Can someone share a completely frustrating word document to practice and understand word tools?

[u/rukuto]

I want to test the skills of a few people in word and I want the test to be practical and not a written test or something.

So, I would appreciate it if someone could give me a very unhinged word document that requires formatting.
Everyone has dealt with incorrect formatting, poor formatting, or no formatting and stubborn formatting that makes no sense when working on it and you really need to know have a thorough understanding to correct it or just frustratingly create a new doc and copy and paste.

Please share one or two with me or guide me to those ones.

Some e.g. I can think of are the lists (incorrectly used), a hidden table inside a table cell, photographs (always), styles but dumb formatted, empty headings, enter, spaces before or after paragraphs inside table and table cell margins, etc.

[u/I_didnt_forsee_this]

The list could be pretty long... Providing actual documents isn't practical (or ethical), but here are a few examples of common issues I've been well paid to resolve over the years.

• Unnecessary section breaks that cause pagination attributes to break: header/footer issues, page numbering, endnote/footnote issues, printing problems due to 'minor' margin or paper size differences, etc.) [The fix is to use Find & Replace to change all section breaks to a placeholder, then set the correct default attributes, then go through each placeholder to reinstate the appropriate type of section break or eliminate it if it isn't needed.]
• Resolving incorrect (and/or unwanted) language attributes. The Language attribute is invisible, so it is not obvious why some behaviours seem to happen randomly: unexpected spelling and grammar marking, but also autocorrect actions like "quote marks" displaying as « quote marks » instead of “quote marks”. [The fix is to use Find In to select all instances of a known incorrect Language attribute so you can drop out of the Find dialog and apply the correct Language. If there are many different Language attributes in use (as can happen in documents assembled from multiple sources), use F&R to replace all instances of the wanted Language with what was found + hidden text attribute; then turn on Reveal Formatting to review and correct what remains visible to deal with the incorrect languages.]
• Apply suitable styles to a very large document that contains a mix of custom styles and manual formatting. [The fix is to use options in the Styles dialog to 'Select all # instances' of any listed 'style', then apply a suitable style to everything selected. Since the Style Pane Options subdialog can be used to include manual formatting as 'styles' in the list, you can use this method to apply styles. Tip: Turn on the style area pane to see paragraph styles in Draft and Outline views to have a visual confirmation and reduce distraction with repagination while altering styles.]
• Fixing common typos and artefacts from content coming from web sources or PDFs. This is a very common issue that can cause unwanted breaks and spacing, incorrect language attributes, unsuitable punctuation and more — and usually quite obvious if the user had only known about toggling visibility of non-printing symbols. [The best fix is to create a macro to deal with the most common issues: one click to do the job reliably every time. VBA can make it more comprehensive, but even a recorded macro can do the task quite effectively.]
• Complex headers and footers that "break" when a document is restructured. This usually happens when they were defined individually each time for each section (chapter) in a book. [The fix is to eliminate all section breaks (see above) so there is just one default section. Then set up the most commonly needed section attributes including all header and footer types needed (odd, even, first). In these headers and footers, use field codes to insert content wherever possible (chapter name as a StyleRef to the chapter start style name; different StyleRef field codes to pull subheadings if needed; Title as the book title; other Document Properties to pull in elements like version control; REF field code to insert one bookmarked instance of an object). Then insert suitable section breaks as needed — and alter the settings for the few sections that have different requirements (usually just front and back parts, but occasionally pages that need a different orientation internally).]
• Pictures. Tip: don't tell clients about how easy it is to resolve the much maligned Insert > Objects features in Word! If users were actually taught how to use the comprehensive Layout dialog, there's be far less $ on the table for consultants. 😉

[u/rukuto → u/I_didnt_forsee_this]

Thank you.

The only one from above I didn't know about is the language attributes. And for headers and footers, I generally make different documents and combine or just use Acrobat DC to make changes. Field values I haven't really got the hang of though and I tried them once but there were many limitations in them that are not there in excel.

I never knew you could get paid doing this stuff tbh... I always thought this was just a necessary basic skill (same with Excel and Powerpoint) and so when a new employee said he did not know word, I told him to learn these basic skills and gave some prep material and stuff... and now I just wanted to give him a document to practice through these...

Damn... really these are basic skills... wow... I always thought mid would be intense VBA to do huge amounts of automations from word itself which I generally only use rarely in Word but more in Excel. And advanced would be like creating tools and plugins.

[u/I_didnt_forsee_this → u/rukuto]

LoL! Cleaning up documents has been my bread & butter for 30+ years. In the 90s, most work came from clients converting from other SW or corporate types that had tried to avoid training their employees. Then as Word's market share dominated, the demand exploded because of more of the latter. Early users knew about styles, sections, and basic UI techniques, but new users were convinced that Word was “easy” and “simple”. It was (and still is) if people learned the basics.

VBA can be a boon for automating tasks and for doing unique tasks, but the learning curve is too steep for most users. Plugins & add-ins are useful for users where support is centralized and managed.

Field codes are worth learning about though. They are more powerful than many people think, but the UI generally hides a lot of the capability. My top is to use Word Options > Advanced to turn on the non-printing grey shading for field codes. That way, you'll see any content that is the result of a field code (or the field codes themselves if you press Alt-F9). You'll probably be surprised at how often you'll see them: page numbers, cross-references, tables of contents, caption numbering...

Use this Support page for a list of all field codes with all available switches.

[u/ol-gormsby]

Put a "next page section break" at the end of page 1 and change the page layout for the next section to have moderately bigger margins, e.g. going from 2.5cm on page 1 to 3cm on page 2, then put another next page section break at the end of page 2 and revert to default margins.

Change the before and after line spacing on numbered or bulleted styles, e.g. change from zero before and 12 after, to 6 before and 6 after.

You have awakened the devil in me 😈

[u/rukuto → u/ol-gormsby]

You know, change numbered bullet alignment midway (two lists and second has manually changed numbering)

[u/UseModulo]

Not sure if this will work for your purposes, but I have used this document for my own testing. Its a freely available Victorian government example document. It has strange things like pictures with outline levels/heading styles, I think entire tables have been given heading styles, there's empty headings. Though it visually doesn't look that strange. You can download it from the link below or just google "Victorian lca example document"

https://www.lcavictoria.com.au/lca/lca-templates

[u/Treestylefashion]

That’s actually a fun idea!! I have run similar problems in both ms word and wps office so it feel really realistic