[Mark Thompson]

Unfortunately, neither the outline view nor the document map really does what
I'm wanting.

The Document Map requires significantly more screen space than does a row of
tabs across the top of the screen. Also, the Document Map looks directly at
the heading-formatted text in the document, thus creating unnecessarily long
references. For example, the header on a particular page might say
'Observations and Recommendations', but really the tab need only say
something short and sweet (like on an Excel tab), such as 'Summary',
something that is under my direct control. Further, if this was a book with
chapters, the author might not title his chapters, but just have chapter
numbers at the top of the page. A tab would give the author the ability to
label his chapters for his own own navigation, while not cluttering up the
document itself with a lot of unwanted text.

The Outline View is good in its way as well, but it relies on drilling up
and down throughout the entire document. For long documents, it isn't easy
to use Outline View to bounce back and forth between sections, and its more
cumbersome because we're still expanding and collapsing sections in order to
keep it somewhat navigable. Much easier page navigation in Excel.

I'll take your word for the "PageBreakBefore" property in a structured
document. That phrase is not in the initial Help search for Word, and the
extended search shows that it isn't really something that an ordinary user
would get into in a typical scenario such as the one I'm describing. Yes, I
understand what you're saying, but only because I'm a geek too. My wife is
an administrative assistant who does basic word processing and Excel, and
that would be way over the top for her.

I'm just looking for basic functionality, in an already understood paradigm
such as Excel tabs, that enhances productivity.

"Robert M. Franz (RMF)" wrote:

Hi Mark

Mark Thompson wrote:
Now that IE 7 has the concept of Tabs, and Excel has the concept of multiple
Sheets in one workbook, I'd like to suggest that Word incoroporate that same
functionality.

It would be really nice to be able to create tabs, or "chapters", in a Word
document, and to be able to move quickly and easily between chapters by
clicking on their tabs, just like clicking on the tab for an Excel sheet.
Chapters in a book, sections in a proposal, pages in a briefing book, I can
think of several uses. Each chapter, or section, or whatever you want to
call it, would have a tab across the top of the work area.

Have you tried using the Document Map or OutlineView to achieve the
desired result?


This could also help with paging during printing. Perhaps an option for
each tab/chapter could be "Always start printing the information on this tab
at the top of a printed page".

Hmm, in a structured document, this would be taken care of by setting
the "PageBreakBefore" property in the necessary style(s).

2cents
Robert
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