Thanks for your response Beth. I had thought about tables, but I am
reluctant for a few reasons. The first is that everywhere I've read states
that a large one row column makes the document unstable. I'd like to make
the document as consistent as possible and trying to determine when to add a
new row would be near impossible. I've thought about making it every heading
change, or every 5 paragraphs or something, but the complexity of the manual
creates too many inconsitencies.
To give some more information. I am very limited by the IT department in
the interoperability of the network. As far as I can tell they have no file
update function which makes for creating a global template pretty near
impossible. The document template that I am designing is for creating a
1000+page manual (about 200 pages are complete, but are roughly formatted and
I have to follow something close to the way it looks). Various sections will
be edited by different departments, thankfully most of the departments are in
the same building. The document needs to require as minimal training as
possible since the average user has nary even an introductory knowledge of
Word functions. To make matters even more complicated, some departments have
a high turn over rate so whoever's editing the document now may not be in 5
months, so whoever I train has to train them. To be frank, the word template
puts half the people on the committee uneasy. The reason for the two columns
is to put references to some procedures, the references will be somewhat
short, but need to be visibly accessible as they reference Governing
documents.
(Things were going smoothly until the supervisor said, "Find a way to
include those references")
--
-Beeler
"Beth Melton" wrote:
Is there a reason you can't use a borderless Word table? Attempting to use
the Columns feature, created for snaking newspaper style columns, as
blocked/parallel columns is a nightmare! I think if we knew more about why
you're unable to use a table we might have other suggestions. :-)
Also, if you are setting up a template for others then the nonprinting
characters won't help since this is a user preference and isn't stored in
the document.
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP
Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/boo...x#AboutTheBook
Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
"Beeler" wrote in message
news
In word 2002 how does one view just the breaks, ie. column break, section
break? There are options to view seemingly every other type of hidden
character or code. Ideally I would like only column breaks to be visible
by
default for a template.
(For those interested, or with additional suggestions, I'm trying a
workaround for parallel columns in word w/o using tables, linked
textboxes
etc.)
--
-Beeler