TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Conditional text in Word From:"David M. Brown" <dmbrown -at- teleport -dot- com> Date:Thu, 29 Jun 2000 18:07:55 -0700 (PDT)
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Bob Goulder wrote:
>
> Can anyone tell me what features in Word 2000 I should use to
> create multiple manuals from one template incorporating common text.
You want the SET, IF, and COMPARE fields. It's not exactly user-friendly
for large passages, but you can make it work...with practice. Just
remember that paragraph marks in conditional text can't contain paragraph
formatting information (at least the last time I tried), so try to keep
your conditional passages smaller than paragraph-sized. (I'd love to hear
if this limitation has been removed!)
MS hides these fields under "mail merge" (since that's what they figure
most of their users are going to use them for). Anyway, you can look them
up directly in the index, once you know their names. The help topics
contain fairly good examples.
By the way, "template" means something very specific in Word, and not what
I think you meant when you used it above.
--David
=============================
David M. Brown - Brown Inc.
dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com
=============================
HTML Indexer 3, still the easiest way to create and maintain real
back-of-the-book indexes for web sites, intranets, help systems,
and other HTML documents.
Includes support for HTML Help and JavaHelp indexing, too!