Tag: tutorial

How to turn off image compression in Word

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 File option at the top left corner.
Click on File option at the top left corner
Select Options from the pop up menu.

How to use a preflight profile

Preflight profiles in Adobe Acrobat® Pro can be used to check properties of a PDF document, as well as make some automatic fixes to them.  In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use preflight profiles developed by the Graduate School to check the image quality in a PDF file.

To begin, download a preflight profile and save it to your computer. Depending on your browser settings, you might need to right click on the link to save the file to your computer as a *.kfp (or*.xml) file. The Graduate School has created the four below:

  1. Graduate School All Items will show you all items that have errors (red “x”) or should be examined (yellow exclamation point).  It includes checking page size (red “x”), embedded fonts (red “x”), type 3 fonts (red “x”), image quality (yellow exclamation point), and color images (only important if saving printing costs is a concern for you).  This is the same checker that the Graduate School uses.
  2. Graduate School Embedded Fonts will show you all of the fonts that aren’t embedded and where type 3 fonts are used.
  3. Graduate School Images will show you which images have a resolution below 300ppi.
  4. Graduate School Color Pages will show you which pages are in color.

First, you need to open the preflight tool.  In Adobe Acrobat® XI Pro, the preflight tool is located in the “Print Production” section of the “Tools.”

How to edit a style

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.

Edit the text to meet your specifications.

How to apply a style to a paragraph

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).

The Styles section on the Home tab contains all of the built in styles available for use.

How to rotate landscape pages in a pdf file

For your thesis or dissertation, you must either present all pages in portrait orientation, or list all of the landscape pages on the Degree completion form.  If you have many landscape pages, it may be easier to rotate the pages in the pdf than list all of the pages one by one.

This tip requires Adobe Acrobat, and applies to either a single sided or double sided document.

How to use the Edit Text Tool

Adobe Acrobat has a Edit Text & Images Tool for content editing. This tool can be used to do minor text edits, such as deleting a small amount of text, or fixing a spelling mistake.

Open your pdf file, and select Edit Text & Images by clicking on “Tools” and selecting it from the “Content Editing” section as shown in the screen shot below.  If you use the tool a lot, right click on the tool to “Add to Quick Tools” and it will appear on your toolbar.

How to access a document in Perceptive Content

Graduate School forms submitted by students are electronically stored in Perceptive Content (formerly known as ImageNow).  All member of the graduate faculty and authorized staff may access these forms by opening the Perceptive Content program, and logging in with their Michigan Tech ISO ID and password.  Students do not have access to Perceptive Content.  Dissertation, thesis, or report reviews are available to students through Canvas (for pre-defense documents) or Digital Commons (for post-defense documents).

Faculty can also choose not to utilize Perceptive Content to access the student’s review.  These faculty may ask their student to share the review file with them, or contact the Graduate Program Assistant for access to the file. The email notification lets the faculty member know that the review is available.

Perceptive Content may be installed on any University computer running the Windows operating system; contact IT for assistance. There is no longer a web client for Perceptive Content.

If your computer is unable to have Perceptive Content installed, the software can also be accessed on the University’s remote server, remote.mtu.edu. See information from IT on how to connect using a Windows or Mac computer and note that a VPN will be needed to access from off campus.

Once logged in, click on the “Documents” icon.  If you have access to more than one set of documents, click on the arrow next to the “Documents” icon and select “Graduate School.”  Note that the name of the software is now Perceptive Content, some windows in the program may still list ImageNow in the title bar of the window.