I'm looking at Word as part of a document generation solution for a law firm. There are different documents that need to show/hide certain clauses/sections based on business rules and logic that can be fairly in depth - things like a specific judge in a specific county requiring certain information, so entire sections of the document may be shown or hidden based on this logic.
I'm aware of the Content Controls in Word, but is it possible to have nested content controls inside each other? For example, let's say I have a dynamic paragraph (i.e. it might be shown or hidden based on some business rule) and that paragraph also needs to display the name of the plaintiff, which is retrieved from a database.
Our current solution uses a pseudo templating language inside of the Word docs that gets parsed out and replaced (something like {FIELD "FIELD_NAME"} which would insert the value of FIELD_NAME) and it seems to work fairly well but I'm curious if it couldn't be improved using built-in features of Word instead of custom software.
Is something like this possible? I've found an article for Word that seems to indicate this exact scenario, but no articles or resources explaining how to actually achieve it.
Sure, you can nest other content controls within a rich text content control.
You can do this programmatically (in Word using VBA, or in a VSTO Add-In).
But first just try it in Word (enable the Developer ribbon, then insert a rich text control, then insert other content controls in that). A rich text content control can contain paragraphs, tables etc (provided that it is block level, not run level).
Related
I am writing an instruction manual with many endnotes and footnotes. I want the endnotes to be on a specific page, specifically after the references, say they are on page x.
The document is split into many sections using the different styles available in word.
If I choose the endnotes should be at the end of the document, then I cannot put any text after them, which I would like to do.
If I choose the endnotes should be at the end of the section, then each new heading style starts a new section, so the endnotes are smack in the middle of the page.
Is there a way to create an endnote and make it appear immediately after a specific section, say my References?
If a potential solution involves macros, I have no experience writing them, so I'll need to know how to create and insert them if that is the case.
Thanks.
P.S. There is no endnotes tag so I used footnotes.
I have an input form in which users submit multiple types of information to the database.
Is there any way I could provide an example input of what should go in each field, upon the form loading?
Some fields I'd expect a small paragraph of text, others are dropdowns. The dropdown fields I wouldn't need to put an example of course, just the string text fields. If I try and include an example in the Default value for example, it would save the default value, which I wouldn't want.
Any help is greatly appreciated - It's worth noting I'm quite new to Access & coding in general.
I agree you probably don't want to use default values, or actually enter dummy data into the actual controls for the reason you mention: saving dummy values to the table.
A few possibilities:
Use a custom tooltip. You can do this by editing a control's "controltip text" property. Keep in mind that tooltips are only visible to the user when they hover the cursor over the specific control.
Add a label below the input control that describes the information that should be put in the control. This would always be visible, but can quickly cause your form to be cluttered and difficult to read.
I should say though, that you want to attempt to make your forms as intuitive as possible. For example, if you expect a paragraph of text, make the textbox much larger than a control only expecting a 6 character string. The more you are concerned with UX (user experience), the greater the chance that users will pick up on expectations using subtle design hints. I highly recommend researching the topic if you are concerned that your users will be unable to decipher the purpose of your form/controls. Be sure to check out the UX page on SE.
Furthermore, you can utilize a control's "AfterUpdate" event to validate the input placed in the control as soon as the user moves away from it. For example, you could test if the input IsNumeric() to validate that numbers were entered instead of text. If text is found, you can use a message box to alert the user, and move the cursor back to the control that is invalid.
Of course, that's the customized approach to just using the control's validation rules. The only issue I have had with the standard validation rules is user exhaustion. It can be irritating for a user to deal with validation messages when they are already aware that a typo was made. With an unbound entry form that requires a save button, I usually batch all control validation into the save procedure. This allows the user free reign to skip controls in the tab order without being blocked by constant validation exceptions.
I am just wondering is there any plugin to create dynamic content for a page i.e something similar to a data repeaters in .net. To make it simple it should be a section that should contains 5 to 6 fields/property like
heading
heading 2
image
content - rich text editor
info
This must be in repeatable control so that the editor can add any number of these section a page and all these should be displayed in a single page.
Is there a plugin for the above functionality or what is the best way to achieve this.Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Aneesh
You can achieve this without any plugins.
Create your repeatable section (containing the relevant fields) as a document type, and then use the multi-node picker in another document type to select one or many of the sections.
So for example, I could have a FAQs page (which uses a document type called "FAQs Page"), and I want to be able to add multiple question and answers to this page. I could set up a document type called "Question". This will contain two fields: Question and Answer.
On the "FAQs Page" document type, I would add a multi-node picker field called "Questions". This way, an author could select multiple "Question" nodes to appear on the FAQs page.
You would obviously need the code to output this, and also you would create a data type that inherited from multi-node picker, so that you could limit the selection to only Question nodes.
There is also the Repeatable Custom Content datatype which works well but does not support all data types. But it does support all the ones you need for your stated purpose (textstring, media picker, richtext area, etc).
You can find it here: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/repeatable-custom-content I've used it a few times and it works really well in certain situations (e.g. where the items will not be shared across different pages of your site).
If you are sharing content components across multiple pages then #Digbyswift's solution is perfect.
I've always Digbyswifts method, but whilst looking for an alternate solution tonight I found this plugin, which is excellent for those situations where creating lots of widget nodes feels like overkill. It's licensed but the free older version is also available.
http://inaboxdesign.dk/blog/widget-builder-for-umbraco/
I am developing a Word add in that is intended to create randomizable test bank documents. I would like the add in to prevent user entry outside content fields where there will be texts of questions and choices. I tried protection applied outside the content controls, but that requires the add in to frequently unprotect and reprotect the documents with the risk of any intervening error leaving the document unprotected.
If anyone can suggest an alternative method, I will appreciate it.
Hurol Aslan
After trying the protect/unprotected approach, I found that it does not let me nest a locked content control (for providing code-defined content) within a content control open to editing. However, I can set LockContents properties of nested content controls independently. That is the approach I will go with.
my company's software product has a feature that allows users to generate forms from Word templates. The program auto fills some fields from the SQL database and the user can fill in other data that they desire. So we have a .dotx template that holds the design of the form, and then the user gets the .docx file to fill out when they call it from our program.
The problem we're having is that some of our users have been finding that the forms take an exceptionally long time to open up and then, once open, are so slow to respond (scroll around, etc) that they're unusable. So in my investigations so far, I've found out that the problem systems are one with lower powered CPUs (unfortunately it happens for systems above our system requirements) and the Word forms that cause the problems are ones with large amount of ActiveX style checkboxes on them. I verified that reducing the ActiveX checkboxes fixes the form loading problems.
So I have the following questions about solutions (we're using Word 2007):
1) Is there any way to configure Word, or some other settings, so that there won't be such a strain opening a Word form with lots of ActiveX checkboxes? Any way of speeding up Word's opening?
2) Using Legacy style checkboxes instead of the ActiveX ones makes the forms load fine, but it looks like the user has to double-click the checkbox and change Default Value->Checked. Is there a way to configure it so that they can simply click on the checkbox to tick it? "Legacy Forms" checkbox as a name kind of worries me (Legacy…), does that mean a future version of word at some point wouldn't load the checkboxes because they're "legacy"?
3) Yes, it became clear to me after a little bit of research into solutions that Word is not the tool for the job for forms like I'm describing. InfoPath seems to be exactly what we should have been using all along but unfortunately I wasn't involved in the decision making or development of these forms, just tasked with coming up with a solution.
I'd appreciate answers to any of these, or if anyone has any other ideas for solutions to this problem.
Thanks
I'm about 3 years too late, but if you want a legacy checkbox to act like a checkbox, you have to restrict editing on the document or section. (You can lock just a section, if you want.) Locking--on Word 2010 it's called "Restrict editing"--is an option under either the Developer tab or the Review tab.
If you restrict editing in this way, the user cannot edit the text but can fill in the form field, so if the form field is a checkbox, the user can click the checkbox on or off; if the form field is a text box, the user can fill the text box.
If you choose to lock off just a section, you'll probably want to use continuous section breaks (Page Layout > Breaks > Continuous) and specify which section. (In the space where you choose form editing as your kind of restriction, there's a small link that lets you specify which section or sections are locked.)