Collapsable sections?

[JMM]

I'm running Word 2002 SP3 on Windows XP. I was wondering if it's possible to
create documents with collapsable sections. I would like to use Word to
track the status of various tasks by showing the task name, and the most
recent update below the name, with all previous updates collapsed. Using the
outline view in Word, I can (more or less) format the document as desired,
but once saved and re-opened, all outline sections are expanded by default.
The Word help menu employs collapsable sections very nicely; would be great
if Word let you use them in documents.

Thanks,
JMM

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?Sk1N?=,

I'm running Word 2002 SP3 on Windows XP. I was wondering if it's possible to
create documents with collapsable sections. I would like to use Word to
track the status of various tasks by showing the task name, and the most
recent update below the name, with all previous updates collapsed. Using the
outline view in Word, I can (more or less) format the document as desired,
but once saved and re-opened, all outline sections are expanded by default.
The Word help menu employs collapsable sections very nicely; would be great
if Word let you use them in documents.

The Help stuff is coded in XHMTL; Word is Word...

You can emulate this by creating a specific paragraph style for each section
(looks the same, just a different name). To "collapse" any section, set the
"Hidden" property to the font to True; to unhide, to False.

With a macro (or set of macros), you can speed this up. A possibility would be a
macrobutton field (display text = section heading, for example).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[JMM]

Cindy, thanks... I was hoping a basic formatting function like this would
have been achievable through menu commands, but it sounds a little more
complicated than that... I've never had occasion to use macros in Word, but
will take your advice and see what I can manage.

I am aware that the help menu is not a Word document itself; was just making
the point that Microsoft clearly found the collapsable section to be useful
and did a decent job of structuring their help menu using it; would have been
nice of them to include such functionality in Word so users could make
documents with it, as well. Maybe next release....

Thanks,
Jon Myers

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?Sk1N?=,

I was hoping a basic formatting function like this would
have been achievable through menu commands, but it sounds a little more
complicated than that... I've never had occasion to use macros in Word, but
will take your advice and see what I can manage.

The word.vba newsgroups are good places to get support. FWIW, this topic comes
up with some regularity, so a search in those groups (and their archives on
Google) might turn up something or other.

I am aware that the help menu is not a Word document itself; was just making
the point that Microsoft clearly found the collapsable section to be useful
and did a decent job of structuring their help menu using it; would have been
nice of them to include such functionality in Word so users could make
documents with it, as well. Maybe next release....

No, it won't be in the next release, either

What I was trying to express in my previous message is that this kind of
functionality is part of HTML - a viewing-oriented environment. Word is a
printing-oriented environment.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail