Article Submission Format

[Mickeylayne]

I just recieved an email that my article was rejected because CC can't accept "docx" files. What's a "docx" file? I created the article in MSWord, and saved it as that. I looked in the help file, but I must have missed the information as to the format for admissions. I'm a little glad it wasn't because of grammar, punctuation, or something like that. I went over it as best I could. Can anyone help me with submission format? Thanks!

[Celeste Stewart]

Word 2007 uses the new .docx format instead of the old .doc format. CC doesn't accept it because it's too new and only users of Word 2007 or users who have downloaded a viewer can open these documents - not too good for the customer to buy an article and not be able to open it. You can get around this by choosing Save As > Word 97-2003. This saves it in .doc.

I have set up my own version of Word 2007 to automatically save all documents in .doc. Do this by going to the Office button (the round one in the upper left corner) and clicking Word Options. Click the Save link and then choose Save Files in this Format and pick Word 97-2003.

[Mickeylayne]

Thanks so much for the help, Celeste! I had submitted two articles initially, and that message came in yesterday about the first. The message about the second article (also in docx format) came in this morning. I NOW know what to do about the docx problem, but the second problem they had with the other article puzzles me. Here's the message: "We cannot accept docx files. Please place your article in a subcategory
upon submission and format long summaries as per our guidelines."
I saw the subcategory option. I could, I suppose, come up with a subcategory, but I didn't think I was supposed to. But I don't know what they mean by "format long summaries as per our guidelines." Did I miss something, or is there a specific format for long pieces? Should I have chopped it up somehow? I realize you may not be able to help me on this one, as you don't have access to the article. But is there a place here, aside from the "writer's guidelines" where I should go to find out about this problem? Or is it in writer's guidelines and I just haven't interpreted the instructions right? In that case, I'm a bit emabarrassed.
I have other articles in the works, but I'd like to either iron out my errors before submitting the new articles, or decide this whole thing simply goes over my head too far for me to continue. Thanks again!

[Celeste Stewart]

Ed may be able to clarify. I do know that sometimes when copying and pasting text into the long summary the spacing between paragraphs gets messed up and it looks like one large chunk of text. Could be that? Or maybe not a full third of the article posted?

[Mickeylayne]

Thanks Celeste! You may be right on both accounts! Maybe I can handle this one on my own. Ed's probably up to his eyebrows in work. Let me try. I re-saved the articles in the older format of Word, and I'm going to resubmit them. I'll separate the sentences more in the summary and be sure to submit a full third of the 3,806-word article. Hope this works. Again, thanks for the tips!

[Ed]

"sometimes when copying and pasting text into the long summary the spacing between paragraphs gets messed up and it looks like one large chunk of text."

Yeah - my reasoning behind this is that customers need to be able to read the long summaries, since this will ultimately allow them to decide to purchase the article. If the long summary isn't as reader-friendly as possible, the customer may just move on rather than try to figure out where one paragraph ends and the next begins.