Select Alternate Text (Word 2000 sr1)

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Attorney wants to create a template of a legal document that includes “alternate text”. For example, paragraph A is shown as usual, but then another paragraph A of alternate text follows; this is so that he can choose whichever paragraph suits the situation. The alternate text should not print, but it’s ok if it’s seen onscreen (hidden text?); I thought about bookmarking, references, some automated method of doing this. He is not an experienced Word user and wants this set up in as foolproof a manner as possible. Any ideas?

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Highlight the text to be hidden, then- Format, Font, and check the “Hidden” box.

I prefer to make it red as well, as it makes it stand out.

To ensure that it can be seen- Tools, Options, and under the default “View” tab, select the Hidden checkbox.

To ensure that it can’t be printed- Tools, Options, and under the Print tab, ensure that “Hidden” is not selected.

I prefer to use VBA to ensure that these options are set properly when the document is opened.

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Having said all of this, I have a situation where this will not work.

It’s a document template which will be loaded into the application (Documents are stored on an Oracle database).

I cannot use hidden text, because the application explicitly hides hidden text. I cannot use VBA, because this is stripped from any documents uploaded into the application.

The “Hint” text on a form field is too subtle to be seen.

Is there another way of showing something to the user which will not be printed?

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I would also suggest using VBA to control this, rather than hidden text, especially in a law firm. We have run into problems here (also a law firm) when users e-mailed documents with hidden text to clients unintentionally; they had turned off viewing of hidden text on their PCs and assumed that it wouldn’t go “with” the document when e-mailed. I would create a small VBA interface in the template that would “ask” the user which paragraph they wanted and then insert that paragraph, rather than relying on the user to delete unwanted paragraphs. That is just my thought, though…

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A fair point.

We have templates which go to the minister. Whenever a new template, based on a template, is saved, we strip off all hidden text.

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The method can be nicely extended using character styles: You could have a character style “version a” and another “version b”, and make one visible, the other hidden (or the other way around).
Deleting one of the versions is easy then, too (you can choose the version you want to keep).

Klaus

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Klaus,

not sure if this should go to you but you were last on this thread.

I have a similar need. A doc has 50 “boilerplate” paras. However, for a particular client, say paras 1-4 and 10 are needed whereas for another client paras 3-12, 11, 12, 21-32 are needed. I’d like to create a new doc for each client with just the necessary boilerplate paras.

I understand I can play with styles to hide the unneeded paras. However, I’d probably want to automate this with some kind of user form (not sure what would be on the form to associate the item on the form with the para – maybe pick up a H1 style if we have any). I also share the sentiments that maybe building it from the files (1 for each boilerplate para) or deleting unneeded paras, rather than hiding text, might be safer.

Any ideas?

Thks.

Fred

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Hi Fred,

I’m really out of my depth here.

The two methods I have seen to quickly assemble documents from prefabricated building blocks are either to use AutoText from a boilerplate dot, or IncludeText fields referencing texts from some boilerplate doc.

Using the second method you could automate creating new documents rather easily by using the same bookmark names for all clients, but using different bolierplate docs (where some bookmarks are empty for some clients, or contain different texts). You then would have one standard document with all these IncludeText fields, and only have to change INCLUDETEXT “Client1.Doc” to INCLUDETEXT “Client2.Doc”.

Hope somebody else who has more experience doing this kind of stuff will jump in,

Klaus

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I once fantasized about building a whole database program to process agreements. Now I just ask other people to write them for me.

What might be good in your case is to create a two column table, but the paragraphs in the right column and checkboxes in the left. You could create a form that would set “standard” choices for one type of deal or another, but also let the user flip individual checkboxes. Then the user would run a macro to build a new document from those choices. This had the advantage that it’s easy to understand, and should be easy to maintain. Not sure that Word’s numbering features are ready for it, however. Also, because you would have to protect the table for forms, users could not touch the boilerplate until the new document was built. Still, it could work.

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Fred,

It sounds like what you’re looking for is a little bit different from the original post – in that case (if I understand right) the attorney wanted to be able to go through an entire document that had alternative language/paragraphs, and pick and choose what do use and what to discard.

The situation you’re describing (start with one base boilerplate template but delete specific paras depending on the client, at the time the document is created) is really easy to do (we do a lot of these):

You put bookmarks around the paragraphs that are potential deletes. So the ones that get deleted if the client is Jones, get names like “bmkJonesX1”, “bmkJonesX2” etc. Whereas the ones that get deleted if client is Brown get names like “bmkBrownX1” etc.

On the userform you have option buttons to allow the user to select which client they’re creating a document for.

The code that runs when they click OK on the userform is along the lines of:

If optJones.Value = True Then
DeleteJonesBmks ‘call the appropriate subroutine
ElseIf optBrown.Value = True then
Delete BrownBmks ‘

And the DeleteJonesBmks procedure can simply be a list like:

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(“bmkJonesX1”).Range.Delete
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(“bmkJonesX2”).Range.Delete

or if you want the code to be more generic:

Public Sub DeleteBmk (Client As String)
Dim aBmk As Bookmark
For Each aBmk in ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
If InStr(aBmk.Name, Client) = 0 Then
aBmk.Range.Delete
End If
Next ‘aBmk

and the code to call it would be along the lines of:

If optJones.Value = True Then
DeleteBmk “Jones”

(note I typed this code in this window – not tested)

You can take the alternative route of doing a “document assembly” routine of building the document from pieces of other files, but that is a lot more trouble.

Hope this is along the lines of what you’re needing to do.

Gary

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