The thesis template is a Microsoft Word file that contains a set of text styles (put together by Heather Miyagi) that allows the thesis document to be formatted uniformly throughout. The graduate college insists that formatting be EXACTLY the same throughout the document and that formatting meets their specifications. This protocol explains how to use the template but is not intended to replace the graduate school thesis handbook, which contains the specific requirements that must be met.
Applying styles to your text inserts code into the document, which is a very simple process if done while writing. Microsoft Word can then search for the codes and automatically create a list of figures, list of tables, and table of contents. While this is much less time consuming than attempting to generate these 3 portions of the thesis by hand, the process requires more time than you would think (it's not entirely automatic), patience, and thinking through the process before you do it. Allow at least a day for the generating the tables (longer if you have no experience with creating multiple document sections with separate pagination-this part is a pain). Once the tables are generated, they can be easily updated to accomodate additions, deletions, or changes in page numbers to the main body of the text.
Open the thesis template file in Microsoft Word. To insert the style codes, you need to have the "styles" section of the formating toolbar visible in Microsoft Word. Select the text you wish to format using the mouse. Go to the styles section of the formatting toolbar and select the appropriate option. The selected text will change to the format you selected. Formats are available for various level headings, figure captions, table captions, etc. The formatting not only changes the font but also the spacing above and below the headings. DON'T add additional lines of spaces- the point of using this is so that you don't have to go though the document at the end of writing and put the same amount of space between main headings and sub headings etc. (The thesis office will have you redo the formating if you are inconsistent between chapter.) The codes can be inserted into the text as you write the thesis.
Before generating the table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables all of your chapters need to be in one document file and have the code inserted into headings, figures and tables. Your document will need to be divided into at least two sections with separate pagination. The table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables all fall on pages with roman numerals prior to the actual thesis text. Pagination must be inserted before generating tables. Refer to the help section in Word if you do not know how to do this. Paginating the document correctly is not particularly easy.
The list of figures and list of tables must be generated first. To generate the list of figures, go to Insert-->Index and Tables. Click on the "Table of Figures" tab. Click on the "options" button. Select "Figure Caption" from the pull down menu. Everything else should be fine on the Word default settings. Click "Ok". The list of figures should appear. Do the same to generate the list of tables, except select "Table Caption" from the pull down menu under the options button. Create main headings for the list of table and list of figures using the styles text codes so that the headings appear when you create the table of contents. Create the table of contents by selecting the "Table of Contents" tab. Click "Ok" and the table of contents should appear. The roman numberals will appear as capital letters. They need to be lowercase. Select the row of text the numbers are in and right click. Go to "Font" and select (or unselect) the appropriate box. Any of the tables can be updated by right clicking on the table and telling Word to update either the page numbers or the entire table. This is helpful if you have to change things in the document after generating the tables. Some amount of practice (and thinking) is needed to get this right. If you format the heading for the acknowlegements section, for example, too soon it will appear in your table of contents when you generate that table. Again, think and save frequently under different file names so you can start over if something very bad happens.