Loose Change

This is the information embedded in ONE line of an RTF file.

It's that time of the morning when the sun starts coming up...

Any word processing program embeds information into a file. Spacing, line wrapping, styles, paragraphing, fonts... WORD is probably one of the worst. However WORD is also fairly universal, and comes installed on a good many computers, or did, and is our industry "standard." Using RTF files (Rich Text Format) we can construct a document in WORD that can be edited with comments and then converted to all of our sale formats.

Open Office will not solve this problem. I've tried. Not only that, but authors who use Open Office can't read their editor's comments. Word Perfect is definitely not a solution, either. WORD to WORD PERFECT and back creates even more file errors, and almost every publisher uses WORD. Only way to create certain file types for resale.

Under normal circumstances, WORD is reasonably stable. The problem comes when you start emailing WORD files. Or any files, for that matter, but we're looking specifically at WORD files. When you start emailing files from say author to critique partner to editor and back, the amount of information stored on and in the file multiplies dramatically. Not only that, but since the file is sent as a collection of little electronic "packets" pieces can get lost in the mail. Think of shipping a Gingerbread House, unwrapped. Occasionally a postal worker takes a tiny little nibble.

Turn on Track Changes, and WORD saves both the old and new versions of the file. And it also saves the instructions as to how to tell the difference between the old and new versions. SO if the piece that falls off happens to be the instructions...

We have to email files. No choice in the matter. So how do you avoid having YOUR file be the one that corrupts?

1)    Turn off track changes. (Go to TOOLS, Track Changes, Highlight, click on Highlighting, and uncheck everything.) Never, never, NEVER use track Changes. Did I mention Track Changes is the source of some of the worst file corruption errors I've ever seen -- including whole chapters disappearing?
2)    Don't "SAVE" your file. Use "Save As". This gives WORD clear instructions to overwrite the existing file information.
3)    Back up your file to multiple locations, preferably on multiple computers, and a thumb drive. Email a copy to yourself. Throw one on your FTP (If you have a website, you have an FTP. Ask your web mistress to explain how to access a folder for safe storage.)
4)    Once your critique partner/partners are done with your file, before you send it to your editor, right click on the file and open it with WordPad (and Save As). This is a simpler word processing program that removes a lot of the embedded information you no longer need.

If you've had problems with files corrupting, put the file you're going to mail in a folder of the same name, right click on the folder, and hit Zip or WinZip, select "Add to (Winzip Folder name)" and attach the zipped folder to your email rather than the naked file. Think of WinZip as file bubble wrap. Because when you lose a file, or it reverts to the version you saved last Wednesday, you've lost a lot more than your time. A piece of your sanity goes with it. And as authors, we haven't got that much to spare.

"Save Early. Save Often. Save Everywhere."

Margaret Riley
AKA Shelby Morgen
Publisher, Changeling Press LLC
www.ChangelingPress.com

Tags: corrupted file, track changes

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Loose Change

Inside Epublishing

Mar. 2nd, 2009

Why Files Corrupt

December 2009

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