OCR Tips

Over the years with BBCdocs.com I have learnt one or two things that some people may, or may not find usefull.

1) Make sure you set the page size to that of the original document before you start all your formatting.

2) Use headers and footers where applicable. Put the page numbers in the footer, and then use page breaks after the last paragraph to seperate the pages. Don't think it doesn't matter - it does, as different people use different printers / paper lengths, or for that matter don't use printers at all, they might view it on-line. If you don't use the page breaks it just comes out a mess.

3) If you are having problems with the page numbering - ie you want to start at page 1 but this is the 5th page, then look up "section breaks" in the help.

4) Try and use the paragraph spacing instead of a carriage return between paragraphs or headings. This makes formatting alot easier.

I use a little macro to help me with this assigned to ALT <P>. This basically toggles between 0 / 6 / 12 point spacing after a paragraph. This is for MS Word v7.

With Selection.ParagraphFormat
If .SpaceAfter = 6 Then
.SpaceAfter = 12
Else
If .SpaceAfter = 0 Then
.SpaceAfter = 6
Else
.SpaceAfter = 0
End If
End If
End With

5) When trying to format a contents list, to get the page numbers alligned down the right hand side you need to set a right tab stop. Look at the BBC User Guide to see what I mean. To set the right tab stop you must click the tab icon at the left hand side of the ruler until it displays a right tab. Then you can set it by clicking on the ruler with the left mouse button.