Hi, Mayrie, I'll tell you something, but I'll have to hear from Rick Costa first. Here's what he told me: assuming you have somebody who can eyeball the file for you, you somehow get yourself to where the trouble is on the lines of text. Next, you go into the paragraph presentation area of the file and find out what settings you have on that particular line of text. Now here's the weird part. I found out the "before" spin box was set a little greater than zero, and the "after" spin box was at 474 or something outrageous like that. He basically told me where the trouble stopped (which was at the top of page 10 of the book.) He said I could try selecting all the text from where this mess started to where it ended (use the control and shift keys with the left hand while pressing the Down arrow key with the right hand), then hit alt+O to enter the format menu and arrow until you hear "paragraph" and press enter. Now go through the dialog boxes and check that the before and after boxes are both set to 0 points. Then tab until you come to "okay" then press the spacebar. The weird result of this maneuver is that the page break count was reduced to 224 pages which sounds right to me. Can I explain this? Not on your life. (I should tell you that I have a copy of the original file where I tried Mr. Costa's suggestion and this is the result I got.) I'm not guaranteeing this works for everything and I'm not sure if my result is correct, but it sure feels reasonable to me. I don't know the scanning program the submitter used, but if she used Kurzweil like you and did the same things you do, then what happened to her file is really weird and MSWord sure did a number on her file, wouldn't you say? Cross your fingers and I'll let you know what I hear. You know I think if there is a way that submitters and proofreaders can make Word behave )assuming we decide to use the path of least resistance [in my case, if the file is in .rtf it will open in Word], then it will be really great for both branches of the deranged perfectionist brigade to have a sure-fire technique to get the file in its proper shape. I'm willing to try. Also, Mr. Costa suggests the paragraph spacing be set to single rather than at "at least". I don't know about this. Regards, Kim Friedman. -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mayrie ReNae Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 11:14 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi Kim, Well then, I think Judy and Mike have the right of it, and I'm sorry to say, I wouldn't want to be you. I do know though that if you're determined, you'll solve the problem. Hey, wait! I think I have an idea that will work and won't make you have to learn a new and taxing, confusing new technique. How's about you release the book, remind me what the name of it is, let me check it out, open and save it in Kurzweil 1000 which should strip all the styles, but won't mess up anything else? Then I can upload the book to the approval queue and ask Carrie to put my fixed file back on the checkout page with a hold on it for you. I bet that'll work! Wanna try it? Mayrie -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kim Friedman Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 10:52 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi, Mayrie, I changed the width of the page to 22 inches so the whole thing is 22 inches by 22 inches. I hate to tell you this but the page count remains 255, ergo, no change at all. Regards, Kim. -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mayrie ReNae Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 10:03 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi Kim, I don't have any other ideas. You do know, right, that those soft page breaks won't hurt anything in the final uploaded book to Bookshare? They're just really, really, annoying, frustrating, and sometimes confusing to deal with as a proofreader, as, if you're like me, you forget what page you're on, what page you're supposed to be on, and what page Word thinks you're on, and all that means when combined. I have never tried this, but can you widen the pages in page setup? I know you said the page length is set at 22, the longest page one can have, but can one have pages wider than 8.5? If you make the pages really wide, wouldn't that maybe help? It certainly can't hurt. So, maybe try that? Do you know how to get to the page setup dialogue? It's in the file menu, and once the dialogue opens, you need to press control plus tab to get to the paper size tab and then choose a wider page width if that's possible. Guess what? It is possible, I just looked! You can choose to have a 22-inch wide page! So, your page would be 22 by 22 inches. Maybe that'll get rid of the too many soft page breaks. Try it and see! And let us know how it goes! Good luck! I hope it works! Mayrie -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kim Friedman Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 9:46 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi, Mayrie, just for grins I made a third copy of the original file. I opened the file, selected all, did the find-and-replace for extraneous blank lines. It changed Ms. Word's page count from 256 to 255. So your suggestion helped a little bit but not by much. So what does one do now after this to get rid of soft page breaks? Regards, Kim. P.S.: Really weird, isn't it? K. -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mayrie ReNae Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 9:13 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi Kim Are all of the page breaks hard page breaks? If you can't really tell, but you're pretty sure that your problem is too much white space in big chunks, you can try this: Open the find and replace dialogue by pressing control plus h In the find box of the find and replace dialogue type ^p^p^p (That's the caret followed by the lower case letter p) In the replace box type ^p^p Hit enter on replace all. Repeat this process until Word tells you you've made zero replacements. What you're doing here is eliminating all big chunks of white space, but keeping single blank lines if they need to be there, which might help to get rid of soft page breaks if they exist. And, no, your screen reader isn't causing the problem. Good luck, and let us know if this helps. Mayrie -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kim Friedman Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 8:16 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] The case of the proliferating page breaks Hi, I'm working on a document which is kind of peculiar. First of all, the submitter set the whole thing to custom size (22 inches by 8.5 inches) and the paragraph presentation was set to the usual standard as mentioned for optimum proofreading. Even though this was apparently the case, the document when opened in Word 2003 said the file had 256 pages when the actual page count in the book is 216 pages. I followed this procedure: 1. Selected the entire document which took me to the bottom of the file: 2. Entered the format menu and selected the paragraph settings. My question is how is it possible for one to get into the paragraph settings and somehow deselect the document so that one isn't getting the whole file set correctly? I was under the impression when one selected the entire document and went into the paragraph presentation dialog boxes that whatever changes one made was supposed to affect the whole document and not have the internal pages set differently from what it's supposed to be. Is there some settings in Word which are configured wrong or is it some peculiarity of the scanning program or OCR which has messed up this pagination so this proliferating page break situation occurs? I consulted with Rick Costa who had the file in front of him. I was told that about ten percent of the document must have a lot of white space which seemed to cause the huge amount of page breaks. He is also curious to know if the screen reader affects the file in any way. I don't think this is so just because its job is simply to read what is on the monitor screen. I don't see how an .rtf file or it's opening in MS Word should affect it. I also don't see why going into the paragraph presentation in the formatting menu should deselect what was selected. Do any of you know? This would be very helpful to submitters who turn in files and it would also help proofreaders who come across this proliferating page break phenomenon. Regards, Kim Friedman. P.S.: The book I'm working on is Scales of Retribution by Cora Harrison. (It is the sixth installment of the Burren mystery series by her.) K. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.