acronyms in fields in headers in Word 2003 documents

[Spencer]

A chain of specific actions in Word makes for a WEIRD glitch in some of my
documents. There's a workaround, but it's an annoying inconsistency.

Frequently, the title of a document includes the acronym for my company's
name ("BMC"). I want the title to appear on the title page, and in the
header on every page of the body.

I have a template that has a separate section for the title page, with a
Title field centered on the page. A later section also has a Title field in
the header.

After creating a new document from the template, you update the Title
property in File->Properties, then right-click on the field on the title page
and "update field". then repeat for the header.

I've created dictionary and AutoCorrect entries to ensure that "bmc" or any
capitalization variant is rendered as BMC.

Now here's the weird part.

In the Title field on the title page, Word renders "BMC" as "BMC", even if I
use TitleCase format. But if I use TitleCase for the title field in the
header, Word renders it as "Bmc". You can manually change it to BMC, save
the document, and reopen it and "BMC" will appear. But as soon as you try to
print, it changes "BMC" back to "Bmc".

The workaround is to use "no format" for the Title field in the header and
make sure the title property has correct Title Capitalization when you type
it into File->Properties. This may be undesirable for viewing properties in
other applications, but who's going to care about other applications after
all that?

The problem also doesn't happen if you don't use a field and type the title
as plain text. But then you have to type it correctly twice.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Hi Spencer

I think either you are misunderstanding Title Case or I am misunderstanding
your problem.

To me, Title Case is rather complex in the English language and Word hasn't
got it right. You can see a full definition in Wikipedia here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization

BMC is a title and you need it in AllCaps as you have defined in
AutoCorrect. But if you then assign Title Case properties in the Header
Style, there is a conflict which Word is not able to resolve consistently
because on one hand you have formatted it as Title Case (through Header
Style)but on the other hand you have made an AutoCorrect entry assigning BMC
as All Caps. Word must be assigning one or other at different times.

Most likely this is because the Headers and Footers in Word are not in the
same level as the main document. So on the Front Page, AutoCorrect correctly
makes BMC AllCaps. Where BMC appears in the Headers, AutoCorrect is ignoring
it, so the Title Case is correctly assigned. The solution, as you have
found, is to remove the conflict.

 

[Spencer]

(please pardon the snipping and rearrangements)

To me, Title Case is rather complex in the English language and Word hasn't
got it right. You can see a full definition in Wikipedia here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization

Well, English capitalization certainly isn't as complicated as Wikipedia
makes it out to be. But that's a discussion for the Wikipedia talk page.

Most likely this is because the Headers and Footers in Word are not in the
same level as the main document.

I suspected this, but the complicating factor is the use of a field. As I
said, if you just type in "BMC" as text, AutoCorrect takes care of it, and it
stays "BMC", even in the header. I'll make a wild guess that Microsoft used
separate code for the header (aurocorrect, then format field) versus the main
body of the document (format field, then autocorrect).

Spencer

 

[Terry Farrell]

That's correct. A field in the Header (or Footer) is ignored by actions such
as SelectAll followed by UpdateField (F9) which updates all the fields in
the document except in Headers and Footer (and Text Boxes) because they are
all in a different layer. There are ways to programmatically make F9 update
H&Fs too, but its knock-on effects make it not worth the effort.

Terry