading 1, or click on the arrow to the right of Heading 1.  The arrow will appear when you roll over the right side.
• Select “Update Heading 1 to match selection” to update the style.

Styles in Word are used to format text consistently throughout your document. Each paragraph may have a single style applied to it.  For each paragraph, styles define the:

• Appearance of the text (bold, bulleted, size, font, etc.)
• Behavior of the paragraph (does it stay with the next paragraph?  Have a page break before it?)
• Structure of the document (is this a heading meant for the table of contents?)

Styles are found on the Home tab of Word, in the Styles section (boxed in the figure below).

• Style set changes the default set of attributes for the built in styles.  You can choose a “Distinctive” set, or the standard “Word 2007” set.
• Colors changes the default color scheme for your fonts.
• Fonts allows you to select a set of fonts to apply to the styles. For example, the “Normal” font in Word 2007 is Calibri, but in Word 2003, it was Times New Roman.  If you prefer the default fonts from a previous version of Word, or want to define your own, select this option.
• Set as default makes any of the above choices the default for new documents created in Word. Note that these changes may not remain fixed in a network environment.

To apply a font, place your cursor within the paragraph.  In the picture below, the cursor is between the “o” and “d” in introduction.  Then, click on the desired style.  In this case, I have selected “Heading 1.”  Note that as you roll over each style, the text will change to match the preview text for the style.

Sometimes, it is difficult to scroll through the large preview icons in the Home tab, and a simple list of styles is easier to work with.  In this case, click on the circled icon in the figure below to display the boxed Styles window.  This window has other helpful tools that will be explored in future blog posts.

Tabs can be used to align text in a document.  This is very useful for lining up the numbers in the table of contents, equations in the body of the document, or lining up lists of items.  Spaces should never be used to line up items, since each character in a font is a different width.  Precise alignment of items is only possible with a tab.

To access the tabs menu, you can double click on a tab in the ruler.  This can be tricky, so there is another method.

From the Home tab, click on the icon in the lower right of the paragraph grouping.

On the paragraph dialog box, click on the “Tabs…” button.

In the Tabs dialog box, select the options for your tabs.

• Tab stop position: places a tab at the location you desire.  The window below this box shows you tabs already in your document.
• Alignment: select the alignment you like.
  • Left aligns tabs on the left side.
  • Center will center text around the tab.  This is useful for equations.
  • Right will line up the right edge of the text.  This is useful for a table of contents.
• Leader: will insert text before the tab.  This is useful to create a line of periods before the numbers in a table of contents (using option 2), or to create a signature line (option 4)

After you have selected the options for your tab, click the “Set” button to create the tab.

From this dialog box, you can also change the default tab stops from 0.5″ to any increment you would like.