Several readers have written to complain about Microsoft's "enhancements" of various features in Word 2002. Most notably, the Comments and Revision Tracking features are broken. I've written about these here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710381892

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711737396

Reader Ned Humphrey suggested starting a campaign to get Microsoft to reverse itself on such "disimprovements," which I thought was a great idea. So gentle reader, if you're so inclined, I'd like to enlist your help in asking Microsoft to change Comments and Revision Tracking back to the way they worked in Word 2000--or at least to give us the option of having them work the old way. Are you with me? ARE YOU WITH ME? (Sorry, I got a little carried away there.)

If you are, or if you have any other suggestions you'd like to give to Microsoft, you can do so here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];feedback

Microsoft is asking for feedback, and I say we should give it to them. Please take a minute to click on the link above and send Microsoft your ideas. If we all work together, we should be able to help make a great word processor even better. And if you've ever wondered how to go about giving feedback to Microsoft, now you know how. Thanks for your help.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Hilary Powers sent a correction to her serial comma macro that appeared in last week's newsletter. She wrote:

Everybody needs an editor. Turns out there's a mistake in my macro as presented--it won't ignore "andiron" at all. It needs to look like this instead:

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
'Serial Macro
'Macro written 02/27/03 by Hilary Powers; updated 3/12
'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.text = "and"
' REMOVED LEADING SPACE IN SEARCH STRING
.MatchCase = True
.MatchWholeWord = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=2
' BACK UP TWO SPACES BEHIND SEARCH STRING TO MAKE UP FOR DELETED SPACE
Selection.TypeText text:=","
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

I didn't spot the problem until I contemplated the version in the newsletter and started wondering how it can find "whole words" on a string containing a space. I wrote that bit in rather than recording it, and the macro works without complaint--but it turns out that the string simply overrides that provision. So everything's fine as long as the next "and" string really is a whole word, but if it's not--a rare but possible thing--you get a comma there anyway.

If you don't know how to use macros like the one sent by Hilary, you can learn how here.

___________________________

Marty Spitzenberger sent in a way to insert serial commas using a wildcard Find and Replace. He wrote:

Type "([!,]) and>" (without the quotes) in the Find what field, and "1, and" in the Replace with field. Check the "Use Wildcards" box. Do Find Next. If the found text needs a comma, then do Replace. Since another Find Next is automatically performed after the Replace, exit the dialog box and do to return to the point of text replacement so the manual review can continue. This sequence can be recorded and saved as a macro.

The Find What text above translates to the following: find a group of one character that is not a comma, followed by one space character, followed by "and", which is the end of the word. This approach avoids a match to something like "black andirons."

Obviously, this will still find "Jack and Jill", which doesn't need a comma, but then so does last week's macro. This approach does avoid the extra steps in the macro of moving the cursor to the end of the previous word to insert the comma. The Replace With text translates to: replace the selection with the found group/character that wasn't a comma, then a comma followed by a space character and "and".

An improved search string would find sentences with a serial comma error in the form "I like a, b and c." This wildcard Find What string is:

(, [!.,:!?^013]@) and>

This search string finds the following sequence of characters:

a comma,

a space,

one or more characters that do not include period, comma, colon, exclamation mark, question mark, or paragraph mark

a space,

"and", which is the end of the word

The appropriate Replace With string is unchanged:

1, and

The search string limits the found text to appearing within one sentence of one paragraph, where the sentence contains a comma and then some other text without a comma immediately before " and". This way the search string avoids finding sentences in the form of "I like a and b." While it will incorrectly find sentences in the form of "Sadly, I like a and b.", it is still an improvement.

Another frequent task that can be simplified through wildcard search and replace is the deletion of extra paragraph marks inserted when a word-wrapped paragraph is converted to plain text. For example, my email as attached to your reply now has "> " at the beginning of each line and a paragraph mark at the end of each, with many short lines. Although transforming this text back into nice, word-wrapped paragraphs takes several steps, it is still quicker than doing each replacement manually:

1. Obviously, copy the desired text into a new word document.

2. Remove all of the "> " at the beginning of each line with this:

Find What: ^p>^032

(You can use a space character in place of the ^032 used here and elsewhere. I'm using ^032 to ensure that you enter a space.)

Replace With: ^p

Disable "Use wildcards"

Do Replace All

Note: The ^p at the beginning of the Find What is needed to avoid deleting a "> " string contained within paragraph text, which occurs here in the text representing key labels.

3. Review the text to ensure that there is a tab character starting each paragraph or a blank paragraph following each desired paragraph. Add any that are missing.

Note: Replacements in steps 4 and 5 are done to replace the paragraph mark with a space if a space isn't already before or after the para mark. The Find string also avoids replacing the paragraph mark if it is followed by a tab, under the assumption that this is an indented paragraph or a bullet.

4. Find What: ([!^013^032])^013([!^013^t^032])

Replace With: 1^0322

Check "Use wildcards"

Do Replace All

5. Find What: ([!^013])^013([!^013^t])

Replace With: 12

Check "Use wildcards"

Do Replace All

___________________________

Linda Duguay wrote:

I was recently faced with a request to create a macro to get rid of multiple blank lines in a document. This could happen when a document comes in as a text file or during a merge etc. I brought out my trusty book, Total Word Domination, that you wrote and went to work on the problem using wildcards.

A caveat in this case: there were blank lines between paragraphs (it was a text file so no paragraph spacing) and we wanted to delete them (the first Find command). But we didn't want to delete the actual carriage return at the end of the paragraph, so we searched for two carriage returns and replaced them with one. With all of the double carriage returns out of the picture, we could now search for all occurrences of three or more carriage returns and delete those (the second Find command). It was very fast and did the job. We had over 1,000 pages reduced to 1 page in seconds.

In the case where you want two carriage returns to separate paragraphs, you can either not use the first Find routine or using a message box to ask if this is wanted.

Here is what I came up with:

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
Dim myRange As Range
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Add Name:="TempDBP", Range:=Selection.Range
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^13{2}"
.Replacement.Text = "^13"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^13{2,}"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("TempDBP")
.Select
.Delete
End With
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

___________________________

From: Phil Rabichow [mailto:phrab@earthlink.net]

The last issue of Editorium pointed out that you can search for ^013 when you're looking for a paragraph mark. You can also use ^13 (just one keystroke less, I know). Anyhow, here is a list of Find/Replace codes:

These you can use when you don't use wildcards:

^p Paragraph mark

^t Tab character

^a Annotation (comment) mark

^0nnn ANSI (4 digit) or ASCII (3 digit) characters, where nnn is the character code

^? Any character

^# Any digit

^$ Any letter

^^ Caret character

^c Clipboard contents

^& Contents of the Find What box

^e Endnote mark

^d Field

^f Footnote mark

^g Graphic

BREAKS

^n Column break

^l Line break

^m Manual page break

^b Section break

HYPHENS AND SPACES

^+ Em dash

^= En dash

^s Nonbreaking space

^~ Nonbreaking hyphen

^- Optional hyphen

^w White space

Here is a list that you can use in Find when using wildcards:

^1 Picture (Except pictures with Float Over Text property, Word 98

Macintosh Edition)

^2 Auto-referenced footnotes

^5 Comment mark

^9 Tab

^11 New line

^12 Page OR section break

^13 Carriage return

^14 Column break

^19 Opening field brace (when the field braces are visible)

^21 Closing field brace (when the field braces are visible)

^? Word 6.x and later: Any single character (not valid in the Replace

box)

^- Optional hyphen

^~ Non-breaking hyphen

^^ Caret character

^# Any digit (Word 6.x and later)

^$ Any letter (Word 6.x and later)

^& Contents of Find What box (Replace box only) (Word 6.x and later)

^+ Em Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)

^= En Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)

^u8195 Em Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the

Replace box)

^u8194 En Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the

Replace box)

^a Comment (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x - Word 7.0)

^b Section Break (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)

^c Replace with Clipboard contents (Replace box only)

^d Field(Word 6.x and later)

^e Endnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)

^f Footnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)

^g Graphic(Word 6.x and later)

^l New line

^m Manual Page Break (Word 6.x and later)

^n Column break (Word 6.x and later)

^t Tab

^p Paragraph mark

^s Non-breaking space

^w White space (space, non-breaking space, tab; not valid in the

Replace box)

^nnn Where "n" is an ASCII character number

^0nnn Same as above, but uses ANSI characters (ALT+nnn PC only)

^unnnn Word 97 Unicode character search where "n" is a decimal number corresponding to the Unicode character value.

Thanks to one and all for their useful suggestions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

If you haven't yet signed up for Allen Wyatt's wonderful WordTips newsletter, you're missing some of the best tips and tricks around. The perfect complement to Editorium Update, WordTips provides a weekly helping of quick, helpful hints for beginners and experts alike. You can learn more and sign up here:

http://www.vitalnews.com/wordtips/

I've occasionally mentioned this in passing, but based on recent questions from readers, it seems worth making a fuss about: Yes, you *can* use a carriage return in a wildcard search.

People who use Microsoft Word often get stymied by this. They try doing a wildcard search with a string like this one:

^pSee(*)^p

What do they get? An error message: "^p is not a valid special character for the Find What box or is not supported when the Use Wildcards check box is selected."

Then they give up: "Dang! Guess I can't look for carriage returns in a wildcard search." In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never give up." There's almost always a solution if you'll just hang in there and look for it. In this case, the solution is to use the ASCII character code for a carriage return. That code is:

^013

So our theoretical wildcard search would look like this:

^013See(*)^013

And that will work--unless you're using a Macintosh. On a Mac, Word simply won't find anything or (as just happened to me when I was testing this) your computer will lock up. But, surprisingly, there is a solution, which took a considerable amount of messing around to figure out. Use the ^013 but "escape" it with a backslash and treat it as a range with square brackets. In other words, use this:

[^013]

If you're a Mac user, you know what a breakthrough that is.

Finally, a caution: If you're *replacing* with carriage returns, don't use the ASCII code. Instead, use the good old paragraph code, ^p. Why? Because ^013 and ^p are not the same thing. ^p is a Word carriage return, and as such it holds formatting information that ^013 doesn't. If you replace with ^013, that formatting may be lost.

Want to know more about wildcard searching? See David Varner's comment and my response in today's Readers Write column.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

David Varner wrote:

"I wanted to bring up your mention of wildcard searching as a skill. You said it 'may be the most important tool you can acquire.' Okay, I've read all your articles and tried the different tips. Heck, I've printed out all the articles. But it's not the same as having one dedicated wildcard text source. And so the question is, any chance you can point me to (or create/compile) a clear and straightforward, whole enchilada wildcard search and replace manual? Or maybe I could just cut and paste all your wildcard Editorium Updates together!"

I responded to David that I'd already done this, in a document named "Advanced Find and Replace in Microsoft Word." I sent the document to him, and I'm making it available as a free download for anyone else who wants it. This document is worth your time, believe me. You can start the download by clicking here:

http://www.editorium.com/ftp/AdvancedFind.zip

I'd like to thank Bob Janes for formatting and editing the document and especially for compiling the reference section at the end.

___________________________

After reading my philosophical ramblings on the value of technical literacy in last week's newsletter, Dan A. Wilson sent this terrific comment. Thanks, Dan!

"In business talks and seminars aimed at corporate climbers and white-collar execs in the past several years, I've begun including this phrase at opportune times:

"'Time was, and not too long ago, that the value of an individual to an organization increased geometrically when he or she became computer-literate. Today, literacy at the computer no longer pulls much weight: you have to be computer-sophisticated today, and that means simply that you must have come to regard the computer as far and away your most valuable tool, your ultimate enabler, your brain's second-in command. A brain with a pencil in its hand cannot compete--indeed cannot even credibly challenge--a brain with a computer and computer-sophistication at its disposal. Regarding the machine as an enemy, an obstacle, an unnecessary complication is lethal, and the individual who has that view of the computer is at least dying, if not already dead, in the world of business affairs, but probably doesn't yet know it.'"

___________________________

In the February 26 newsletter, I asked readers to send in their hyphenation exception dictionaries to share with the rest of the world. Rebecca Evans (evansreb@earthlink.net) actually did! Thanks, Rebecca! The dictionary is available for download here:

http://www.editorium.com/ftp/Exceptionary.zip

Here are Rebecca's comments on the dictionary:

"This is the hyphenation exception dictionary I currently use with Ventura. Ventura lets me specify how many letters must appear before a hyphen at the beginning of a word and how many after at the end so some of the words show hyphenation points at places I would not actually allow.

"In Ventura, words in the exception dictionary shown without hyphenation points are words that Ventura is told not to hyphenate at all. I use this for words that hyphenate differently depending on usage, such as pro-ject and proj-ect. I also place unhyphenated words in here to prevent unfortunate breaks, such as anal-ist.

"The words in this exception list also don't include every possible hyphenation point because I use this list to force preferred hyphenation, such as dem-onstrate instead of demon-strate.

"Microsoft Word and Ventura mis-hyphenate differently, I would imagine, so many of these words may hyphenate properly in Word. In fact, I've been using this list for so long now (so many versions of Ventura) that many of these may actually hyphenate properly in Ventura."

___________________________

Hilary Powers sent in a terrific macro for working with serial commas. Thanks, Hilary! Here are her comments, followed by the macro:

"Remember I asked awhile back about automating the placement of serial commas? This doesn't do the whole job, but it takes a lot of the curse off of the problem of dealing with an AP author who's writing for a Chicago publisher.

"It goes to the next instance of the word 'and,' backs up a space, and puts in a comma--ignoring 'And' and 'andiron' and the like. (I may do a partner for 'or' one day, but that doesn't come up nearly as often.)

"I have it assigned to the hot key Alt-/ and to a voice macro pronounced 'seer-comm.' So when I'm reading along and I see a spot that needs a serial comma coming up, I just say or key the command and the comma appears where it belongs, without the need to mouse to the exact spot. And if there was another 'and' in the way that I missed seeing, well, that's what Ctrl-Z is for."

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
'Serial Macro
'Macro written 02/27/03 by Hilary Powers
'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.text = " and"
.MatchCase = True
.MatchWholeWord = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.TypeText text:=","
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Steve Hudson is making his consulting and training services and Microsoft Word spellbooks and macro packages available at his new Web site, here:

http://www.geocities.com/word_heretic/products.html

Check it out! A great way to improve your technical literacy.

I work with lots of authors who use WordPerfect. Sometimes they pass their documents on to colleagues who use Microsoft Word. That wouldn't be a problem if the authors would first save their documents in Word format. But they don't, and their colleagues work on the documents in Word, pass them around to others, and then give them back to the authors, who send them to me.

When I open these documents they look okay--except that some of the characters look kind of funny. The quotation marks and apostrophes are a little crooked, and the em dashes are thick and bold. What's going on here?

What's going on is that these aren't regular ANSI characters. You can prove this by selecting one and then pressing CTRL + SPACEBAR to remove any directly applied formatting. When you do, the character will turn into some other character. With this particular kind of weirdness, an opening quotation mark (for example) will become a capital A. You could Find and Replace these with real quotation marks, but your document may have hundreds--even thousands--of *real* capital A's that you want to preserve.

Here's a list of the pseudo-characters (the ones I've identified; there could be more) and their corresponding true identities:

CHARACTER DISGUISED AS TRUE IDENTITY (sort of)

Em dash C

En dash B

Opening quotation mark A

Closing quotation mark @

Opening single quotation mark >

Closing single quotation mark

(apostrophe) =

Another way to prove something weird is happening is to put your cursor in front of one of these characters and then run the macro you'll find here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704193319

The macro will tell you that the ANSI number is 40--which is really the number for an opening parenthesis. That will be true whether you're checking a pseudo-quotation mark, em dash, en dash, whatever. So you can't Find and Replace them by using character number 40, either, since your document may contain legitimate parentheses.

What's needed is a way to Find and Replace a character that is an A (or whatever) *and* has the ANSI number 40. At the end of this article is a macro (one for Word 97 and above; one for Word 6 and 95) that will do just that, for all the weird characters in question.

Now, if you run into this WordPerfect weirdness, you'll have a way to fix it. If you know about other characters that act the same way, please let me know and I'll include them in a future newsletter with a revised macro.

If you remove directly applied formatting and the character (such as an em dash) *doesn't* change to something else (such as a C) but instead to a less-bold version of the same thing (which can happen), then the macro won't fix it. It if you know what's going on with *these* weird characters and how to fix them, please let me know and I'll share your solution in the newsletter.

If you don't know how to use macros like the following, you can learn how here.

'MACRO FOR WORD 97 AND ABOVE STARTS HERE

Dim a

Dim i

Dim FalseChar$

Dim TrueChar$

Dim ThisChar

WordBasic.EditFindClearFormatting

WordBasic.EditReplaceClearFormatting

WordBasic.StartOfDocument

'Check for platform

a = InStr(WordBasic.[AppInfo$](1), "Macintosh")

For i = 1 To 6

'Set find and replace variables

Select Case i

Case 1

FalseChar$ = "C"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(209)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(151)

End If

Case 2

FalseChar$ = "B"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(208)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(150)

End If

Case 3

FalseChar$ = "A"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(210)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(147)

End If

Case 4

FalseChar$ = "@"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(211)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(148)

End If

Case 5

FalseChar$ = ">"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(212)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(145)

End If

Case 6

FalseChar$ = "="

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr(213)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr(146)

End If

Case Else

End Select

'Find and replace

WordBasic.EditFind Find:=FalseChar$, MatchCase:=1, PatternMatch:=0

While WordBasic.EditFindFound()

ThisChar = Asc(WordBasic.[Selection$]())

If ThisChar = 40 Then

WordBasic.WW6_EditClear

WordBasic.Insert TrueChar$

End If

WordBasic.EditFind

Wend

Next i

'MACRO ENDS HERE

'MACRO FOR WORD 6 and 95 STARTS HERE

EditFindClearFormatting

EditReplaceClearFormatting

StartOfDocument

'Check for platform

a = InStr(AppInfo$(1), "Macintosh")

For i = 1 To 6

'Set find and replace variables

Select Case i

Case 1

FalseChar$ = "C"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(209)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(151)

End If

Case 2

FalseChar$ = "B"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(208)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(150)

End If

Case 3

FalseChar$ = "A"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(210)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(147)

End If

Case 4

FalseChar$ = "@"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(211)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(148)

End If

Case 5

FalseChar$ = ">"

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(212)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(145)

End If

Case 6

FalseChar$ = "="

If a Then

TrueChar$ = Chr$(213)

Else

TrueChar$ = Chr$(146)

End If

Case Else

End Select

'Find and replace

EditFind .Find = FalseChar$, .MatchCase = 1, .PatternMatch = 0

While EditFindFound()

ThisChar = Asc(Selection$())

If ThisChar = 40 Then

WW6_EditClear

Insert TrueChar$

End If

EditFind

Wend

Next i

'MACRO ENDS HERE

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Donna Payne wrote:

In response to readers write about Track Changes in Word 2002:

Although Microsoft has removed the option for how deleted text should appear in this version due to markup balloons, we have a free pdf file at the following location that explains how to get around this:

http://www.payneconsulting.com/public/tips/TipDetail.asp?nTipID=82.

Donna Payne

President

Payne Consulting Group, Inc.

www.payneconsulting.com

___________________

Johanna Murphy wrote:

In answer to Mary Eberle's comments regarding AutoCorrect in you previous newsletter, I would like to give you my comments on this subject. I also have been using AutoCorrect heavily in Word 97, and I copied my normal over. The problem I have is just the opposite. The formatted entries freeze up the program, but the unformatted all work. Especially the entries I have for inserting fields. For instance, I create a date by using the field Month Date and Year. I then copy it into the AutoCorrect box and tell it to be formatted, but it will turn it into unformatted or freeze up the program. I really hate that! Any suggestions would be appreciated.

While I've got your attention, I am also hoping you or your readers could help me with a problem in Word XP. I work for a law firm and when we had Word 97, I had created the firm's letterhead templates, pleading templates, etc. I inserted comments into the templates for the other users' convenience. When the templates were transferred to Word XP, the comments showed up as a thin vertical line on the screen, and the lines ALSO PRINTED! Every time I open a template it is set to "Final Markup." Since then, I have learned to use the Reviewing Toolbar to set the document to "Final Document." This procedure is very tiresome to always have to remember to switch to Final Document. Staff and attorneys call me all the time to ask why these vertical lines show up when they print something. I have deleted the comments out of the templates, but the lines still show up unexpectedly on the printed documents even though they don't show on the screen anymore. Is there help for this? Thanks.

Thanks to Donna for the additional information and to Johanna for her questions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

If you're having problems importing documents from other word processing programs into Microsoft Word, some of the document converters from Microsoft may help:

http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/default.aspx?Product=Word&Version=95|97|98|2000|2002&Type=Converter|Viewer

Before Word 2002, it was possible to set revision-tracking colors and formatting separately for inserted and deleted text. The procedure was simple:

1. Click Tools / Track Changes / Highlight Changes / Options.

2. Select "Mark" (bold, italic, underline, or double underline) for "Inserted text."

3. Select "Color" (various) for "Inserted text."

4. Select "Mark" (bold, italic, underline, or double underline) for "Deleted text."

5. Select "Color" (various) for "Deleted text."

6. Click the "OK" button.

In Word 2002, however, this feature works only for "Inserted Text." "Deleted text" automatically follows suit, and there seems to be no way to set the two independently. To make matters worse, Strikethrough is no longer among the listed marking options. How annoying! Fortunately, there's a hidden way to overcome these limitations. I've exploited it in the following macro, which you can easily modify to meet your own needs:

Sub SetTrackingFormat()
With Options
.InsertedTextMark = wdInsertedTextMarkUnderline
.InsertedTextColor = wdBlue
.DeletedTextMark = wdDeletedTextMarkStrikeThrough
.DeletedTextColor = wdRed
End With
End Sub

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here.

The macro is currently set to mark insertions as blue text with underline, and to mark deletions as red text with strikethrough. To change this, replace the "Underline" on the end of "wdInsertedTextMarkUnderline" or the "StrikeThrough" on the end of "wdDeletedTextMarkStrikeThrough" with any of the following:

Bold

ColorOnly

DoubleUnderline

Italic

None

StrikeThrough

Underline

Then replace "wdBlue" or "wdRed" with any of the following:

wdBlack

wdBlue

wdBrightGreen

wdByAuthor

wdDarkBlue

wdDarkRed

wdDarkYellow

wdGray25

wdGray50

wdGreen

wdNoHighlight

wdPink

wdRed

wdTeal

wdTurquoise

wdViolet

wdWhite

wdYellow

Then run the macro (Tools / Macro / Macros). Hah, hah! Once again Microsoft Word must bend to your will!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Readers have sent so many great tips and comments that it's taking a while to go through them all. They'll be appearing in the newsletter over the next few weeks. Today's issue makes a good start, however. Many thanks to Bill Rubidge, Rohn Solecki, and Rebecca Evans for their terrific comments and tips.

Referring to the December 18, 2002, issue of Editorium Update, which featured styles and style lists from readers, Bill Rubidge (wbr@aya.yale.edu) wrote:

Eric Fletcher explains that he uses an "Editorial Note" style. We use something similar, but the style is called "Open Issue". (Actually, the name has a prefix, so that all the styles we use are sorted together in the list and distinguishable from styles that may come from other templates or users). The style highlights items with color, as Eric's does, but we do one thing more.

At the end of our documents, we insert a page break and then type a title "Open Issues". Below that, we generate a TOC based only the Open Issue style (not any headings--TOC field {TOC t "wbrOpenIssue,1"}). This gives us a complete list of these open issues for the entire document, to ensure that none are overlooked.

By the way, we also insert these Open Issue paragraphs (which are sometimes just queries) ABOVE the item in question, and the Open Issue style has the paragraph set to "keep with next". This helps make the page number refs in the Open Issue TOC more accurate.

If you really want to get complicated, on multi-file projects (we deal with about 40 files per book), it may be easier to just extract the open issues from the file and put them into another document. For now, I just do this using the open issue TOC at the end of each file, but have a macro that copies it (fields unlinked) to the clipboard and then opens up our Open Issue file (in Excel, for easier sorting). Based on posts in the Word PC listserve, I think involving Maggie Seneca, I think you could also harvest all the Open Issue items in the file and automatically write them to another file (rather than the manual paste we're using).

You might refer to the macro that Bryan and Pieter helped Eve Golden with, back in the Daily Word Tips list. I think the last posts about it were from November 20. That macro searches for text highlighted in a certain way, and copies all that text and appends it to a separate file.

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Rohn Solecki wrote:

I also have a favorite style you might want to pass on. Although it may not be useful to the publishing industry, it is handy for internal documentation in companies that still use "green screen" computer terminals. Green screen terminals are the old style fixed pitch font, by default 24 line by 80 character displays (but optionally up to 27 lines by 132 characters).

Rather than doing a graphic screen capture I do a Edit / Select All, Edit / Copy to capture the text, paste to Word, then apply my "Screen Print" paragraph style to reasonably simulate the appearance of text on the computer terminal. This style has 3 main advantages over pasting a graphic screen capture:

* It uses orders of magnitude less space, which is important if you have lots of screens to capture.

* It is editable, so if something on screen changes you don't have redo the capture.

* Since it is editable, it is easy to apply character formatting like highlighter or font colors to highlight specific sections (without having to use a separate graphics program).

Details of Screen Print Paragraph Style:

* Paragraph Formatting - Flush Left, Keep with Next, Keep lines together, Border: box (single line), Shading: 5%, Indent: Hanging 0.25 Right 0", Widow and Orphan Control. Font Formatting - Courier, 10 pt, Condensed 0.5 pt.

Reasons for choices:

* The Box Border and 5% Shading simulate the look of the screen.

* Keep Lines together and Keep with next ensure that the whole screen capture stays on same page.

* Hanging indent is optional if a line wraps for some reason, for example, capturing from a 132-character display.

* Courier is fixed pitch so characters line up as they did on screen.

* 10 pt Condensed 0.5pt so that an 80-character line will fit on a page with reasonable margins (less than the default 1.5" both sides) without wrapping.

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Rebecca Evans (evansreb@earthlink.net) wrote:

I have been designing and typesetting books for a living since 1976. Being able to use style tags in today's programs is certainly a blessing compared to keeping a spec sheet beside you so you can hand key specs as you re-type a book from a typemarked manuscript.

My comment on the style naming issue is that I have found I do not need list tags that add space after the list (NL End), just the tag to begin the list and for the interior paragraphs. All I need after lists, boxes, and the like, are two Body Text tags with added space above them, one with a paragraph indent and one without, because any paragraph style other than Body Text--heads, extracts, boxes, summaries, other lists--already includes space above.

Of course this assumes that spacing is consistent within a design so that you don't have +12' below a BL and +6' below an NL. And, I realize this may not be applicable to documents other than books. However, in my experience with textbooks, I have found those two extra Body Text styles to be all the "exit" styles I need.

On another note, I use two character style names because that lets me reduce the width of the style tag window (I use Ventura Publisher and keep the style list docked and open on screen), leaving more screen width to display page spreads. This is not an issue if you use a style drop down menu but I thought I'd throw in my two cents on that one too.

I responded, "Not being a Ventura user myself, I'd like to know why Ventura users want to tag Word files before bringing them into Ventura. Won't Ventura import RTF files? Any light you could shed on that subject for me?"

Rebecca replied:

Ventura does import RTF files--it will even File:Open RTF files and build copies of all the Styles as closely as possible to how they are in Word. Irrespective of that, you elucidated the reasons for using raw codes very well in your recent essay.

Most books are Styled erratically by the author and there is usually so much junk left in text files that it's easier to clean up the text if you can see the raw codes. Much of what I clean up is taken care of by EKTPlus but I still like to see exactly what I'm importing before I import it.

Also, an author's Styles, even if perfectly applied, never match the design of the typeset book. It is far easier for me to type codes than to drop down the Style list and click each one. Assign Styles to buttons takes a long time and would be almost as much work to use as dropping down the style list.

I use XyWrite for coding text files because I can drop in coding with short-cut keys, which are incredibly easy to assign in XyWrite: no menus, just select the text, press F2, press the key you want to use for that shortcut (any key), then press F3 to deselect the text. Then it's just ALT+"that key" to insert the text. You can keep reassigning new text to your shortcut keys as you work.

XyWrite also has macro-scripting capabilities that let me build S&R tables for almost anything. I keep the S&R table open in a separate window while I work so I can change/add entries in it as I go along.

Unfortunately, XyWrite is ASCII and everything else in the world (seemingly) is ANSI so I've recently been converting over to coding in Word. Assigning and using shortcut keys is more of a process in Word because alphanumeric keys are used for Word function shortcuts.

I should tell you that XyWrite is an older program used mostly by programming types now. XyWrite is DOS-based so I don't know if it will even run under Windows XP. It's an old friend for me but someone trying to learn it today probably wouldn't know what to do with the command line at the top of the screen (very useful if you know DOS commands) and would have to adjust to using function keys rather than the CTRL/ALT keys to execute commands.

There are folks out there who write scripts for converting Word coding to Ventura--Allan Shearer in Canada comes to mind--but your programs are so well executed and beautifully interfaced that it's worth paying for them even if the same functions are available free from other sources.

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RESOURCES

RMIT University has an excellent collection of links related to editing and publishing:

http://www.rmit.edu.au/links/publish.htm