Re: techwr-l digest: May 30, 2002

["Bill Hall" <bill -dot- hall -at- hotkey -dot- net -dot- au>]

Quoting from Geoff Heart's response

Trudie Folsom has <<...inherited 100 Word documents created by different
authors, with inconsistent styles and formatting, as supplements to online
training. Each document is used to create a second document; the primary
document contains instructor notes that are stripped to create the second
"student" version. These instructor notes are contained in either text boxes
or in one column of a table. The documents are PDF-ed and uploaded as
individual files for the instructors and students to download and
print as needed. Is there an easier way to manage these documents?>>

This is where I would use Word features I actually like using - hyperlinks.
Do your student notes as standalone documents. Do all the instructor notes
in a separate document with the same root filename with a notes suffix. Use
a superscript seq. field to generate numbered note reference links in the
student document. To produce the student version all you have to do is
search on the field and replace with nothing.

Write your instructor notes in the Notes file as numbered blocks (using seq.
field and a "notes" style). The only tricky bit is that you have to
associate a unique bookmark with each note seq. field. Don't worry about
trying to keep bookmark numbers in sync with note numbers - the bookmark
numbers only need to be unique, and you will undoubtedly move things around
to break any synchronisation you start with.

Once you have written a note and bookmarked it, go back to the student text,
highlight the reference number, insert hyperlink, and link to the file and
bookmark number that matches the note text with the student text.

If you do rearrange the student text so notes are out of order, just move
the equivalent block of notes so they are back in the same sequence as the
text. Do a select all in each file and update fields to renumber everything
so the visible numbers correspond to the bookmark links.

It is actually a lot easier to do than describe (I do all my reference notes
this way now) and you can probably write some macros to do most of the work
for you.

With Acrobat, you can also convert the documents to PDF, and from
recollection you only need to reset bookmarks on the Notes document for your
links to work the same way they do in Word. (So far, I am still delivering
my documents in Word format - at least for my personal requirements PDFing
is an unnecessary step).

Hope this helps.

Bill Hall
-------------------------------------------------------------------
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
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TS Eliot - The Rock


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