Hi Tony:
No, there is no way other than linked text boxes to do what you want.
It's not really an appropriate design for an electronic form: With a paper
form, you *can* run out of yoom and need to attach extra information. With
an electronic form, you never "run out of room" so you never need to attach
or append extra information: just let the form grow if it needs to.
Use the TablePropertiesRowAllow row to break over pages (switch it OFF)
to ensure that the form breaks cleanly at a logical division if it needs to,
then just let it grow :-)
Please allow me to suggest that you are trying to solve a problem that only
exists on paper: you can take advantage of the medium you are in now to
solve the problem a different way.
Cheers
--
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410,
"Tony Robbins" wrote in message
...
"John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]" wrote:
Hi Tony:
That's what a Linked Text Box *is* -- an overflow field :-)
Exactly.
If you build this using just a table without any text boxes, then you
won't
get a second page unless you need one. That's what I meant by "Do you
really need a text box?" If you can do this with a table only, it will
grow
only if it needs to. You might use two tables: one for the top of the
form,
and another immediately following for the expandable area.
The problem is that, if the table gets overfilled, it pushes information
down. I need the additional data to get moved to a second page, *after*
the
remaining contents of the form. However, if I put an overflow textbox on
page 2, I still get page 2 even if the contents are empty.
I'm still surprised there's not a non-scripty solution. A lot of forms
have
a small text field on a first page and then ask you to attach additional
information on additional sheets. I'm just trying to automate this on a
form.
Thanks for your ideas,
Tony
Hope this helps
--
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410,
"Tony Robbins" wrote in message
...
The issue is that I'm converting a paper form to digital. As it
stands,
I've
got a text field sitting in a table. If you overfill the table, the
form
"breaks" and starts to fill two pages. I'd prefer it to create the
second
page to overflow, though your recommendation is fair. I could put a
macro
in
that completes the form and deletes the unnecessary area -- or at
least, I
could try.
It's preferable to teaching several non-user to light-user employees to
delete the 2nd page in the vast majority of cases. These note forms
are
generally very brief, so the overflow is an exceptional case and not
the
rule.
I am a little surprised though -- it seems like having an overflow
field
for
text that is too big for its text area wouldn't be so out of the
ordinary.
Are there any other solutions?
"John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]" wrote:
Hi Tony:
Ask yourself if you REALLY need to do this with Text Boxes. I would
try
very hard to return the answer "No" to that question.
Otherwise, yes, you will need some serious VBA to compute that the
text
box
needs to overflow, create the second text box if it does, and link it.
It may be a lot simpler to create VBA that simply determins whether
the
end
of the text is in Text Box A or B, and deletes B if it's empty :-)
Had you thought that maybe having a second empty page is really not
such
a
bad thing? :-)
Cheers
--
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you
to.
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410,
"Tony Robbins" Tony wrote in
message
...
Aloha all,
I am trying to a form for work under Word 2003. The form itself has
two
text (A and B) boxes, each of which is linked to an overflow text
box
(A2
and
B2). If there is too much text in textbox A, I want it to create a
textbox
A2 on page 2 where it continues the data.
Now, simply linking the text boxes will create the effect, except it
leaves
a second page on every form that doesn't need it. Rather than
leaving
the
linked text box (A2) in, I'd like to make it dynamically created or
hidden
unless textbox A has overflowed.
This is slightly more complicated because I want similar behavior
from
textbox B and B2.
Any suggestions? Do I need to use VBA for this or is there a
simpler
method
I haven't tracked down?
Thanks!
Tony