Word bugs - document map

For a doctoral thesis you have to write a l-o-n-g document with several chapters, contents, appendices, so you need to use styles, but Word 2007 sometimes changes styles such as captions to a high level, which messes up the document map. I think I've found the trick solve this problem.

Go to Word options, then proofing, and choose the auto correct tab. Then AutoFormat As You Type. Untick 'Define styles based on your formatting'.

I've shown the relevant window in the picture.

However, you still have to unmess the captions. The quickest way to do this seems to be to select a piece of normal text, right click its style box, and choose update style to match selection.
Then watch your document map refresh itself back to what it should look like.

Examiner chosen

They chosen my examiner, contacted him and they've accepted. They've yet to choose the internal examiner.

Numbering thesis paragraphs

I'm writing this blog while my Word crashes. :(

I thought I'd try again to number the sections within each chapter, like so
2 Literature review
2.1 Introduction
2.2 public sector procurement

I found instructions at http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering20072010.html
and followed them down to modifying the style for my second level headings, where it has crashed. BANG, WALLOP! Silence.

Oh, bother! I'd really like to list my headings like this because I think it would make it easier to work out where you are in the middle of a long chapter.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this thesis provides useful insight that enhances understanding of engagement.

Advanced word processing

My colleague's sitting next to me updating her references to her diagrams manually. She's checking each one and changing them in her 90,000 word long thesis. And she's writing up her contents manually. Yeuch. I showed her how to

• right click any new diagram,
• choose caption,
• add it in and
• check its style is 'caption' so it goes centre and with the required line spacing. Then I
• use insert cross reference to refer to the figure, and
• add the page number if it's a figure in an appendix.
• A quick scroll page (using view document map) to the list of figures in contents,
• right click and update. Yep - all forty figures fine.

But this is not the time to learn advanced features like this - learn them in third year and keep practising. Here's a link to a pdf from Durham University on "Creating Long Documents Using Microsoft Word 2007" - it looks useful, simple and short (20 pages).

I would like to learn and easily do chapter numbers in the way that I did twenty years ago with AmiPro. That was a nice word processing package.

My colleague says (tongue in cheek) this isn't all my own work - I've been too technology-assisted!

Final thoughts

I want to write the final section that addresses the closing thoughts of my research. I can't! I'm just waffling, and I'm not allowed to write:

I've done enough. It's good enough. Just give me the doctorate!

Writing has been a struggle for me all the way through this process.

Research aims were achieved in that the researcher has developed and empirically validated a model that shows how participants engage on IT projects. The research aims have been achieved in that this researcher has written a heck of a lot of words.

By presenting empirical research with case studies of five IT projects, this thesis has detailed perceptions of how engaged IT project participants build relationships and get work done. By collecting and analysing my case studies (and thanks ever so much to my participants) I've got this model of engagement. It's quite neat really.

This thesis set out the findings that addressed the research question by developing a framework for engagement. Yes - that's what I meant to say above.

Engagement was seen to involve conditions and behaviours in a self-replicating system. That's the model I mean.

Suggestions have been made in this chapter as to how client management can manage the engagement process with their external consultants. But will practitioners believe me?

The results of this research fill a gap in the literature on understanding engagement. Like who cares anyhow?

By focusing on the process of building relationships rather than the outcomes and products of engagement, it identifies how engaged behaviours can produce value through exchanging and building new intellectual capital. I reckon that bit's new and clever and I'd just like to write it right.

This thesis has shown that the essential behaviours that emerge are sharing, sense making and adapting which interact and self-reinforce. Actually, I'd like to write about it being an autopoietic system, but I don't use that word much so bringing it in now in the last section is a bit of a shock.

and then bla, bla boring bla

This thesis provides useful insight that enhances understanding of engagement. It does.

I want to write this now. I've got other stuff to get on with, like life.

Progress

We have progress.

1. The draft my supervisors have just read is the penultimate draft. I’m acting on their feedback, and getting the thesis to supervisor #2 in two weeks time, who will return his feedback by 1st March, aiming at small, not restructuring points so that I can submit within a week of that. Good.
2. We’ve discussed examiners and made a decision.
3. Finally and interestingly, we haven’t got a date for a next meeting – there won’t be any more. Howzat?

That means I'll have time to work on the paper I'm submitting to the Management Consultancy Division for their biannual conference in June. That's the first conference paper I've ever submitted.