When a form text field is inserted in a Word document, the grey shaded length is about 5 characters long. How can this length be increased?
Allthough it is a rather crude measure (and I don't recommend it), you can set "Properties -> Default Text" to as many blanks as you want the size. But this comes for a price: as long as you move into the field by pressing TAB, all blanks are selected and get typed over. When you use the mouse, you click the cursor anywhere into the field and start typing ... so your entry might be pre and post fixed by a number of blanks that you have to trim away in e.g. an exit macro.
I recommend old form fields as the last resort (i.e. there must be a good reason to use them) and would prefer (in that order)
native Word2010/2007 fields (text or Rich text - perhaps not backwords compatible)
legacy ActiveX fields (compatible with W2003)
Legacy (old) form fields
Related
I'm on Win10, using Acrobat Pro DC 2021.011... to edit and Reader DC (same version) to test.
From experience and from reading forums etc, forms in these apps are maddening... but I have not been able to find any discussion (or solutions) to the following behavior...
The form I'm building for other employees' use has a large edit text box set to Multi-line and Allow Rich Text Formatting. It is set to a default font, Calibri and size 50pt. For most situations this will work for them; provides 2-3 lines for a short product description. But occasionally they want a smaller font and more lines... They know how to get the ctrl+e properties bar. But in my testing of this alternative situation they'll need sometimes, I'm finding it's impossible to get the smaller font size and more lines to work. Here's my process.
tab into text box. Ctrl+E for properties bar.
before typing I set the font size to 24
then I type in my 4 lines of text
then I tab to my next form field...
and kaboom... the field I just filled...it's line height is so large it's pushed some of the content invisible. I assume this is coming from the field's default font size, 50
And if I try to adjust the line height, by selecting all the text and then choosing in More...>Form Field Text Properties>Paragraph>Line Spacing
If I set it to Single and click Close/click into another field I get the very large leading (presumably for 50pt font (same as pic above after point 5)
If I choose Exactly and set to point size slightly larger, click Close/out of field, I get another ridiculous result where the 2/3 line have the height I set, but the space between the 1 & 2 second line is way too much and the space between the last line and 3rd line is way too small...
before tabbing or clicking out of field to another field
Good lord.. what is that! 3 different leading values in the same field; just after applying 1 value to all lines, all text in the field...
It makes no sense... it doesn't look like it regards your input at all, and just comes up with it's own random leading... I've fiddled with Space before/after and combinations of Line Height and nothing comes close to what we need... At this point I'm convinced the Acrobat tools for a stylizing text in a multi-line, allow formatting text field are useless. I'd be better off with my employees they can't format anything, ever. Just type one line and hit Tab or Enter...
What is going on! I'm trying to make a simple fillable form for other employees to use, but this kind of behavior makes that impossible (It's enough of a stretch to teach them to use the ctrl+E and do some styling of their text but this is bonkers and completely unteachable... there's not rhyme or pattern to teach!)
Hope someone can help or has seen this behavior too.
I have an SSRS report that has Spanish and English text boxes. If the dataset row is a Spanish speaking person, an expression in each Spanish textbox shows that and hides the English textbox. These textboxes are exactly placed over each other.
My boss wants me to use SSRS to generate an Excel spreadsheet from the dataset(this is not hard) and use Word template for a mail merge. However, I am having trouble trying to figure out if I can hide all English when row is a Spanish row and vice versa. These are health clients of Spanish and English nationality.
I can do mail merges attached to a Recordset, I can do one in English, one in Spanish. I am trying to avoid this and have it all in one Mail Merge.
Areas marked in red will change to Spanish translation and/or date format. The dates are a no-brainer I can use a conditional IIF, however the formatted body I have no solution for, based on value in Field "CL_Language" which is either "Spanish" or "English".
====================================
The merge fields for dates and greeting are easy. There is no merge field for the text. And yes, only option might be for 2 separate reports with different Recordsets.
It's not clear what the actual issue is but...
Instead of hiding textboxes, which could cause problems when exporting etc., why not set a single textbox to the correct language text using an expression?
Something along the lines of
=IIF(Fields!Language.Value = "English", Fields!MyEnglishText.Value, FieldsMySpanishText.Value)
I found a solution. But it could be very difficult for the client to create. It involves hitting Ctrl + F9 which will create curly brackets {}.
Inside those curly brackets an IF statement is placed and I just pasted the whole Spanish formatted body in the true area, and the whole English body in the false area.
{IF "CL_Language" = "Spanish" "spanish body text here" "english body text here"}
Very strange syntax and you need to right click on the area to see choices like "Toggle Field Codes" (IF statement get's hidden), "Edit Field", and "Update Field". With Edit Field and Update Field you get a popup with the fields in your recordset.
If you saw the examples in my question, you can see that is some big clunky text AND . . .inside of it is a merge field that works! The Excel recordset comes already with the month name in correct language for each row.
Since it is not smart to include links that might expire, I am including the Google text I used to find this solution. Then I took a chance on a huge formatted chunk of text with a merge field inside of it.
Google this: "If Merge Field then"
Now is this a viable solution for the client versus just having a Word template for each language?
I think this is too difficult and I even duck when running it. Also, once it's working, if I look at the toggled code, the Conditional field no longer says the field name, but the value in the field, go figure.
{IF "Spanish" = "Spanish" or {IF "English" = "Spanish" instead of {IF "CL_Language" = "Spanish" or {IF "CL_Language" = "English"
Here is how to access the fields using right click. (remember, your curly brackets HAVE to be created with Control + F9).
We use TinyMCE as the wysiwyg editor for our content builder. You can drag and drop a text module and once you click an edit button an TinyMCE instance will open. This works really well.
Problem is now that the builder is made for designers so a lot of the times you add a text module just for a 1 word heading or other cases where you only have one block. (one h1, one p etc.) You can also see this behavior in the official demos: Just add an lonely h2 heading, select all text and start to write.
Now Tiny MCE has the default behavior that if you select the complete text (which is almost always the case if you for example change an 1 line / word heading) and you start typing you will lose your formats completely. ( in our case: color, font-size, font-weight, line-height etc.)
This makes editing an heading for example really painful. Best workaround so far is to leave 1 character to not lose the format and then delete the character in the end.
I never saw that behavior in other editors so my question is: Is there maybe an easy setting or workaround to avoid this?
If there are situations where you want a root element to be something specific (e.g. <h2>) you can use the forced_root_block setting on that instance of TinyMCE to force a specific element:
https://www.tinymce.com/docs/configure/content-filtering/#forced_root_block
Even if you delete all text the new text will be wrapped with that root element. See this TinyMCE Fiddle for examples:
http://fiddle.tinymce.com/SOfaab
I think this would address your one line issue?
I am developing an OpenOffice Writer template that can be used to fill in reports for a child-care centre.
There are some standard outcomes, comprising long sentences, and I want the user to be able to select the appropriate sentence from a combo box. I have entered the sentences into a table in Openoffice Base database, which is then connected to a series of combo boxes in a Writer template. However, when the user choose an option that contains a very long sentence, only the text up to the length of the combo box is visible.
What I want to do is have the selected value of the combo-box wrap over several lines when selected so that all the (very long) text appears in the selected box when the user chooses a long sentence from the combo.
I have been looking through the properties of the combo box control, but have yet to identify one that will allow the selected value in the combo box to word-wrap (so that I could make the combo-box several lines in height such that the entire sentence would fit into the box).
Any pointers on how I could do this would be much appreciated.
thanks,
David.
Thanks Jim K, that was helpful. In the end, what I wound up doing was creating a textbox which I named "selectedOutcomeATextBox" immediately below my combo box which was named "OutcomeCombo".
I then attached the following macro code to the textModified event associated with the "selectedOutcomeATextBox":
Sub UpdateOutcomeA
Dim Doc As Object
Dim Form As Object
Dim Ctl As Object
Dim newCtl as Object
Doc = ThisComponent
Form = Doc.DrawPage.Forms.GetByIndex(0)
Ctl = Form.getByName("OutcomeCombo")
newCtl = Form.getByName("selectedOutcomeATextBox")
newCtl.Text = Ctl.Text
End Sub
I also set the "Printable" property of the "OutcomeCombo" to "No", so that when the document prints, the combo box itself does not appear on the printed page, but the "selectedOutcomeATextBox" textbox which has had its value set by the macro when I choose a value from the combo box does appear with the desired text. I also set the "TextType" property of the selectedOutcomeATextBox" text box to "Multi-Line", so that extra long text will wrap to the next line, thereby showing the very long strings that are stored there.
Thanks heaps Jim K.
cheers,
David Buddrige
Apparently combo boxes do not have the MultiLine attribute. The question was asked a few years ago here but was not solved.
One alternative that requires some macro programming is to use a single multi-line text field and then make a scroll bar button that changes the choice. Instead of a scroll bar, two buttons could be used to change the choice (Previous / Next), or even a list box control. Using a list box control in this way would have the advantage that they could see all the choices at once, like a combo box.
Another approach is to break up each sentence and display the parts across several lines of a list box. Then when one line is clicked, all the lines of a sentence are selected at once, using an event listener for the list box. This could be shown in addition to an ordinary editable multi-line text box, in case none of the answers in the list are wanted.
One more idea: Radio buttons can have multiple lines, so dynamically show radio buttons, one for each sentence. A dialog window could be displayed to hold the radio buttons. The result of the dialog would be used to fill the multi-line text field.
Or you could just live with the truncated sentences. Maybe it would help to make the control a little wider, or abbreviate the sentences.
I have a Word document with fields of the reference variety, which occur in the form "[field].[field]"--in other words, there's a period between the two fields. I want to globally replace this with a space.
Word offers the ^d special character to search for fields, but for some reason the query "^d.^d" does not find anything. However, ".^d" does. Now comes the problem, however--what do I specify as the replacement text in order to retain the field code? If using regular expressions, I could use a "Find What Expression" such as \1, but with regexp ("wild card") mode the ^d is not permitted.
I guess I could write a macro...
I would like to add to Bibadia's solution.
An example of an index entry field; we want to change a name we misspelled.
Make sure hidden formatting is displayed (toggle with SHIFT+CTRL+F8).
Make sure wildcards option is not selected. To search for fields, use the opening and closing field braces code (optionally use ^w for spaces, as Bibadia suggested):^19 XE "Deo, John" ^21
Replace won't recognize field braces character, but will allow to insert the clipboard's content. ;). To do that, insert in text the correct entry. CTRL+F9 to insert field and type:XE "Doe, John"
Select the field above and copy
Use ^c in the replace box
Hit Replace All
Ta-da!
It's usually better to go the macro route when finding fields because, as you say, the find algorithm that Word uses doesn't work the way you might hope with fields.
But if you know exactly what the fields contain, you can specify a search pattern that will probably work (however not in wildcard mode).
For example, if you want to look for figure number field pairs such as
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.{ SEQ Figure \* ARABIC \s 1 }
(which would typically be the same set of fields everywhere in the document)
If you only really need to look for the following:
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.<any field>
you could ensure that field codes are displayed and search for
^d STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^d
or
^19 STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^19
If you need to be more precise, you can spell out the second field as well.
"^d" only works for finding the field beginning, not the field end.
It's a shame that ^w wants to find at least 1 whitespace character because otherwise it would be more robust to look for
^19^wSTYLEREF^w1^w\s^w^21.^19
Perhaps someone else knows how to work around that without using wildcards?
Torzaburo,
I suggest that you do this using a macro. You can start by recording the macro, and later refining your processing steps within the macro.
First turn on the hidden characters by navigating to Home > Paragraph > toggle the show/hide Paragraph symbol. Also, select all and toggle the field codes on (right-click and select "Toggle Field Codes".
Open a new blank Word doc in addition to the one you have open. You will use this later. Start the macro recording and find the field using the "^d" (field code) as you said.
When the field is found, copy only the field text within the brackets, and not the full field reference. While the macro is still recording, ALT + TAB to the new blank document and paste the field code in as plain text.
At this point, do the necessary find & replace processing to the field codes. Highlight the processed field codes, copy, ALT + TAB back to the original document, and paste back between the { } brackets.
Stop the macro recording. Add any further custom processing to the macro VBA.
Select-All and re-toggle the field codes. Update the field codes.
You don't need a macro. Just toggle all field codes on by using Alt+F9. Then do a find and replace for what you want to change. Once the replacement is complete, use Alt+F9 again to toggle the field codes back off.
Disclaimer: I didn't originate this solution, but it's clean and elegant and I thought it should be included here:
(Adapted from Search & Replace Field Codes in Word):
Create or find a single instance of the field you want to convert text to
Toggle Field Codes visible (AltF9)
Copy the code for the field you want to use to the Clipboard (highlight and CtrlC)
Open the Replace dialog box (CtrlH), insert the text you want to replace in the Find What box and then enter ^c in the Replace With box.
This will replace your text with the contents of the Clipboard, turning it into the field code you copied in step 3. It also copies formatting information (font, color, etc.), to control how the field will appear when hidden. (Caveat: I've tested this with Word 2003 under Windows 7 only.)
Coming in late on this, probably way too late for Beth (sorry Beth). And this may not be quite what Beth was looking for. But for anyone interested ...
It sounds like Beth may have created captions throughout the document using INSERT CAPTION (hence the presence of field codes). This means these captions will have been (automatically) created in CAPTION style.
To globally replace the separator "." with " " (space) in such captions, take two steps:
[1] Go to REFERENCES | INSERT CAPTION, then click on NUMBERING and replace the SEPARATOR "." with "EM-DASH". This will replace all separators in captions for the selected label in the CAPTION Window. If you have other labels in use in the document (e.g. FIGURE), select the other labels one by one and repeat this process.
[2] Do a find/replace searching for special character "em-dash" (^+) in style CAPTION, replacing with " ". Click REPLACE ALL.
Voila!
NOTE: This presumes that em-dash does not appear in the caption text anywhere. If it does, then you'll need to do a pre- and post- "fiddle" to ensure these em-dashes are not touched by the global replace above.
The "pre-fiddle" is to do a global find/replace across captions, replacing the em-dash ("^+") with some other string (e.g. "EM-DASH") that doesn't ever occur in any caption's text. Then you do the separator change as described above. Finally, the "post-fiddle" is to restore the em-dashes that were in the captions, by doing a global replace of the string "EM-DASH" with the actual em-dash character "^+".