First of all, using Office 2003... I am charged with updating and improving
many of our company's process documents/templates. Like many who have posted
questions about how to HIDDEN text to solve and informational exchange with
the user of a template I have solved (?) my problem using it. I opted for
this because my predecessor had placed help text boxes in the template with
instructions to the user to delete them after they have finished, but of
course rarely do they do it completely so we end up with docs looking very
unprofessional.

The PROBLEMs a

1) In order for the "hidden" help text to be displayed when opened, the user
has to have the "Show/Hide" turned on. Is there a way to have the template
force the "Show/Hide" to ON?

2) My next issue (according to my Director) is that while we want the hidden
text displayed, he feels that users (and himself) do not want to see all the
formatting notation. I am aware that a user can go into Tools Options
View Formatting Marks and selectively turn on/off what they wish to see,
but he would prefer to simply force the hidden text only when the template is
accessed. Is this possible to do?

OR

Is there really a better way to make help text available 100% of time when
displayed but not cluttering up the printed final document?

Thank you for your assistance and expertise.

Mike@ACM

There is no automatic way to deal with your points one and two. You could
add AutoNew and AutoOpen macros to your template, so that when a document is
created or opened using that template, the display settings are set as you
want. But I suggest you don't do this --

a) because you create support and security issues -- unless it's a small
organization, this will be a surprisingly large amount of effort for really
very little reward.

b) these settings are personal preferences. Forcing them to change on other
computers will annoy the experienced users and confuse the novices.



"Mike@ACM" wrote in message
...
First of all, using Office 2003... I am charged with updating and
improving
many of our company's process documents/templates. Like many who have
posted
questions about how to HIDDEN text to solve and informational exchange
with
the user of a template I have solved (?) my problem using it. I opted for
this because my predecessor had placed help text boxes in the template
with
instructions to the user to delete them after they have finished, but of
course rarely do they do it completely so we end up with docs looking very
unprofessional.

The PROBLEMs a

1) In order for the "hidden" help text to be displayed when opened, the
user
has to have the "Show/Hide" turned on. Is there a way to have the
template
force the "Show/Hide" to ON?

2) My next issue (according to my Director) is that while we want the
hidden
text displayed, he feels that users (and himself) do not want to see all
the
formatting notation. I am aware that a user can go into Tools Options
View Formatting Marks and selectively turn on/off what they wish to see,
but he would prefer to simply force the hidden text only when the template
is
accessed. Is this possible to do?

OR

Is there really a better way to make help text available 100% of time when
displayed but not cluttering up the printed final document?

Thank you for your assistance and expertise.

Mike@ACM