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#1
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One document, multiple versions
A friend wants to use MsWord (or some other application) to create
multiple versions of a document. Much of the document would be generic, but for some paragraphs or sections, there might be one or more alternatives which would pertain to a particular version. I'll try to give a flavor. Imagine that you're producing a driver's education manual (this is not the actual application, but it is easier to explain than the real thing). Most of the manual is generic, but you might have a special paragraph for "left turn on red" that is relevant only to Louisiana, say. (I have no idea whether LA differs from the rest of the states in this, that's just an example!) So you'd have a generic para for 49 states, and a special one for LA. Or you might have a section on driving on snow and ice that you wanted to use for the manuals in Minnesota, North Dakota etc., but a much shorter section for Kentucky, and you'd omit this section entirely for the Florida version. Also, parts of the title page would be customized for each state. I know how I would do this in DocBook (I would use the 'role' attribute on the paragraphs or sections). But I have no idea how to do this sort of thing in Word, or if it is even possible. I tried a web search, but if this is written up, I don't know the right search words. Suggestions? Mike Maxwell |
#2
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One document, multiple versions
What I do in this situation is save the generic version as a Master...say:
manual1.doc. That document might contain notes in various areas that help you include changes. Perhaps a sentance in red that says Insert Left hand turn info here. This sentence would be deleted and replaced with appropriate text for each version. Then, when I prepare a special version containing non-generic information, I do a "Save As" and change the name to manualLA.doc - Now you have the original generic and one for LA. If each state had different turn laws. I might make a document called manualTurns.doc which contained all 50 laws...then I could copy and paste from that document to my new document for the appropriate state. If you needed more than one version for LA, say one for motorcycles and one for CDL, I would create and "save as" manualLAmc.doc and manualLAcdl.doc, etc. "McSwell" wrote: A friend wants to use MsWord (or some other application) to create multiple versions of a document. Much of the document would be generic, but for some paragraphs or sections, there might be one or more alternatives which would pertain to a particular version. I'll try to give a flavor. Imagine that you're producing a driver's education manual (this is not the actual application, but it is easier to explain than the real thing). Most of the manual is generic, but you might have a special paragraph for "left turn on red" that is relevant only to Louisiana, say. (I have no idea whether LA differs from the rest of the states in this, that's just an example!) So you'd have a generic para for 49 states, and a special one for LA. Or you might have a section on driving on snow and ice that you wanted to use for the manuals in Minnesota, North Dakota etc., but a much shorter section for Kentucky, and you'd omit this section entirely for the Florida version. Also, parts of the title page would be customized for each state. I know how I would do this in DocBook (I would use the 'role' attribute on the paragraphs or sections). But I have no idea how to do this sort of thing in Word, or if it is even possible. I tried a web search, but if this is written up, I don't know the right search words. Suggestions? Mike Maxwell |
#3
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One document, multiple versions
On Sep 2, 12:38*pm, Steve wrote:
What I do in this situation is save the generic version as a Master...say: manual1.doc. That document might contain notes in various areas that help you include changes. Perhaps a sentance in red that says Insert Left hand turn info here. This sentence would be deleted and replaced with appropriate text for each version. Then, when I prepare a special version containing non-generic information, I do a "Save As" and change the name to manualLA.doc - Now you have the original generic and one for LA. I guess that's more or less what my friend is using now, i.e. he's making the changes manually (but with copy/ paste, or just deleting paras). I was hoping there might be an automatic way of doing this, maybe along the lines of mail merge in conjunction with a batch process. But maybe it doesn't exist, in which case we might go with DocBook. Mike Maxwell |
#4
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One document, multiple versions
You could do this with conditional fields and a collection of documents, one
for each state, that contain the variable data each state with the variable items bookmarked, eg for LA you could name the document "LA Variations.doc" Repeat using the state letters for each other relevant state. {ASK State State}{INCLUDETEXT "C:\\path\\" & { REF State } & " Variations.doc" bookmarkname} You would only have to ask for the state once and the fields should insert the required bookmarked section. The other way is to use mail merge to merge the variable data into a standard merge document. The first column of the data source would contain the state, the subsequent columns the variable data for each state. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org McSwell wrote: A friend wants to use MsWord (or some other application) to create multiple versions of a document. Much of the document would be generic, but for some paragraphs or sections, there might be one or more alternatives which would pertain to a particular version. I'll try to give a flavor. Imagine that you're producing a driver's education manual (this is not the actual application, but it is easier to explain than the real thing). Most of the manual is generic, but you might have a special paragraph for "left turn on red" that is relevant only to Louisiana, say. (I have no idea whether LA differs from the rest of the states in this, that's just an example!) So you'd have a generic para for 49 states, and a special one for LA. Or you might have a section on driving on snow and ice that you wanted to use for the manuals in Minnesota, North Dakota etc., but a much shorter section for Kentucky, and you'd omit this section entirely for the Florida version. Also, parts of the title page would be customized for each state. I know how I would do this in DocBook (I would use the 'role' attribute on the paragraphs or sections). But I have no idea how to do this sort of thing in Word, or if it is even possible. I tried a web search, but if this is written up, I don't know the right search words. Suggestions? Mike Maxwell |
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