One document, multiple versions

[McSwell]

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

 

[Steve]

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]

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

 

[Graham Mayor]

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.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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