Formatting your Thesis and Dissertation:Tools,Tips and Troubleshooting

This workbook covers the process of creating a thesis using Microsoft Word 2016. It looks at the standards and regulations, planning, and the features in Word you will need to use to create a long complex document.

Thesis and Dissertation formats are very specific, and students frequently experience some formatting issues. We have gathered some of the most common challenges and how to resolve them. If you can not find your problem below or need additional help, the librarians at Evans library are happy to help.

• Margins How to adjust and change margins to meet the 1 - 1.2-inch guidelines required for your thesis or dissertation.
• Formatting Landscape Pages How to insert a landscape page into your document and adjust your page number.
• Line Spacing  How to adjust line space to meet the thesis and dissertation guidelines.
• Page Numbers How to make adjustments to page number including using the "iii" required on the abstract page.
• Page Breaks and Section Breaks The difference between page breaks and section breaks how to use section breaks to have your document meet the formatting guidelines.
• Table of Contents or Figures  How to insert and update Table of Contents or Table of Figures.
• Figures or Tables turn Black when converted to PDFs How to fix the issue of tables or figures turning black when converting the document to a PDF.
• Margin issues with Tables How to fix the issue of your tables reaching into your margin.
• Page Numbers are not appearing  How to fix the issue of your page numbers showing when you look at the footer but not when printing or view the page.

Some of the above solutions may not work the same if you are using Word on a Mac computer.

Below are PDF versions of the troubleshooting directions in the links above.

Problems with your Thesis using MS Word:

1. Black Box Problem:  The black box problem typically occurs when people are copy and pasting online images into Word. Most of the time this is caused when people are copying and then pasting into Word. A better practice is to download the image that needs to be put in the document and then use the Insert > Picture > From File inside Word.

The black box problem typically occurs when people are copy and pasting online images into Word. Most of the time this is caused when people are copying and then pasting into Word. A better practice is to download the image that needs to be put in the document and then use the Insert > Picture > From File inside Word.

2. Turning a Word document (PC only) into a PDF/A?
a. In Word, click File > Save As
b. Change the Save as Type to PDF
c. Give the file a name and then click on the Options button.
d. In the box that displays make sure there’s a check in the box by PDF/A compliant in the PDF options
section.
e. Click Ok.
f. Click Save.

If you have issues with turning a Microsoft Word document (PC only) into a pdf/a do this:
a. In Word, click File > Save As
b. Change the Save as Type to PDF
c. Give the file a name and then click on the Options button.
d. In the box that displays make sure there’s a check in the box by PDF/A compliant in the PDF options
section.
e. Click Ok.
f. Click Save.

2. If you are having issues with turning a regular pdf file into a pdf/a file do this:
a. Visit the DSL and log into one of the Macs.
b. Open up Acrobat Pro DC from the Finder by clicking on Go > Applications > Acrobat Acrobat DC
c. From the Acrobat Pro DC screen open up the pdf that needs to be converted.
d. Click on Tools
e. Go to PDF Standards in the Protect & Standardize
f. In the upper right you will see a link to save the file as a pdf/a.
Name the file and save it. Voila! You are now a pdf -> pdf/a wizard!
Congratulations!

Questions?  Contact Jared Campbell at jared@fit.edu  or Ashley Huser at ahuser@fit.edu.