One tool that has become increasingly popular in the workplace is Microsoft SharePoint. What is it? Basically, it provides an “instant portal” if you will for your group or organization. It is aimed at the new collaborative centric workplace, where everybody can access all the information they need from a central location.

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Everybody likes to add pictures to their documents (sometimes to their detriment, but that’s a different article). However, the file sizes on these pictures can add up, and before you know it your 10 page document is 10 MB (megabytes). This causes problems not only for you, but for your audience as well. One example of this occurs with emailing the documents. Many times documents are emailed to their intended audience. Unfortunately, a document of that size could cause problems with their email systems.

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One of the more common things I’ve seen done with Microsoft Visio is to create something in it (such as a flowchart, graph, or diagram) and then embed this creation into a Microsoft Word document. A good example of this occurs when creating a software design document. It’s pretty standard to include both a written description of how the software should work, as well as a visual flowchart of how software should work. Visio is the tool of choice for creating this flowchart. However, once this flowchart is created in Visio, what is the best way to include it in your document?

There are multiple ways to include your Visio object into a document. I’m going to go over two of the ones I’ve seen most commonly used:

• Copying the Visio contents into the document.
• Inserting the Visio contents as an object icon.

Copying the Visio contents

This is the method that I use the most, as it is both quick and easy. To do this, simply select the parts of your Visio project that you want to include in your document and then paste your selection into the document. Need a simple way to select everything on a Visio page? Simply use CTRL+A. This will select everything in the current window.

Once you have pasted your selection into the document, you can size the Visio object to fit your needs using the sizing handles. I like to use this method because it’s easy to perform inline edits. For example, say that you are revising a design document that was created a long time ago. It’s more than likely that you don’t have access to the original Visio object. However, you can edit the embedded object. To do so, follow the steps below:

1. Right click on the object.
2. Select Visio Object.
3. Select Open.

Visio will then open, and you’ll be able to perform any changes you want to the object. To save your changes, select Update from the File menu. Also, if you want to save the object from your document into a separate Visio file, you can go to the File menu and select Save Copy As….

*Note: Instead of selecting Open from the Visio Object menu, you can select Edit. This will open the embedded object for inline editing in Word. However, I find this hard to use, so I recommend that you use the method described above.

Inserting the Visio contents as an object icon

This is a good option if you need to attach your Visio object to the document as a reference or appendix. Including an icon instead of the entire diagram can cut multiple pages from your document.

All you have to do to insert your Visio object this way is follow these steps:

1. Go to theInsert menu.
2. Select Object.

A dialog box will then appear. For our purposes, we will be using the Create from File tab. Browse to the location of your Visio file to select it. Then, click on the Display as icon checkbox. This will enable the Change Icon button. You can use this to change the caption and picture for your icon. Once you’ve finished, click Ok and your object will show up as an icon in your document.

*Note: If you enable the Link to file checkbox, any changes made to your source file will cause the object in the document to be updated.

Important drawback to this method: If you choose this route, your audience will need to have Visio installed on their computer to be able to read it. It’s for this reason that I don’t use this method very much. Visio is not a common Microsoft Office install, so you’ll have to make the call on whether or not your audience will have access to it.

Embedding Visio objects is relatively simple, you should decide which way to do it based on who your audience is and what you are trying to accomplish by using your Visio object.

How much thought goes into the documents you create? If you get the feeling that some of your work products are bloated, take a look at our latest article on over-doing it when creating a document.

When you create a document, do you include a cover page? Formal header and footer? Appendices? This sounds pretty standard, right? However, do you actually need to include all of these things in EVERY document? Probably not.

I’m not advocating lowering the standards of your work products. The point I’m trying to make is that before you create a document, you should determine what you need to include based on what you are trying to accomplish. Why does it matter? What harm could a few extra pages do? Here are some of the possible consequences:

• Miss your deadline - If you get caught up too much in extra sections when you don’t need to, it is easy to miss your deadline. Before you know it, your work is due and all you have is a table of contents and a cover page.

• Your point is missed - By including unnecessary sections in your document, you may make your main point unclear to your audience. This basically defeats the purpose of writing the document in the first place.

• Forget important content - This is another pitfall; You might forget important content that you didn’t have time to focus on because of these unnecessary additions. You need to make sure all of your base content is there and then worry about the extras.

Now that we’ve established the consequences, how do you go about avoiding them? This is a tough question as the answer is very dependent on your situation. However, here are some questions to ask yourself when creating your document:

• Who is your audience? - This can be the deal breaker. Are you writing for a co-worker or for a client? In general, you want to keep it very formal when writing for a client. If it’s a co-worker, you might not have to get so formal. This isn’t always the case, but it’s definitely something to consider.

• Is it really necessary? - This is a question you should ask yourself before you include a section (such as an appendix). A good example of this would be a table of contents. If you’re writing a two page document, do you really need a table of contents? Most likely not. If you can’t answer a definitive “Yes” to this question, you’re probably better off leaving this section out.

• Does it make your point clearer? - Another big concern of yours should be to make sure that everything that you add to your document makes your point clearer. Using the table of contents example above, if you add it, will it make your document easier to navigate? If you add an appendix, does it make your information easier to understand? These are the questions you should be asking.

Remember this: How much you should have in your documents is highly situational. Sometimes you may need to put in what you think are unnecessary sections just because that’s how your company does it (if you disagree, you should suggest a change). However, when you have a choice, try to keep the above tips in mind.

Having trouble getting the number of sections in your documents right? See the newest article on sectioning your documents effectively for some tips on how to solve this problem.

Determining how to break your document into sections can be a very tough task. On the one hand, you don’t want to create too many small sections. At the same time, you don’t want to have one big run-on section. This brings us to the pivotal question: Where do you draw the line?

The following is a list of three ways that you can tell if you have too many or too few sections:

• You have a Section 1.2.3.4.5.6 - We’ve all seen documents with way too many sections in it. This makes the document very hard to read as you have to keep skipping around all the time to gather all of the information you need. In general, I never go past the fourth level when breaking down my documents (ex. Section 1.1.2.3), and I don’t even use the fourth level very often. As a rule of thumb, you will usually end up having more sections in longer documents than in shorter ones.

• You have one Section - This is the opposite of the first point. Instead of having too many sections, you have too few. Unless your document is only a few pages long, you most likely will need to break it down into more than one big section. Just like with a run-on sentence, a run-on section will quickly lose the reader in a sea of information. This doesn’t mean you have to go hog-wild (as demonstrated in the first point), but for a medium sized document you probably want to go to the second level (ex. Section 1.1).

• You get lost reading it - Huge point here. After you are finished with what you think is a solid draft of your document, you should read it the entire way through (better yet, have someone unfamiliar with the document do it). This way, you can make sure that it is both informative and easy to read. If you are having trouble reading it, think of the problems the audience will have. If you find yourself in this situation, take another look at how you’ve broken down the information in your document. You may be able to fix it by simply restructuring the number/content of some of the sections.

It’s not always easy to get a good section layout for a document. However, as long as you put some time into planning the layout, you’ll end up with a quality product.

This is a handy tip inspired by a buddy of mine yesterday. Basically, he went to open a document and instead printed it (all 128 pages). Luckily, he had his printer queue open and could cancel the job before it went too far. Hence, whenever you are printing something that is more than a few pages, I suggest you keep your printer queue open while it prints.

To do this, simply double-click on the printer icon in your system tray (far right on your start menu bar) and the queue should open up. It’s also a good idea to go to the printer and cancel the job itself as everything that has already been sent to the printer will continue printing even if you cancel the job through the printer queue.

Once again, more common sense that most people don’t seem to listen to. We’ve all been there: Working on a document for hours, slaving over it, getting it just right. Then, tragedy strikes: The power goes out. Just like that, your document is gone in an instant. When was the last time you saved it? Probably yesterday. Hopefully it wasn’t too much trouble formatting each section exactly the same, because you get to do it again.

What’s the moral of this story? Save your work, and save it often. It takes two seconds, but it could save you from redoing an entire days worth of work.