MS Word 2003 - How to Use the "Paste All" Function?

MS Word 2003 can store 24 items in its Clipboard and then paste all of them in the same order that you saved them (the last one saved pasted the last).

Why is this such a great function? Because it allows you to gather study and research materials from all kinds of different sources and then compile them within the same Word document for your easy reference and/or re-writing.

1) First of all, make sure your Task Pane is displaying by clicking Ctrl+F1

2) Then click the downward pointing little black triangle on the upper right of the Task Pane and select Clipboard to display the contents of your Clipboard.

3) Now go to any web site you want and select a certain text that interests you. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

4) Next, open an Excel sheet and select any table you like. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

5) Open any Word document you like and select any text of interest. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

You can repeat this up to 24 clipboard items.

All these three items of interest from three different sources/application will be displayed in your Clipboard list.

6) Now, click the Paste All button on the Task Pane to have all of them pasted one after another in your Word document.

This powerful function to gather information from dissimilar sources and then display them all within the same Word document will open new research and writing possibilities for you. Y

You can use MS Word 2003's 24-item clipboard to gather all your notes neatly into the same Word document thanks to the "Paste All" command.

Enjoy!

MS Word - How to Change the Image of Toolbar Button and How to Record a Macro?

If you do not like the way a MS Word toolbar button looks, you can change its image very easily.

1) Select Tools > Customize from the main menu to display the Customize dialog box.

2) Select the button (the image of which you would like to change) by clicking on it directly on the toolbar. A black rectangle will display around the selected button.

3) Click the Modify Selection button in the Customize dialog box to display the drop-down menu.

4) Select Change Button Image option to display all the wonderful icons available to you. Select one and presto! Your toolbar button now has a new spiffy look!

5) If you would like to edit an image by hand to anything you like, you can do that as well by selecting the Edit Button Image option.

************ How to Record a Word Macro?

Recording and running macros in MS Word will save you from re-performing repetitive tasks.

Imagine for example that you would like to transform certain words in a document by changing the font family to Brittanic Bold and increasing the font size to 24 points.

If in a 10,000 word document you have 100 such words to change, wouldn’t it be much better to do it by just clicking a button on your toolbar rather than changing the font family and size 100 times in a row?

This is how you can record and use a Word macro:

1) Select Tools > Macro > Record New Macro from the Word menu to display the Record Macro dialog box.

2) Type in a Name for your macro in the “Macro name” field.

3) Click the Toolbars button to display the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box.

4) Click and hold your cursor on the macro listed in the Commands list-box of the tab. The cursor tip should change into a “+” sign. Drag and drop the macro in anywhere you like on your toolbar. When the cursor changes into a vertical “I beam” it means it is ready to drop your newly created macro button at the selected spot on your toolbar.

5) Then go ahead and change the font family to Brittanic Bold and font size to 24 (through Format > Font dialog box).

6) When you are done, click the STOP button on the mini “Macro tool bar” displaying over your document and you are done.

Now every time you select a word or a paragraph and then click the macro button on your toolbar, your selection will automatically be changed to the new font, size 24. Isn’t that great?

MS Word – Create a Colorful Venn Diagram Easily

I love Venn Diagrams because nothing comes to close to expressing the logical relationships between different sets of elements that well.

With Microsoft Word 2003 you can create fantastic looking and colorful Venn Diagrams on the fly, with as many elements and colors as you need.

It helps to launch your DRAW toolbar first before you do anything else.

Then follow these steps:

1) Click the 3-balls icon (the tooltip text should read “Insert Diagram or Organization Chart”) to display the Diagram Gallery dialog box.

2) Click and select the Venn Diagram icon on the lower-center to insert a default Venn diagram and also to display the Diagram mini tool-bar.

3) To add a new set of elements (represented by each CIRCLE in the diagram), click the Insert Shape button on the mini tool-bar.

4) To move the circle shapes around, click the clockwise or counterclockwise buttons until you get the desired positioning.

5) Click the “Click to Add text” text to enter any text you want to identify the individual elements.

6) Click the Text Wrap button to apply text wrapping, if there is any need.

7) Click Autoformatting button on the mini tool-bar to select a pre-saved format template for the whole diagram.

8) You can change the formatting of any individual slice by selecting it and then clicking the appropriate formatting buttons on the DRAW toolbar.

MS Word - How to Create and Use a Customized Dictionary?

Microsoft Word comes with a powerful dictionary and spell checker. It is very easy to add new words to MS’s default customary dictionary (file name: CUSTOM.DIC) as well.

When MS comes across a word that is not in this default dictionary, the right-click pop-up menu asks whether you’d like to “Add to Dictionary”. Click that option and you are done. The new word is added to CUSTOM.DIC. Next time, MS will know how to correct the misspelling of that particular word.

But sometimes, when you are writing about a very esoteric subject, or perhaps when you are using many foreign words or jargon, or working on a temporary project, you may want to keep the default custom dictionary as is and create your own project-specific customized dictionary. When the project is done, you may want to remove it from your computer altogether.

***** How to create your own customized dictionary?

1. Launch your Note pad, or non-MS Word writing program. (MS Word unfortunately inserts a lot of invisible code to the text which might affect your dictionary list in unpredictable ways.)

2. Enter all your special words, one word per line. Make sure to enter multi-word phrases one word per line. After you type in each word, press Enter and go to the next line.

3. Give your special dictionary a name that ends with “.dic” (For example, “SoccerDictionary.dic”) and save it to C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\MicrosoftProof

***** How to launch and use your customized dictionary?

1. Open the text that you would like to spell check by using your customized dictionary.

2. Select Tools > Options.

3. Select the Spelling & Grammar tab.

4. Click Custom Dictionaries button to display the Custom Dictionaries dialog box. You will see your newly created dictionary is listed in there, right next to the CUSTOM.DIC.

5. Check the check-box of your customized dictionary (if you like, IN ADDITION to the CUSTOM.DIC. It would not hurt.) Do NOT remove “CUSTOM.DIC” since that would impact all the other MS documents that have already used it.

6. While you are here, you can also modify the content of any listed dictionary by selecting it and clicking the Modify button. You can easily add new words in this fashion.

7. Click OK and return to your main document.

Now when you do a spell check (F7), Word will suggest alternatives not only from its default dictionary but from the custom dictionary that you have created as well.

Alternatively, when you right click your mouse over a word that has a red underline, Word will suggest alternatives not only from its default dictionary but from your customized dictionary as well.

You can create and use as many similar customized dictionaries as you like. And when you are done with that special project, you can just simply turn them off at Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar > Custom Dictionaries.

If you think you’ll never again use that special set of terminology, you can also delete a customized dictionary altogether from the C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\MicrosoftProof

MS Word - How To Make Global Changes To Your Text Document Based On Paragraph Styles?

Imagine you have a long MS Word document containing all kinds of paragraph styles. What are you going to do if you'd like to indent all section headers SIMULTANEOUSLY by one tab to the right and then change their color to red?

Obviously the Find-and-Replace functionality is of no help here. Yes, you can search for the paragraphs by their style but you need to type in a search word or phrase. And after finding the headers with that specific style and search words, you cannot select them all simultaneously for a global edit.

Tracking such headers from the TOC (Table of Contents) would also be very cumbersome and again impossible to select simultaneously.

There is a very easy method to accomplish that in a hurry.

First display the Styles and Formatting pane of your document by selecting Format > Styles and Formatting from your main menu.

Select a paragraph style in the list. It will be framed with a dark blue box.

Bring your cursor on top of the style name to display the drop-down menu arrow.

Click the arrow to display the following options:

Select All X Instance(s)
Modify...
Delete...
Update to match the Selection

Select the "Select All X Instance(s)" option to highlight every piece of text in your document which has that paragraph style.

Then click the right-indent button on your tool-bar. All the headers will be shifted towards right by one tab space.

Then click the Font Color button on your tool-bar and select Red. All your headers will be converted to red.

And you are done! Congratulations.

You can do a much more thorough edit by again selecting all instances of a paragraph style.

But instead of changing the style through the tool-bar buttons, you can display the Modify Style dialog box by selecting "Modify" from the drop-down list of the paragraph style listed in the Styles and Formatting pane.

Every change you make in that dialog box will be reflected instantly in every instance of that paragraph style.

CAUTION: If you select the "Add to template" check box and then click OK, you'll make the changes a permanent part of your style sheet.

Web Sites with Pure CSS and Zero Tables

A great majority of web sites out there are still using TABLES to present content, even if the content has nothing to do with tabulated data.

Yet there are also a growing number of great web sites that contain zero tables. They are built by pure CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Here are three of them: Blogger, Microsoft, and CNN.

The screen shots below display the DIV tags used by these sites. As you can see, there's no end to the complex layouts you can achieve with CSS:

(Click the images to enjoy a larger view.)

Firefox 3.0 Lets You View and Remove Cookies

Do you know what kind of cookies the web site you're visiting is placing on your machine?

Now you can easily see and (if you wish) remove those cookies thanks to Firefox 3.0's great cookie editor.

1) When you visit a web site, click on the favicon displayed to the left of the URL:



2) Firefox will display the following dialog box:



3) Click the More Information button to display the following information dialog box:



4) Click the View Cookies button to see the cookies placed on your computer by this web site:



5) Select and click Remove Cookie to delete any cookie you like.

MS Word - How To Import Text And Images From Another Document Or Web Site Without Copy And Paste?

MS Word has a very powerful functionality hidden under its hood.

You can import text and images from any other document or web site into your current document without copying and pasting anything.

You can import external content into the body section of your document, as well as into your headers and footers.

NOTE: Whatever you import into headers and footers will be repeated automatically on every page.

WARNING 1: if you are importing from the Internet, make sure you are not trying to import the whole content of a mega web site like Amazon.com since that will certainly crash your system. Do not type the URL of the Index page of big web site since MS Word will attempt to download everything on that site! You have to be careful not to bite too much.

WARNING 2: you should also not import any copyrighted materials from the Internet unless you have the written permission of the site owner, or the material is clearly marked as "Public Domain" content, like the images you can find on Wikipedia. Downloading copyrighted materials for your own use is a violation of the copyright law.

A good practice is to import a single image that sits on its own page and can be reached through a specific URL.

This is how you do it:

1) Place your cursor where you want the new text or image to appear.

2) Then select Insert > Field from your main menu.

3) Select "Include Image" or "Include Text" field from the list-box.

4) In the "Filename or URL" field, type in the address of the file on your hard drive, or the web site URL.

If the text document you want to import is in the same local folder as your current document, then all you need to type in is the full name of that file.

For example, if you are trying to import the content of a local file named "File1.doc", then all you need to do is type "File1.doc" into the "Filename or URL" field.

Let's say, however, that your current document is saved in the My Documents folder but you are trying to import content from a file named "sample.doc" saved on the C drive, then this is what you would type:

C:\sample.doc

5) Click OK and the content you want will appear in your document.

MS Word Bookmarks for Global Corrections and "Running Headers or Footers"

Imagine you have a 200 page MS Word document with repeating text elements like an address, a name, or a date which repeated over and over throughout the document.

And imagine, after finishing the document, or when it's time to update it, your boss tells you to change the name from "John" to "Bob."

One way to do it of course is to use a global Find and Replace.

But what if you'd like to replace only some of the "John"s to "Bob"? Are you going to check them one by one? Or what if you want to do it automatically without the need to remember to do a Find and Replace?

It's easy. You first mark the source text with a bookmark.

1) Select the text.

2) Select Insert > Bookmark from the main menu.

3) Enter a Bookmark Name (no spaces) and click Add. To see your bookmark on the screen, select Tools > Options > View Tab. Check the "Show Bookmarks" check-box.

The next step -- for all the other instances of this text, enter a REF (Reference) FIELD that points to the BOOKMARK of your reference TEXT.

1) Place your cursor where you want the next instance of the source text to appear.

2) Select Insert > Field from the main menu to display the Field dialog box.

3) Find the REF field in the "Field Names" scroll-down list box.

4) Select REF and then select your BOOKMARK in the "Bookmark Name" list box in the middle.

5) Click OK and your text will be inserted with a gray background screen (which will not be printed), denoting that this is not normal text but a variable field.

Now, every time you make a change to your original text, all other instances will also be changed automatically AFTER you do the following:

1) Select the whole document by selecting Edit > Select All from the main menu, or pressing Ctrl + A.

2) Press the F9 key and BINGO! You've got all instances of your text updated automatically.

P.S. Be careful not to delete the bookmark markers when you are editing your original text. That's why it is important to work by displaying your bookmark markers.

Creating RUNNING HEADERS and FOOTERS

Another great use of Bookmarkers and the REF field variable is in the Headers and Footers.

Imagine you'd like to include the Document Title (not the File Name but the actual name of the document printed on the front cover of the document) or a section title either in the header or the footer. This is also called a "running" header or footer since the header/footer on a page changes depending on selected section headings or titles like the way, for example, you'd see on any phone directory or dictionary page.

Adobe FrameMaker takes care of this much more elegantly by allowing you to assign one or more variables to your header or footer, variables that are fully customizable and indexed to your paragraph tags, so that you can actually have multiple levels of running headers and footers displaying on your pages.

Although MS Word does not provide the same easy functionality to key the headers/footers to paragraph styles, it still can be done by inserting bookmarks and REF variables.

This is how you do it:

Assign a bookmark to the title (or any other source text of your choice) and then insert its corresponding REF field variable into the header or the footer. After updating the text, go back to your header or the footer editing mode (View > Header and Footer) and press F9. All your headers or footers (within that given section) will be updated as well.

NOTE: There is a formatting problem with updating the headers and footers this way since MS Word has the tendency to insert the source text with its original formatting.

If, for example, you are referencing a 24 point document title in your header, your headers will look huge. You can of course select the header text manually and re-format it to a smaller size.

If the next time you update the source text, the length of the updated text is equal to or smaller than the original text, then the header/footer preserves its latest formatting properties.

If, however, your new updated text is LONGER than the previous one, then for only that part of the text which is longer, MS Word switches the formatting back to the original source text format.

For example, if your original document title is composed of two words, "Word Tricks," and your updated document title is either "Word Techniques" or just "Word," then the headers and footers are updated (after going into the header/footer editing mode) nicely by preserving your latest formatting corrections.

However, if your new title is "Word Tricks Explained," then the last extra word "Explained" is displayed in the headers/footers with the original formatting of your document title, creating a lop-sided and aesthetically unpleasant header/footer. In those cases you need to go back to your header/footer and reformat the extra new word(s) as well to match the rest of your header/footer. This is a bug that I hope Microsoft will take care of in the future.

MS Word - How To Remove Hidden Personal Information From Your Text Documents

Did you know that MS Word records a lot of information about you, and even about your computer and the network you're working on, and then saves them with the text document you are creating?

If you are using MS Word as your main word processor, you may be providing a lot more personal information to your readers than you intended to.

Some of the information you inadvertently provide can be not only just "unfortunate" or "undesirable" but it could have legal consequences as well if it's a Word document, let's say, provided to the opposing counsel in a court setting.

It is strongly advisable to clean your MS Word documents from all such personal information, unless you really want to include them for one specific reason or another.

CAUTION: According to Microsoft, MS Word stores a wide variety of personal information with a document including the following:

• Your name

• Your initials

• Your company or organization name

• The name of your computer

• The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document

• Other file properties and summary information

• Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects

• Document revisions

• Document versions

• Template information

• Hidden text

• Comments

And there is no method to remove all such information in a single move. Moreover, different versions of MS Word have slightly different ways of removal.

However, here is a basic way to make sure your personal information will not be saved with the File Properties fields of your document:

Select Tools > Options from your main menu.

Select the Security tab.

Select "Remove personal information from file properties on save" check box and click OK.

FrameMaker versus Word

By Shweta Katdare

Introduction

The most important skills for a technical writer are writing, editing, and design. However, these skills are not enough to make you a successful technical writer. You also need to learn how to use authoring tools.

The most widely used publishing tools are:

• FrameMaker
• Microsoft Word

FrameMaker

FrameMaker is a desktop publishing and a help authoring application created by Adobe Systems. It is used by technical writers as a publication tool for creating large documents. Its latest version is 7.2.

Advantages of FrameMaker:

• Useful for writing large and complex documents.
• Creating a PDF is easy and the user can create bookmarks, links, and other PDF features.
• Easier to change the layout of a document using Master pages. A master page is created whenever the user creates a new document. It is used to decide the layout of the document.
• Text in tables can be rotated.
• Can print a rotated page with normal headers and footers, which means that the text can be in Landscape mode whereas the headers and footers are in Portrait mode.
• Has good color options. They include CMYK and Pantone.
• It can handle a lot of graphics.
• Has a number of cross-book features. One of them is to search and spell-check the whole book. This feature is useful for dealing with large books.
• Has good flexibility in numbering options. It has built-in variables for chapter and volume numbering. It can also handle long numbered lists without any errors.
• Allows you to set up numbering for steps or procedures.
• Cross-referencing can be added easily. You can also define formats for your cross-references.
• Can customize and save table formats.
• Character and paragraph formats selection lists are displayed as windows. They can be moved on the screen as convenient.
• FrameMaker supports conditional text.
• Easier to create single source documentation set in FrameMaker. Single sourcing allows you to use the same content in many documents. For example, if your user guide and admin guide have some common topics, it is easier to share them rather than maintaining separate copies.
• Has Webworks Publisher, which is a powerful tool used to produce HTML, XML, or RTF output.

Disadvantages of FrameMaker:

• Has a steep learning curve for Word users.
• FrameMaker for Windows does not have macros.
• Undo is limited to one action.
• Cannot right-click and paste selected text. You have to use the keyboard commands or use the Edit menu for it.
• Has an unpredictable spell-checker.
• Drag-and-drop feature is not present in FrameMaker.
• Does not have grammar checker.
• Inserting graphics is a very awkward. You first need to create an anchored frame, insert the graphic, and then manually resize it.
• Find command does not stop when it reaches the end of the document. It keeps on continuing.
• Have to manually format table columns.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is word processing software used to create documents. It is a powerful tool to create professional looking documents.

Advantages of Microsoft Word:

• Many help authoring tools are available such as RoboHelp. Help authoring tools (HAT) are used to create online help manuals and are used by technical writers. They get the source text from programs like HTML and Word and generate output in formats like Microsoft WinHelp or Adobe PDF.
• Has a good spell-checker features like on-the-fly spell checking, removing the spell-check dialog box out of the way when it selects text, and informing the user when it reaches the end of the document.
• Can use track changes to review documents.
• Has a good grammar checker.
• Has the ability to "undo" many times.
• Has macros, which can automate repetitive actions.
• Can open two parts of a document in one window using Word.

Disadvantages of Microsoft Word:

• Not stable for large documents. It gets slow while handling large volumes.
• Difficult to have a single-source documentation set.
• Does not run on Unix.
• Does not handle multi-document features like headers, footers, indexes, table of contents, cross-references, etc very well.

Conclusion

FrameMaker is best suited for large documents or documents with a lot of files, such as books and user manuals. Word is better for smaller documents like reports, newsletters, writing letters, and memos. However, Word is much easier to use and has many advanced features.

Most of the features of FrameMaker can be implemented in Word, but FrameMaker manages large documents better and also has good cross-referencing and multiple file support.

Both Adobe FrameMaker and Microsoft Word are powerful, professional authoring tools. Both have strengths and weaknesses. To decide which is best for you, look closely at the type of document you need to write.

Shweta Katdare is a writer with 24 by 5 Tech Comm, a technical writing company that specializes in fast, high-quality writing and editing. For more articles on writing, technology and business, sign up for the 24 by 5 Tech Comm Newsletter at www.24by5.com.

How to Attach Graphics to the Headers of a FrameMaker Document?

Imagine you’d like to have the sweet image of a finch accompanying every section header in your FrameMaker document that has something to do with “Birds.”

For example, let's say you want the readers to see the image of a finch right before every header that reads something like “Birds of North America,” “Migration Routes of Birds,” etc.

First of all, create the image and save it on your computer.

Then do the following in your FrameMaker document:

Select View > Reference Pages to display your reference page. The chances are you are looking at the default images of Footnote, TableFootnote, Single Line and Double Line. This is where we will add our image.

Select Graphics > Tools and display your tool bar.

Click and select the “Place a Graphic Frame” tool in the middle. Your cursor will transform into a Plus Sign.

On the Reference Page, drag and draw a graphic frame appropriate for the size of your graphic file. FrameMaker automatically displays the Frame Name dialog box.

Enter a short but distinct frame name. If you enter names that are similar to each other this will create a problem later on when it is time to select that graphic and to attach it to your header paragraph style.

Select File > Import > File to import your previously saved icon/image.

Browse and find the image file. Click the “Import by Reference” radio-button if the image size is too large and at the end you’ll save the whole document as PDF before distributing it. Otherwise you will need to distribute the image together with your FrameMaker file. If the image is small, you can select the “Copy into Document” radio-button as well.

Click the Import button to import the image into the graphic frame. And you are half done.

Save and go back to your main document by selecting View > Body Pages.

Now, open your Paragraph Designer (Ctrl+M). Find the Header Style to which you want to attach the image.

Select the Advanced Tab. You’ll see that, at the bottom, there are two drop-down menus: “Frame Above Pgf:” and “Below Pgf:” Select the former if you’d like your image to appear ABOVE the header paragraph, and the latter for BELOW.

If you click and view the drop-down list for either option you’ll see the name of the image you’ve saved in the Reference Page listed there.

Click and select the name of the image and you’re done! Save the paragraph style.

Now the image will be placed either above or below your header (depending on your previous choice), and it will always be so every time you use that paragraph style, giving you a very consistent looking document.

TIP: if the alignment of your image is not perfect, then go back to your Reference Page and play around with the dimensions of the graphic frame of the image, and the image’s alignment WITHIN the frame itself (click and select the image and then move it around inside the frame by clicking one of the four positioning buttons on the main toolbar, on top of the FrameMaker screen).

I find that most of the time perfect positioning of most FrameMaker images require some minor visual trial and error until they look right.

How to Set Up a FrameMaker Template?

A FrameMaker template consists of a set of Master Pages.

Select File > New > Document from the top menu.

Select Portrait and create a new document.

Select View > Master Pages to switch to the master page editing screen.

The default FrameMaker document comes with a single master page named RIGHT (check the status bar at the bottom of your screen), complete with a default HEADER and a default FOOTER. In between is the default TEXT FRAME.

To modify the dimensions of the text frame, select Graphics > Tools to reveal the TOOLBOX. Select the arrow on the TOP RIGHT square, the SELECT OBJECT tool.

Click on and select the text frame. Six handles will appear on the dotted-line borders of the text frame.

Select Graphics > Object Properties.

In the dialog box, enter the WIDTH and HEIGHT of the text frame, its distance from TOP and LEFT of the page, the NUMBER OF COLUMNS you need on the page, and whether you need a ROOM FOR SIDE HEAD for your sidebar (check the check-box and then enter the WIDTH of the sidebar and the SIDE it should be on).

You are basically done. If you need a certain text to appear on the HEADER or FOOTER of every page, enter those as well.

To enter a page number, place your cursor where you want the page number to appear and then select Format > Headers & Footers > Insert Page #.

If you want a “Page X of Y” type of page number designation, do the above, enter a single space, and then select Format > Headers & Footers > Insert Page Count.

To clone a LEFT master page from your RIGHT page, select Format > Page Layout > New Master Page.

In the dialog box, give it the name LEFT, and leave the radio-button “Create from Master Page Right” as is, selected.

Click Add and voila! You have a new LEFT master page looking just like your RIGHT page.

So what’s the point?

Now you can change the positioning of the HEADER and FOOTER elements, for example, so that page numbers and Chapter headings can appear away from the “gutter” and towards the open ends of the pages.

I usually also clone one more master page from the RIGHT -- the FIRST page since the first pages of all chapters always look a little different.

Once you have your three basic master pages, your rudimentary chapter template is done.

Save and return to your body pages by selecting View > Body Pages.

How to Use the "Pending" Marker in FrameMaker?

FrameMaker (FM) is such a wonderful software to write long and complicated books and documents. In my 20-plus years of experience as a writer, nothing comes close.

FM has a very powerful built-in marker functionality with which you can mark not only your index words and cross-references, but your “pending stuff” as well.

Let’s say you have these paragraphs in your document that you do not quite know how to edit because certain information is missing. So you would like to mark those section as “pending” and come back and revisit them later on when the missing information is supplied.

If your document is only 10 pages long, obviously it would not be much of a hassle to remember which sections are “pending.”

But how are you going to keep track of the missing items if you have 100 or 200 “pending items” in a 1,000 page user’s guide?

With FM it is very easy. Just simply select the pending sections or click your cursor where you want to enter the marker.

Then, select Special > Marker from the main menu to display the Marker dialog box.

Select the Pending option from the Marker Type drop-down menu.

Type in anything you like for the “Marker Text” as a reminder. Or, if you've selected the whole pending section previously, the selected text will automatically populate the Marker Text field.

Click the New Marker button, and you are done.

To see all your pending markers in a neat list, select Special > List of > Markers from the main menu to display the standalone list warning message. Click Yes to display the Set Up List of Markers dialog box.

Select Pending from the “Don’t Include” list on the RIGHT and click the left arrow to transfer it to the “Include Markets of Type” list on the LEFT.

Click the Set button to create a standalone list and all your pending markers will be listed for you.

To jump directly to a certain marker’s location. Press Alt + Ctrl. Your cursor will transform into a pointing finger. Click and FM will automatically take you to the exact location of the marker.

Once you edit the pending item, you can delete the pending marker.

Display Conditional Text In FrameMaker By Using a Single Text Block

You want to display different versions of the same text in a FrameMaker technical document.

You'd like to toggle different versions on and off.

There is one condition however: you do not want to use multiple copies of the same text block (with perhaps different paragraph tags assigned to them) for fear of messing up the formatting of your pages.

How would you do it?

It's simple, but you need to watch out for the simple tricks explained in this article.

For example, let's take this hypothetical case: how to display the same text in different colors without changing its paragraph tag?

1. Create as many Conditional Text conditions as you like. Let's say; Blue and Red, turning the selected texts into blue and red, respectively.

2. Select your text and apply ALL the conditions to the same text. The resultant color may be something like Pink. That's okay.

3. Do this to all your target texts (or apply the copy-and-paste trick explained at the bottom of this page). Now you can de-select everything. Your main document does not need to be selected at all in order to turn on and off different colors as explained below.

4. Click the Show/Hide button in the Conditional Text dialog box to display the Show/Hide Conditional text dialog box.

5. Move into the Show list-box the condition that you want to make active. Click Set to turn the color of all previously "conditioned" set of texts to your selected color.

6. IMPORTANT: To shift to another color, you first have to move ALL conditions back to the Hide list-box. This will cause all text to disappear momentarily.

7. Move into the Show list-box the NEW condition that'd like to be active. Click Set to turn the color of all previously "conditioned" set of texts to the NEW color.

COPY and PASTE TRICK: You can copy and paste the "conditioned" text as long as you also copy and paste the PARAGRAPH MARK at the end of the text. The conditioning information is embedded not in the text itself but the paragraph mark that follows it (just like in MS Word).

That way you can assign multiple conditions to only one block of text; copy and paste it with its paragraph mark; and then type over the pasted and "conditioned" piece of text any new content you want.

Paul Schrader on Writing

"You’re a real writer if you write every day. I’ve written two screenplays this year, but for three years earlier, I didn’t write any screenplays at all."

"The weakest writing in America today is in the movies, the best writing is on TV, in series like The Sopranos. That’s because scripts for TV are about human beings and human behavior, not a journey to the center of the earth. Movies have become less and less about good writing and more and more about spectacle, so the importance of the screenwriter has declined. The most spirited dialogs in spectacle films are lines like: “Look, it’s coming” or “Run, run, run.” When I started out in the film business about 30 years ago, there was a crisis of content. Now there is a crisis of form, with films on DTH, internet downloads, and so on. But as screen sizes become small — TV, cable, computers, mobile phones — spectacle will become less important, and the importance of the screenwriter will be re-established."

~ Paul Schrader, screenwriter (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ)

Source: http://www.tehelka.com

How to Create Cross References in FrameMaker?

FrameMaker has a very powerful cross referencing (linking) functionality. You can easily refer to another section or element in your book by a hyper-link that will be alive when you save your document as a PDF file.

The linked cross references are updated automatically when you edit your document or book and select Edit > Update References.

Here is how you can create FrameMaker cross references easily:

Enter your cursor to where you want your cross reference to be.

Then select Special > Cross Reference (or use the very useful Esc+S+C hotkey shortcut).

In the Cross-Reference dialog box, make sure PARAGRAPH is selected for Source Type.

Select a PARAGRAPH STYLE in the PARAGRAPH TAG window. All text for the document (the NAME of which is displayed in the DOCUMENT field on top) tagged with that paragraph style will be listed in the PARAGRAPHS text box on the right.

Select the text on the right window TO WHICH you’d like to create a cross reference from your cursor position.

Then select a REFERENCE FORMAT from the drop-down list at the bottom.

Click the INSERT button and you are done. The cross reference is inserted to where your cursor is.

Now you have an accurate and great looking cross reference which will be updated every time you edit your chapter or book.

How to Create Sidebar Icons in FrameMaker?

Sidebar icons are cool. They not only look great aesthetically but they also perform a great function by emphasizing the important points in the text and making sure that the reader does not miss them.

I, for example, always use the image of an “exclamation mark inside a triangle” or a “lightning inside a triangle” to the left of any WARNING or CAUTION text. If a hardware user can get an electric shock for missing such an important tip, then I feel it’s my duty as a writer to use strong graphics to alert him/her to the fact.

THE MAIN TRICK is - you need to create a special Paragraph Style (also known as a “Paragraph Tag”) for your sidebar image.

Fire up your Paragraph Designer by selecting Format > Paragraphs > Designer (or entering the very useful Ctrl + M hotkey shortcut) to display the paragraph designer.

Click the Commands button at the bottom to display the popup menu. Select New Format to display the New Format dialog box. Enter a Name for your new style, let’s say, “SideIcon”. Select the “Store in Catalog” check-box because you want this style to be available to you straight from your Paragraph Style list. You do not need to select the other check box “Apply to Selection” since you are creating the style from scratch.

Click Create and the style will be created.

Click the Pagination tab.

Select the “Sidebar Alignment” radio-button. Experiment with the existing alignment options available through the accompanying drop-down list to see which works better to align your icon with the first line of the text. I usually select the default “First baseline.”

Click the Basic Font tab. If you get a Apply Changes prompt, click the “Apply Changes” button.

For default font size, select or enter the SMALLEST possible font size. And you’re done!

Now, place your cursor to the very beginning of your text. Then hit ENTER once and create a new paragraph. (You should always have your Text Symbols on when working in FrameMaker. Select View > Text Symbols, or hit Esc+V+T.)

It is IMPORTANT that you place your cursor to the paragraph symbol you’ve just created on TOP of your existing text. The reason is simple: if you apply your SideIcon style to the existing text, the whole warning or caution text itself will become a sidebar icon! You don’t want that. You want the icon and the first line of the text lined up neatly side-by-side.

After your cursor is in the right spot, click the SideIcon style in the Paragraph Style Catalog (Format >Characters > Catalog).

The new paragraph mark you’ve created will immediately jump to the sidebar, waiting for you to insert your icon.

Select File > Import > File, browse to the image/icon, and click Insert, and you are done.

Congrats!

If the image is not lined up nicely with the first line of the text you can always adjust it by experimenting with the following variables of the SideIcon style inside the Paragraph Designer: font size (in Default Font tab); side head alignment style (in Pagination Tab).

Another thing you can do is go to Special > Anchored Frame dialog box and experiment with the different values in then ANCHORING POSITION drop-down list.

FrameMaker Markers Ease the Pain of Big Tech Book Projects

Those technical writers who have written manuals running hundreds and even thousands of pages know the difficulty of keeping various kinds of markers under control.

But if you are an Adobe FrameMaker user, you are lucky because FM provides you with many ways to mark a document.

Open your document and press Esc+S+M to display that life-saving Marker dialog box. (Or select Special > Marker from the main menu.)

When you click the drop-down menu you’ll be presented with an astonishing variety of ways to mark your document: Author, CloseAnchor, Comment, Conditional Text, ContextString, Cross-Ref, Equation, Glossary, Header/Footer $1, Header/Footer $2, HTML Macro, Hypertext, Index, OpenAnchor, Subject, etc.

And if you select the “Edit…” option you can Add a new custom marker of your own or Change or Delete an existing marker. It’s not going to get any more flexible than that.

In this article I’ll show you how to use the Comment marker.

"Comment" Marker

Comment is basically what it exactly sounds like – if you’d like to drop a note for yourself anywhere in the document, like “do not forget to insert Graph A right after this paragraph” do the following:

1) Place your cursor where you want to insert your comment.

2) Press Esc+S+M to display the Marker dialog box.

3) Select Comment from the drop-down list.

4) Enter your comment in the Marker Text text box.

5) Click New Marker, and you are done!

6) To see a list of all your Comments, select Special > List Of > markers to display the Set Up List of Markers dialog box.

7) Select the Comment marker type from the right list box and click the left arrow to transfer it into the “Include Markers of Type” list box on the left.

8) Check the “Create Hypertext links” check-box (a recommended practice).

9) Then click the Set button and you’ll have all your Comment type of markers listed in a separate window for you.

To go to any specific Comment marker, place your cursor on the page number of the listed comment and press Ctrl and Alt buttons (on a PC) simultaneously. Your cursor will transform into a pointing finger. Click and you’ll automatically be taken to that specific comment even if it is on page 10,000. To delete the comment, hit the Delete button immediately after you hyperlink to the comment from your Comments List.

This is how you can make all kinds of notes to yourself as you are working on a long document, without worrying about forgetting anything. Before finishing the document, you can generate a list of all such comments and take care of them one by one.

Good luck!

How to Hide FrameMaker Page Number Cross-References by Conditional Text

If you have a document that will be printed hardcopy (or distributed as PDF) as well as used as a help file, the hyperlinked page number cross-references usually create a problem since page numbers do not make sense in a help file and should not be there.

So what are you going to do? Create two different versions of the same document, one with and the other without page number references? Of course not.

With FrameMaker, you can have your cake and eat it too by creating a single source document with conditional text.

When you hide the conditional text (for the help file), the page number references would be hidden too. And when you turn them on (for generating a PDF copy or regular printed hardcopy), you'll have your page references back on displaying again.

The trick is to split your hyperlinked cross-references into two parts and assign different cross-reference formats to them.

For example, consider the cross-reference "See Chapter 15, Troubleshooting on page 235."

You want this reference to show as is in the hardcopy print edition since the readers can actually flip to that page (or click to that page if it is saved as PDF).

But in a help file, you want the same reference show up only as "See Chapter 15, Troubleshooting."

Here is how you do it:

1) You select "See Chapter 15, Troubleshooting" and press Esc+S+C (or select Special > Cross Reference from the main menu) to display your cross-reference designer.

2) Assign a "Heading only" cross-reference style to the selected text, a style that does not include any page number.

3) Click the Replace button to assign the style to the selected text.

4) Then do the same with the text " on page 235" – including the space just before "o". In your cross-reference designer, assign a "Page only" style to the page number text.

5) While the page number text is still selected, display your conditional text dialog box by selecting Special > Conditional Text from your main menu. Make sure the "Conditional" radio-button is selected because you will make this text conditional.

6) Either select one of the "Not In" tags and click the left arrow to transfer it into the "In" box… or, click the Edit Condition Tag button and create your own tag, named something like "HidePageNum". Then make sure you again select this new tag and transfer it into the "In" box.

7) To toggle the page number text on and off, click the Show/Hide button. In the "Show/Hide Conditional text" dialog box, select your tag and move it into the "Show" box to show it and "Hide" box to hide it. When you press the Set button, the FrameMaker will either show or hide your conditional text, depending on your choice.

8) Repeat the same for all the text in your document that you'd like to hide first before compiling a help file.

If you use the same conditional text tag for all the text that you want to hide, at compilation time all you need to do is hide a single tag and FrameMaker will automatically hide all the text tagged with that same label as a conditional text. It's as simple as that.

This is a very convenient way to turn on and off hundreds and thousands of different text strings in a long document by just a single command. It is worth practicing it until you get it right because it will save you untold hours of work in the future when you are struggling against the deadline to compile a neat looking help file from your main document.

Enjoy and good luck!