The default settings of Word were defined for business rather than
academic users. You should make the following setup changes (easier
than editing them in at the end or attempting a rescue halfway).
Reduce margins to 1 inch all round with a slightly wider left hand one
to accommodate the spiral binding. Start new pages for each chapter and
sections like the bibliography. Number these sections clearly.
If you have difficulty dealing with a long document, break it down into
smaller documents and assemble them all at the end. Create a footer
with your name and page numbers in a small font size e.g. 8. Numbers
are a huge help to navigating as the document grows in size. Switch on
the automatic spell and grammar checkers in the Tools menu - these are
not 100% but can eliminate the large majority of 'silly' errors.
Change the line-spacing to double.
Turn on the Reviewing toolbar so you can add comments to the text -
very useful for your supervisor and they can easily be deleted later.
Choose a serif font in a readable size e.g. Palatino Linotype 12 (the
default Times New Roman 10 is very difficult to read in a long text).
Set up at least three independent storage locations for your document
to protect against accidental loss e.g. hard drive, CD ROM and USB
stick.
NEVER TRUST YOUR PRECIOUS DOCUMENT TO JUST ONE FLOPPY DISK OR STORAGE MEDIUM.