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#1
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
Hi,
I have a need to be able to embed a text phrase on various pages in my document that will not be printed as part of the page, but which will be picked up from the page and displayed in the footer. The goal here is to be able to add content to the page footer on a page-by-page basis, which we'll use to put a revision number on changed pages. (I'd like to define the page footer once in the document and not have to insert section breaks so that selected pages can have their own footer definition -- too hard to maintain). For example, I'd like to be able to embed the string "Rev 1" somewhere on page 3, and have "Rev 1" appear in the footer of page 3 and only page 3. The phrase "Rev 1" shouldn't appear in the body of page 3 -- just in the footer. I've been experimenting with the {STYLEREF} field. If I style the text "Rev 1" with a style named "RevTextStyle" created just for this purpose, I can pick up the text in the footer with {STYLEREF "RevTextStyle"}. If the next page doesn't need a marker, {STYLEREF} picks up the same text, so I have to create an emtpy RevTextStyle paragraph on the next page to give {STYLEREF} something to pick up on this and subsequent pages. The problem is that if I use the Hidden font attribute to hide the RevTextStyle paragraph in the body of the page, it's also hidden in the footer, and even \* MERGEFORMAT doesn't seem to let me make the text visible always. Any suggestions? Or any ideas for other mechanisms to do this? This is a common requirement for industrial/government/military type documents, so people have to have encountered this before lots of times. I've considered using a text box (Shape object) positioned to overlap the footer. That could work too, but it's seems easy to mess up its positioning accidentally. I'd appreciate any ideas anyone might have for handling this. Thanks, Brian |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
Check out the use of the StyleRef field.
-- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP "Brian Knittel" wrote in message ... Hi, I have a need to be able to embed a text phrase on various pages in my document that will not be printed as part of the page, but which will be picked up from the page and displayed in the footer. The goal here is to be able to add content to the page footer on a page-by-page basis, which we'll use to put a revision number on changed pages. (I'd like to define the page footer once in the document and not have to insert section breaks so that selected pages can have their own footer definition -- too hard to maintain). For example, I'd like to be able to embed the string "Rev 1" somewhere on page 3, and have "Rev 1" appear in the footer of page 3 and only page 3. The phrase "Rev 1" shouldn't appear in the body of page 3 -- just in the footer. I've been experimenting with the {STYLEREF} field. If I style the text "Rev 1" with a style named "RevTextStyle" created just for this purpose, I can pick up the text in the footer with {STYLEREF "RevTextStyle"}. If the next page doesn't need a marker, {STYLEREF} picks up the same text, so I have to create an emtpy RevTextStyle paragraph on the next page to give {STYLEREF} something to pick up on this and subsequent pages. The problem is that if I use the Hidden font attribute to hide the RevTextStyle paragraph in the body of the page, it's also hidden in the footer, and even \* MERGEFORMAT doesn't seem to let me make the text visible always. Any suggestions? Or any ideas for other mechanisms to do this? This is a common requirement for industrial/government/military type documents, so people have to have encountered this before lots of times. I've considered using a text box (Shape object) positioned to overlap the footer. That could work too, but it's seems easy to mess up its positioning accidentally. I'd appreciate any ideas anyone might have for handling this. Thanks, Brian |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
This is one huge drawback of the StyleRef field. Frustratingly, the Hidden
font attribute is the *only* direct font formatting it picks up. Given that StyleRef is not going to work (and I suspect it would prove problematic even if it did, for the reasons you describe), I think a text box is going to be your best bet. Design your footer such that the text box won't cause ructions, and anchor the text box to a paragraph that has been revised on the given page . -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA "Brian Knittel" wrote in message ... Hi, I have a need to be able to embed a text phrase on various pages in my document that will not be printed as part of the page, but which will be picked up from the page and displayed in the footer. The goal here is to be able to add content to the page footer on a page-by-page basis, which we'll use to put a revision number on changed pages. (I'd like to define the page footer once in the document and not have to insert section breaks so that selected pages can have their own footer definition -- too hard to maintain). For example, I'd like to be able to embed the string "Rev 1" somewhere on page 3, and have "Rev 1" appear in the footer of page 3 and only page 3. The phrase "Rev 1" shouldn't appear in the body of page 3 -- just in the footer. I've been experimenting with the {STYLEREF} field. If I style the text "Rev 1" with a style named "RevTextStyle" created just for this purpose, I can pick up the text in the footer with {STYLEREF "RevTextStyle"}. If the next page doesn't need a marker, {STYLEREF} picks up the same text, so I have to create an emtpy RevTextStyle paragraph on the next page to give {STYLEREF} something to pick up on this and subsequent pages. The problem is that if I use the Hidden font attribute to hide the RevTextStyle paragraph in the body of the page, it's also hidden in the footer, and even \* MERGEFORMAT doesn't seem to let me make the text visible always. Any suggestions? Or any ideas for other mechanisms to do this? This is a common requirement for industrial/government/military type documents, so people have to have encountered this before lots of times. I've considered using a text box (Shape object) positioned to overlap the footer. That could work too, but it's seems easy to mess up its positioning accidentally. I'd appreciate any ideas anyone might have for handling this. Thanks, Brian |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
Hello Brian
Brian Knittel wrote: [..] I've been experimenting with the {STYLEREF} field. If I style the text "Rev 1" with a style named "RevTextStyle" created just for this purpose, I can pick up the text in the footer with {STYLEREF "RevTextStyle"}. If the next page doesn't need a marker, {STYLEREF} picks up the same text, so I have to create an emtpy RevTextStyle paragraph on the next page to give {STYLEREF} something to pick up on this and subsequent pages. The problem is that if I use the Hidden font attribute to hide the RevTextStyle paragraph in the body of the page, it's also hidden in the footer, and even \* MERGEFORMAT doesn't seem to let me make the text visible always. Any suggestions? to add to Suzanne's answer, instead of hiding the field you could also set its font color to "white" and, say, its leading to "exactly 1 pt." Alternatively, you could use a frame anchored somewhere on the page, which displays a white text but is completely in the margin so it doesn't disturb the flow of text. Or any ideas for other mechanisms to do this? This is a common requirement for industrial/government/military type documents, so people have to have encountered this before lots of times. The fundamental problem with such an approach in conjunction with a modern text processor like Word is that (Word) is not at all page-oriented. Thus, page-by-page revisions don't work really well not matter what you do. In a sensible document, when you change something on page 1, this change itself might result in altered pagination up to page 25 easily. 2cents Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MSFT | \ / | MVP | Scientific Reports X Against HTML | for | with Word? / \ in e-mail & news | Word | http://www.masteringword.eu/ |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
An additional issue is that formatting something as white and one point (so
that it can't be seen even when Hidden text is displayed) is a recipe for disaster even if you're the only person editing the text; I find it all too easy to forget what I did in a document created a week ago, much less several months or years. Putting something in a frame makes it a bit more visible. If the frame is anchored to the revised paragraph, then it should travel along pretty reliably, but repagination is still an important consideration. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA "Robert M. Franz (RMF)" wrote in message ... Hello Brian Brian Knittel wrote: [..] I've been experimenting with the {STYLEREF} field. If I style the text "Rev 1" with a style named "RevTextStyle" created just for this purpose, I can pick up the text in the footer with {STYLEREF "RevTextStyle"}. If the next page doesn't need a marker, {STYLEREF} picks up the same text, so I have to create an emtpy RevTextStyle paragraph on the next page to give {STYLEREF} something to pick up on this and subsequent pages. The problem is that if I use the Hidden font attribute to hide the RevTextStyle paragraph in the body of the page, it's also hidden in the footer, and even \* MERGEFORMAT doesn't seem to let me make the text visible always. Any suggestions? to add to Suzanne's answer, instead of hiding the field you could also set its font color to "white" and, say, its leading to "exactly 1 pt." Alternatively, you could use a frame anchored somewhere on the page, which displays a white text but is completely in the margin so it doesn't disturb the flow of text. Or any ideas for other mechanisms to do this? This is a common requirement for industrial/government/military type documents, so people have to have encountered this before lots of times. The fundamental problem with such an approach in conjunction with a modern text processor like Word is that (Word) is not at all page-oriented. Thus, page-by-page revisions don't work really well not matter what you do. In a sensible document, when you change something on page 1, this change itself might result in altered pagination up to page 25 easily. 2cents Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MSFT | \ / | MVP | Scientific Reports X Against HTML | for | with Word? / \ in e-mail & news | Word | http://www.masteringword.eu/ |
#6
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
to add to Suzanne's answer, instead of hiding the field you could also set
its font color to "white" and, say, its leading to "exactly 1 pt." ... The fundamental problem with such an approach in conjunction with a modern text processor like Word is that (Word) is not at all page-oriented. Thus, page-by-page revisions don't work really well not matter what you do. In a sensible document, when you change something on page 1, this change itself might result in altered pagination up to page 25 easily. There is a vast segment of the technical document space that is page controlled; that is, pagination is not allowed to change, due to governmental regulations or just corporate policy. If editing causes a new page break, you can't just renumber the succeeding pages. You have to insert an outliner page. For example, if the content of page 11 spills to a new page, you can't renumber page 12 to 13, 13 to 14 and so on, you have to insert a page 11a. Word's making page flow invisible to its object model doesn't make automating the job any easier! There are hundreds of millions of pages of documents out there that require this sort of control, and the individual revision marking that I've been discussing. These, plus more significant issues like the instability of outline numbering mean Word is a poor choice for maintaining technical documents. Yet, corporations and agencies still decide to use it, so we're stuck with it. Using 1 point white text could work technically, but the purpose of all this is to assist in easy and accurate maintenance of the document. Short leading would make the embedded marker text nearly impossible to find or edit. I guess I could write macros to enlarge or shrink the text based on stylename, but the idea still makes me uncomfortable. Hidden text would have been such a good solution because you can enable and disable its display quite easily. And in fact I'd set up the style for these marker paragraphs as having a colored background shade and a thick border, so its presence on the page was unmistakable. But, unfortunately, as Susan noted, there appears to be no way to prevent {STYLEREF} from carrying the hidden attribute along with the text, so the text can't be invisible in the body but visible in the footer. Unless there's a field that extracts just the text from its argument, stripping all formatting? Then I could nest the STYLEREF inside that. Anyway -- I think that a text box overlaying the footer may be the only option. STYLEREF is not usable, and I investigated using SET, but you can't multiply define bookmarks, so that won't work either. I just don't see any other options. I'll discuss with the client and see where it goes. Thanks for your input Brian |
#7
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
Hello Brian
Brian Knittel wrote: There is a vast segment of the technical document space that is page controlled; that is, pagination is not allowed to change, due to governmental regulations or just corporate policy. If editing causes a new page break, you can't just renumber the succeeding pages. You have to insert an outliner page. For example, if the content of page 11 spills to a new page, you can't renumber page 12 to 13, 13 to 14 and so on, you have to insert a page 11a. Word's making page flow invisible to its object model doesn't make automating the job any easier! There are hundreds of millions of pages of documents out there that require this sort of control, and the individual revision marking that I've been discussing. I believe you that there is such type of documentation out there. IMHO, I think it's archaic and such a "document model" should hit the dust rather sooner than later, because it really is a model tied too much in the physical, printed model. When the documentation world was ruled by typewriters, this model made a lot of sense. Paper was relatively expensive, and to correct one tiny flaw somewhere you only changed that one page, had it retyped, and swapped against its predecessor. But nowadays, many forms of documentation have nothing whatsoever to do with pages. They might end up in small HTML chunks, or on your PDA, or any other electronic gadget. "Page" doesn't really have a meaning then. Also, for "tracking" edits while a document is still in production, there are new tools to go about that. By no means is Word's Track Changes feature all one could wish for, but in a controlled environment, there's not much wrong with it conceptually. These, plus more significant issues like the instability of outline numbering mean Word is a poor choice for maintaining technical documents. Yet, corporations and agencies still decide to use it, so we're stuck with it. I guess Wordies have to fight with numbering issues now and then, yes. :-) Depending on the needs, many field-based numbering schemes are more solid and are certainly in use to this day. SEQ anyone? Using 1 point white text could work technically, but the purpose of all this is to assist in easy and accurate maintenance of the document. Short leading would make the embedded marker text nearly impossible to find or edit. I guess I could write macros to enlarge or shrink the text based on stylename, but the idea still makes me uncomfortable. Hidden text would have been such a good solution because you can enable and disable its display quite easily. And in fact I'd set up the style for these marker paragraphs as having a colored background shade and a thick border, so its presence on the page was unmistakable. But, unfortunately, as Susan noted, there appears to be no way to prevent {STYLEREF} from carrying the hidden attribute along with the text, so the text can't be invisible in the body but visible in the footer. Well, since you really have a page-oriented approach, I think it's easier by _a lot_ if you work with single-page sections. You unlink your headers and footers and never need bother with STYLEREF. After all, fields should make our life easier. 2cents Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MSFT | \ / | MVP | Scientific Reports X Against HTML | for | with Word? / \ in e-mail & news | Word | http://www.masteringword.eu/ |
#8
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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picking up text from current page in footer
Hi all,
Thanks for the interesting discussion. I agree the the page model may be rooted in antiquity (as is the custom of making text terminal displays and command prompt windows 80 characters wide, which comes from the punched card). But, for regulatory, control and maintenance reasons, some unit has to be selected as the unit for approval and distribution, and the page is a reasonable sized chunk. But more importantly, manuals are still printed on paper and you have to have a way of marking and distributing updates to printed manuals. So the page is an important and persistent concept. (And regardless of its value or the length of its teeth, there's no reason that Word has to hide it from us -- there could easily be a method to give us a range object scoped to a page. There just isn't.). I have clients that are moving to page-less models, but truth be told, it's causing them more headaches than it's solving But -- back to the original topic, I solved the problem using the SEQ field: {SEQ RevLevel \r nnn} in a hidden paragraph on any page whose revision level is different than the previous page's, and {IF {SEQ RevLevel} = 0 "" "Revision {SEQ RevLevel}"} in the footer. Bingo! They just need a pushbutton+macro to let them insert and edit these and they're good to go. Brian "Robert M. Franz (RMF)" wrote in message ... Hello Brian Brian Knittel wrote: There is a vast segment of the technical document space that is page controlled; that is, pagination is not allowed to change, due to governmental regulations or just corporate policy. If editing causes a new page break, you can't just renumber the succeeding pages. You have to insert an outliner page. For example, if the content of page 11 spills to a new page, you can't renumber page 12 to 13, 13 to 14 and so on, you have to insert a page 11a. Word's making page flow invisible to its object model doesn't make automating the job any easier! There are hundreds of millions of pages of documents out there that require this sort of control, and the individual revision marking that I've been discussing. I believe you that there is such type of documentation out there. IMHO, I think it's archaic and such a "document model" should hit the dust rather sooner than later, because it really is a model tied too much in the physical, printed model. When the documentation world was ruled by typewriters, this model made a lot of sense. Paper was relatively expensive, and to correct one tiny flaw somewhere you only changed that one page, had it retyped, and swapped against its predecessor. But nowadays, many forms of documentation have nothing whatsoever to do with pages. They might end up in small HTML chunks, or on your PDA, or any other electronic gadget. "Page" doesn't really have a meaning then. Also, for "tracking" edits while a document is still in production, there are new tools to go about that. By no means is Word's Track Changes feature all one could wish for, but in a controlled environment, there's not much wrong with it conceptually. These, plus more significant issues like the instability of outline numbering mean Word is a poor choice for maintaining technical documents. Yet, corporations and agencies still decide to use it, so we're stuck with it. I guess Wordies have to fight with numbering issues now and then, yes. :-) Depending on the needs, many field-based numbering schemes are more solid and are certainly in use to this day. SEQ anyone? Using 1 point white text could work technically, but the purpose of all this is to assist in easy and accurate maintenance of the document. Short leading would make the embedded marker text nearly impossible to find or edit. I guess I could write macros to enlarge or shrink the text based on stylename, but the idea still makes me uncomfortable. Hidden text would have been such a good solution because you can enable and disable its display quite easily. And in fact I'd set up the style for these marker paragraphs as having a colored background shade and a thick border, so its presence on the page was unmistakable. But, unfortunately, as Susan noted, there appears to be no way to prevent {STYLEREF} from carrying the hidden attribute along with the text, so the text can't be invisible in the body but visible in the footer. Well, since you really have a page-oriented approach, I think it's easier by _a lot_ if you work with single-page sections. You unlink your headers and footers and never need bother with STYLEREF. After all, fields should make our life easier. 2cents Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MSFT | \ / | MVP | Scientific Reports X Against HTML | for | with Word? / \ in e-mail & news | Word | http://www.masteringword.eu/ |
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