Word needs conditional text for today's business use.

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Guest

Since Word is the defacto standard in so many offices and used for training
manuals and other documentation, it is high time it had conditional text
abilities. I think this is the most important feature to add to make it
viable for the publishing tasks for which it is already widely used.

Are there currently any good, full-featured third party add-ons available at
a reasonable price with a track record of longevity and maintenance?

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...992824&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
 
What's wrong with the conditional text features already there? Have you
actually looked at the help file?
 
I didn't find anything in the help about conditional text, unless you mean to
hide and unhide the bits you want to be conditional. If there are
conditional text abilities please jot down a few notes on where to find them.

Thanks,
Dan
 
Maybe this will help:

http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Toggle_Data_Display.htm

If that isn't it, try describing in more detail what you mean by a
"conditional text feature". How do you want it to work?

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
I didn't find anything in the help about conditional text, unless you
mean to hide and unhide the bits you want to be conditional. If
there are conditional text abilities please jot down a few notes on
where to find them.

Thanks,
Dan
Click to expand...
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...992824&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
 
Thanks Jay, that approaches what I am looking for. However, what I am
suggesting that Word needs is a conditional text feature similar to that in
RoboHelp or publishing programs where you can tag sections of text to print
when those tags are active.

For example, in my help files I tag some text with an "advanced" tag, other
text with an "accounting" tag and so on. Then I can tell the progam to print
showing none of the tagged text for the docs that go with the bare-bones
version, print with advanced for the full product, and advanced with
accounting tags for those who have all of the modules. All of this is
maintained in one doc so I don't have to edit three versions when a change is
made to a basic function.

Conditional text with built in tagged text handling is what I am looking
for. It is available from some third party vendors for Word, but is usually
part of a larger expensive package. I would also have concerns about
maintenance and upgradability using a third party package.

Thanks,
Dan

this will help:
 
Hi Dan,

That kind of system can be built in Word by defining and applying styles for
the tagging, and using macros and/or a userform to choose which styles
should be visible vs. hidden. If you have more than two or three conditions
the design quickly becomes complex, at which point you need (or need to
become) an expert template designer. There's nothing built in to make the
job much easier, so your suggestion makes sense to me.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Thanks Jay, that approaches what I am looking for. However, what I am
suggesting that Word needs is a conditional text feature similar to
that in RoboHelp or publishing programs where you can tag sections of
text to print when those tags are active.

For example, in my help files I tag some text with an "advanced" tag,
other text with an "accounting" tag and so on. Then I can tell the
progam to print showing none of the tagged text for the docs that go
with the bare-bones version, print with advanced for the full
product, and advanced with accounting tags for those who have all of
the modules. All of this is maintained in one doc so I don't have to
edit three versions when a change is made to a basic function.

Conditional text with built in tagged text handling is what I am
looking for. It is available from some third party vendors for Word,
but is usually part of a larger expensive package. I would also have
concerns about maintenance and upgradability using a third party
package.

Thanks,
Dan

this will help:
Click to expand...
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...992824&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
 
Jay Freedman said:
Hi Dan,

..........There's nothing built in to make the
job much easier, so your suggestion makes sense to me.
Click to expand...

And then ?
Something new ? in office 2007 ?
 
I'm also constantly hitting this problem in Word. We have documents that we
issue to different customers, where a few parts only apply to one customer.
We want to be able to maintain a single document and only turn on the bits
that apply to each customer when we generate a PDF.

I'm sure some fancy macros and format styles could be used but that will get
complicated. Conditional blocks are a fundamental feature that most decent
DTP applications will include (e.g. Framemaker). I agree that Word should
have this.
 
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