Why can't robot servants help with this?

January 6, 2006 1:09 PM

Help with re-formatting a word document?

I had a perfectly formatted document in 8.5 x 11. I just found out it has to be in 6 x 9 instead. This is an enormous, enormous headache. First, are there any applications out there that could convert this for me, appropriate shrinking fonts and mathematically changing margins to just "shrink" the page? I have access to MS Word, OpenOffice, and Adobe Acrobat.

If not, I've run into a problem while doing it manually. If I use Word, Word will not let me change an indent on a pre-loaded style from 3.25" to 2.25". Word says that the indent is too large (even though I'm making it smaller). Why must Word judge me so?! When I do the same thing in OpenOffice of course it lets me change the indent, but then the style does not automatically update, which baffles me.

Help?

posted by ducksauce to media & arts (16 comments total)

I'm not sure if this would work, but if you change the page setup under file in word, does that not change the formatting as well?
posted by xospecialk at 1:14 PM on January 6, 2006

Are you on Windows or OSX?

There's a 'Shrink to size' option in OSX printing that will fit your document into a smaller size without changing it.
posted by unixrat at 1:15 PM on January 6, 2006

If only it did, xospecialk. You'd think there'd be some sort of option for that now that Word is in its 10th or so incarnation, but no -- it kept margins and (most importantly) styles the same. If there's a macro or hidden command out there to accomplish this, though, I would be very happy to find it.

unixrat, I am in Windows. I'm investigating shrink to size, but I'm not sure if it would help me as ultimately I have to print to the PDF distiller.
posted by ducksauce at 1:18 PM on January 6, 2006

Click File
Click Page Setup
Click the Paper tab on top
Enter the new paper dimensions
Click OK
posted by KRS at 1:23 PM on January 6, 2006

What about reducing it on a photocopier?
posted by exogenous at 1:28 PM on January 6, 2006

Thanks for the suggestion, exogenous, but here's the situation (I apologize for not being clearer in the question):

Currently I have a doc, looking good at 8.5 x 11.
I have to somehow get to a PDF, looking good at 6 x 9.

The PDF will then be sent to a publisher for printing. The Doc is 385 pages at 8.5 x 11 -- I'd love to have it still be 385 pages at 6 x 9 (but smaller), but a few more or less wouldn't matter much.

I also have a PDF, looking great at 8.5 x 11 if it would be easier to convert that to what I ultimately need. But any real world options like photocopiers, rescanning, etc. won't help me now.
posted by ducksauce at 1:31 PM on January 6, 2006

The other thing that you can do is try to copy and paste it all into Notepad, reopen Word with the right page size, then paste your text in (unformatted).
posted by k8t at 1:32 PM on January 6, 2006

Perhaps there's an option on the PDF print driver to "shrink to fit".
posted by GuyZero at 1:38 PM on January 6, 2006

Well, your first problem is that they are different proportions. You should be able to just print it at 70% scale to your PDF distiller. Unfortunately, that will give you a 5.95" x 7.7" document, leaving about an extra 1.25" vertically. To make it really fit right, you'll need to change your page setup in Word and fix any messed-up areas.
posted by designbot at 1:42 PM on January 6, 2006

In Acrobat's Print window, there's an option "Shrink oversized pages to paper size". In the Properties window (click that button), you can set the paper size under the Paper tab.

That might do it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:48 PM on January 6, 2006

Hmm... I see. Thanks, designbot. Luckily, vertical space is not an issue. I can easily mess with those values without screwing anything up -- it's horizontal spacing that is critical. I'm going to see if I can print to 70% scale in the distiller... that would be perfect!
posted by ducksauce at 1:50 PM on January 6, 2006

Would it work to take a screenshot of it using Gadwin or something, and then just treating it like an image that can be resized?
posted by jasper411 at 2:30 PM on January 6, 2006

jasper411, that would result in a kajillion 72 dpi image files, hardly suitable for printing.
posted by designbot at 2:56 PM on January 6, 2006

I missed the fact that it was over 300 pages! Obviously my idea blows.
posted by jasper411 at 3:05 PM on January 6, 2006

If the document has been created using styles then it would be a minor job to re-format it by editing the styles. You'd still have to check it but it wouldn't take long, and you'd have something that fits the page rather than being scaled down.

If you haven't used styles (i.e. made headings bigger by altering the point size and setting bold) then you're in trouble.

I only mention this because other people reading this thread may not have realised how important using styles is.

Trust me, it is vital to good document management.
posted by Glum at 4:00 PM on January 6, 2006

Well, I wound up having to do it manually, as designbot suggested. I had myself a martini and settled down for the repetitive task of scanning and editing the entire document over and over again to fit it into the new proportions, then resizing to the distiller. It is now in the perfect format for the printer.

Thank you all for all of the responses. Ask Metafilter, as usual, is just awesome.

Also, Jasper, the image idea was something that came to mind earlier, but I rejected it because I thought that resizing an image would probably make my fonts look ugly. 300 images may seem to be a bit unwieldly but I could just set up a photoshop macro to do all of the dirty work once I had it exported (I think).

Glum, yep, styles are absolutely fantastic and increase the power of Word/OpenOffice/etc incredibly. My problem here was that: Word would not allow me to change the styles in the manner I needed (it said that my indent was too big), and OpenOffice would not allow me to apply style changes to the entire document, for some reason. I'm sure there are ways to do each of these things, of course, but I couldn't figure it out -- and that's why I wound up asking this question.

Again, I greatly appreciate all of this!
posted by ducksauce at 4:48 PM on January 6, 2006