Well, that should be "slowly improving." A recent update is available
for Word 2007 Help (also for Excel and other Office apps). Presumably
this installs some of the Help topics previously available only online,
but it doesn't increase the total number of Help topics available--just
makes more of them available offline.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
The Help in Word 2007, though slowly improvely, is still pretty
hopeless. The Word 2003 Help topics on field codes can be found
starting at
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/CH100992711033.aspx?stt=1
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Thank you again Jay. I profoundly appreciate your insight into this
area. We are slowly transitioning from another wordprocessor and have
struggled to find the automated equivalents in Microsoft Word. The
field listings under 'Quick Parts' is exactly what we were looking for
and is, most certainly, where we must have seen these codes before in
some sample online illustration.
I don't know about others, but we often struggle with the 'Help'
feature in Microsoft Office. Perhaps, it's a function of our
unfamiliarity with Microsoft terms or definitions, but it can oft
times be very frustrating to find help on certain, even basic,
subjects.
Thank you again,
Richard
***************************
Hi Richard,
To answer your first question, the field codes aren't visible on
toolbars or
menus in any version of Word, but they can be seen in the Insert
Field dialog
(in Word 2007, Insert > Quick Parts > Field) if you click the Field
Codes button
in the lower left corner of the dialog. Other than that, you'd see
them only if
you toggled from field results to field codes with Alt+F9 (or
Shift+F9 for a
single field).
The place to find a list of all field types is in the Insert Field
dialog that I
just mentioned. Unfortunately, the Help topics that explain the
purpose and
syntax of specific fields are fairly spotty in Word 2007, and what is
there is
poorly indexed and hard to find. A better resource is to use Office
Online,
which contains the Word 2003 help topics on fields starting at
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/CH061047231033.aspx.
The list of fields should answer the part of your third question
about whether
they're part of a larger set: 'merge' codes are simply a subset of
field codes.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), however, is an entirely
different and much
larger topic. Start with
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/VBABasicsIn15Mins.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/UsingRecorder.htm. If you want to
pursue
this further, start reading the other articles on the MacrosVBA
section of the
site, and post questions in microsoft.public.word.vba.beginners.
Forgive me Jay, but a few more questions just occured to me. FIRST,
are any
of these standard codes available from the toolbars or menu system in
Word
2007? There is something vaguely familiar about these codes, as if I
have
seen them elsewhere in the menus. SECOND, as I asked Suzanne, where
might
we find a listing of these codes. THIRD, are these codes part of a
larger
set of codes, such as data 'merge' codes or 'Visual Basic' codes?
Thanks,
Richard
Hi Richard,
As Suzanne says, you _can_ insert fields one at a time, each time
you want
them. Being lazy, though, I would prefer to package the entire
"Page
{PAGE} of {NUMPAGES}" construct into an AutoCorrect entry so it
takes only
a few keystrokes to drop it into a footer.
First type the whole expression into some document, using Ctrl+F9
to
create the field braces, and select all of it. Go to Office button
Word
Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options. In the dialog that opens,
the
selected text will be in the box on the right labeled "With". In
the box
to its left labeled "Replace", type an abbreviation that you aren't
likely
to type for any other reason -- for example, pxy -- and click the
Add
button.
Now, any time you type that abbreviation followed by a space or
punctuation, it will automatically be replaced by the Page X of Y
expression.
There's more about AutoCorrect at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AutoCorrect.htm.
Although the
article was written for Word 2003 and earlier, the only thing
that's
different about it in Word 2007 is the path to the AutoCorrect
Options
dialog.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so all may benefit.
Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
You can insert any field by pressing Ctrl+F9 to insert the field
braces and then typing the field name between them. In this case
the
relevant fields are PAGE and NUMPAGES.
Thank you for the explanation, Jay. Your last paragraph
intrigues
me, but you also lost me. Is it possible you are saying we can
simply insert the codes for current page and total pages somehow?
Could
you explain a little further how we do what you are describing
in the last paragraph addressing a 'better solution'?
Other programs allow you to type in the text and simply insert
the
automated codes, where needed, one at a time. Not sure why it
seems
to be so difficult in Word.
Thanks,
Richard
***************
Blue Max wrote:
We want a footer that includes "Page X of Y" where X equals the
page number and Y equals total pages. The problem, however, is
that our footers often already exists and includes a fair
amount
of custom design work. In our experience, selecting a page
number
from the gallery with the proper format, replaces the existing
footer. Therefore, how does one simply insert the codes for
'current
page'
and 'total pages' into the existing text of the footer in order
to
preserve the current design?
On the Insert > Page Number button, choose the Current Position
item
instead of the Bottom of Page item, and choose the Page X of Y
entry from that gallery. It will probably also insert a
paragraph
mark formatted with Normal style, which you'll have to delete so
the remaining paragraph mark is formatted in Footer style.
A better solution is to make an AutoText or AutoComplete entry
from
the text of the Page X of Y entry, without its paragraph mark,
and
insert that when needed instead of using the Page Number button.
