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How can I automatically generate a list of acronyms in Word 97?
Subject:How can I automatically generate a list of acronyms in Word 97? From:Lisa Priester <lpriester -at- EARTHLINK -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 6 Oct 1998 21:48:36 -0700
(Cross-posted to the Word-PC list and the Techwr-l list)
My current contract requires me to use Word 97 to write technical manuals
(on a network with PCs using NT or Win 95). I'd like to be able to
automatically generate the list of acronyms (and initializations). Is there
any third-party software I can use to do this? If not, do you have any
ideas on how this might be done? A programmer is helping me with this
project, so macros and some customization of Word are an option. (Excuse me
if I do not describe the programming part perfectly myself since I haven't
worked with macros or VBA.)
Our idea is to search the text for words with two capital letters in a row.
This will catch most but not all acronyms. At the first occurrence of such
a word, tag it with a special TC field (ignoring subsequent occurrences of
the word), then generate the special TOC in another doc. Save the TOC doc
as text, then open it again in Word and convert the text to a table. At
this stage, I would use this table of acronyms and page numbers in page
order to ensure acronyms are properly defined upon first reference.
Meanwhile, I am learning Access by building a style guide in it. Among
other things, it contains acronyms and their definitions (in two text
fields). I don't know how to do it exactly, but I'd like to use the acronym
table described in the preceding paragraph as the basis of a query in
Access. It seems to me I should be able to use my style guide to build
another table in Word (using mail merge?) containing the acronyms in alpha
order, along with their definition from the style guide. After some
cleanup, this table would be used in the document as the list of acronyms.
Is there an easier way to do this? This all seems "doable" to me, but, as
you can tell, I'm still learning the technology. I welcome better ideas or
software tips.
Regards,
Lisa Priester
Papyrus Information Architects
Lpriester -at- earthlink -dot- net
213-413-1639 voice and page
213-413-1887 fax
