In my last post, I wrote about what goes into a hand-off package for delivering a custom application to a client. A big part of that package is documentation, which for our clients, means Microsoft Word documents. In this post I will explain five quick ways to give your Word documents a professional finishing touch.
1. Use Styles
The styles feature enforces a consistent look throughout the document and keeps all the documents looking the same. All the documentation you provide to a client should look like it came from the same place. The styles you use do not have to be fancy or customized. The default styles are fine, just be sure that everyone on the team uses the same set, and do not use too many different styles in the same set of documents.
A quick primer about using the styles feature can be found here.
2. Make the documents easy to navigate
Technical documents can be long and dense, but a few simple steps make the document less cumbersome. With styles (see point 1, above), it is easy to create headings and sub-headings. Visually, the headings delineate different sections, and they also serve as the basis for the table of contents and the document map. Be sure to update the table of contents (right click on it, select update field) before finalizing the document.
Instructions for creating a table of contents can be found here.
3. Title page, headers and footers
A title page identifys the document when it is first opened or when it is printed. It is acceptable to put your company name, website and logo here as a mini advertisement, but it shouldn’t be more than that. Insert the date, the project name and perhaps the names of the key team members. The title page should not take anytime at all to read: it only serves to quickly identify the document. I like to have a header or footer on each page, but again, keeping it very simple: page number, the document name and sometimes a tiny company logo.
4. Remove metadata and markup
It is surprising sometimes what is lurking in Office document metadata. To sanitize the file in Word 2010, go to the File menu, select ‘Info’, click the ‘Check for Issues’ button and then ‘Inspect Document’. In Word 2007, click the Office button in the upper left hand corner, select ‘Prepare’ and ‘Inspect Document’. This will show you what is hiding and gives you the option to remove it. Be careful not to remove anything that you actually want, such as headers and footers.
5. Mark as Final
Again under the File menu, select ‘Info’, click the ‘Permissions’ button and then ‘Mark as Final’. For Word 2007, this is located under the ‘Publish’ menu. This makes the document read-only to prevent accidental editing. It is easy to reverse this by selecting ‘Mark as Final’ again if you or your client need to edit the file.