Graphics

Graphics embedded in Word files can be left in place during eXtyles processing, but for best performance, we generally recommend removing them. If you prefer to leave graphics in the Word document, we recommend that you insert linked images in place of the embedded images. However, if you need to convert those image links back to embedded graphics after you’re finished running eXtyles, follow these steps.

Converting linked images to embedded graphics

1. In Word (2016 and later), click the File tab, which will open the Info screen.

2. Choose Related Documents > Edit Links to Files: 

   

3. Choose the linked files that you want to re-embed in your document.

4. Check the box for Save picture in document.

5. Click the Break Link button. A dialog opens; click Yes to confirm this action.

   

The links should now be removed and the graphics embedded in your document!

Reference heading

eXtyles Auto-Styling, which runs during Cleanup, automatically applies the appropriate paragraph style to reference entries, so you don’t have to style them manually.

eXtyles can usually identify a numbered reference list (e.g., Vancouver or medical style) without a reference heading. For documents that use Harvard-style (name–date) citations, and therefore have unnumbered references, the reference list should be preceded by a standard heading such as “References,” “Bibliography,” or “Works Cited.”

Tables

eXtyles is optimized to process tables created using Word’s table tools. However, authors sometimes use a variety of creative methods to construct tables in Microsoft Word, so before Activating a document with eXtyles you should convert all tables built in other ways (e.g., tab-delimited, linked Excel table, columns and column breaks, etc.) into Word tables.

Visual formatting

Does your document contain any unusual formatting (e.g., especially large or small fonts, odd typefaces, garbage characters)? Does the document include fields (e.g., references and citations added via a reference manager such as EndNote)?

These formatting problems may indicate a document poorly imported from another word-processing program or a document that will cause other eXtyles processes (such as Citation Matching in the case of fields) to work suboptimally. The best time to find out is now! But how?

Field Shading

To easily see whether fields have been used to format text in the document we recommend turning on Field Shading in Word. To do this:

1.  Go to the File tab.

2. Navigate to Options > Advanced > Show document content > Field shading:

3. Change the dropdown option from “When Selected” to “Always.”

4. Click OK.

You should now see gray shading on all Word fields regardless of whether you’ve selected them: 

Nonprinting Characters

It can be tremendously helpful to expose nonprinting characters in a Word document so that you can easily see whether spaces, tabs, or other whitespace has been used to incorrectly format content. For example, has the author used a tab or several spaces to indent the first line of a paragraph? Has the author used tabs to format content that should be in a Word table? These questions can be hard to answer without nonprinting characters visible and the answers to them can inform decisions you make when running subsequent eXtyles processes, such as Cleanup.

To turn on nonprinting characters simply toggle the paragraph mark button on the eXtyles ribbon:

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