"Coordinated Forms" in Word 2008 - how to? No documentation.

[Michael Jardine]

I just discovered the "Coordinated Forms" folder in Word 2008. I clicked on
a business card template and it create and entire page of cards, using my
name and address. Pretty cool.

However

Is there a way to edit what appears in each of the fields?
Is there a way to edit the location of each field in the card?
Is there a way to change the graphics that appear on a card?

....all of the above but to make those changes be reflected in the other 19
cards that appear on the page?

Incidentally, there are NO help files that mention ANYTHING about
"Coordinated Forms," either in Word, or on the mactopia site, or in the land
of Google. Some basic documentation would be nice, otherwise this feature -
which obviously someone in the MacBU spent a lot of time on - will go
completely unused.

Regards
Michael Jardined

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

I wish you would send your comments to Microsoft. This is the kind of thing
they need to hear. Use Help>Send Feedback to send it in (Microsoft is not
looking in here, so they will not see your comments).

A big problem with Office 2008 is that they ran out of people and time to
finish it, so many things are in a half-finished state. This applies
particularly to the Help, and to the templates.

To answer your questions: "Yes" there is a way. However, that method has
not been documented yet. And some of the tools you would need do not exist
in the Mac version of Word yet.

If you have access to PC Word 2007 this project becomes easier, and if you
have a copy of Visual Studio Team Office for the PC, then it is
straight-forward to do this. But in Mac Word, it's going to be a bit of a
fight.

The co-ordinated forms are an expression of the use of Themes. And you
won't find them in the Help yet, either.

You can make your own Themes, and it is easiest to do this in PowerPoint.

If you then apply a consistent set of styles to each document in your forms
set, the colours will all swing in line with the Themes.

Within the documents, you can move the elements around as you wish: they are
just documents. The text that is placed is controlled by the fields in the
documents: use Preferences>View>Field codes to see the fields involved.

Note: This can be a lengthy learning curved, particularly if you are not
familiar with coding fields.

I suggest that you get as far as having created a colour scheme for yourself
as a Theme, then come back and we'll talk you the rest of the way through
the game.

Cheers

However

Is there a way to edit what appears in each of the fields?
Is there a way to edit the location of each field in the card?
Is there a way to change the graphics that appear on a card?

...all of the above but to make those changes be reflected in the other 19

cards that appear on the page?

Incidentally, there are NO help files that mention ANYTHING about
"Coordinated Forms," either in Word, or on the mactopia site, or in the land
of Google. Some basic documentation would be nice, otherwise this feature -
which obviously someone in the MacBU spent a lot of time on - will go
completely unused.

Regards
Michael Jardined

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Michael -

Not as lamentable as John's reply, but that curmudgeon is hard to please in
the first place... Make that "impossible" See below for some preliminary
findings - I haven't played with it much:

I just discovered the "Coordinated Forms" folder in Word 2008. I clicked on
a business card template and it create and entire page of cards, using my
name and address. Pretty cool.

However

Is there a way to edit what appears in each of the fields?

By & Large it's a 'click 'n' type' proposition. The cards are populated with
placeholders so you can enter/change content initially. Once you do the
content becomes regular text.

Is there a way to edit the location of each field in the card?

That's a bit tougher. Each card is like a mini-document so you still have
the same issue with regard to the content being a part of the flow. Key
Option+F9 so you can see the fields & you can play around with it.

Is there a way to change the graphics that appear on a card?

Sure - Control/Right-Click the graphic & select Change Picture or deal with
it just like a graphic in any other document.

...all of the above but to make those changes be reflected in the other 19
cards that appear on the page?

That's the real disappointment:-( Each card has to be edited individually,
although Copy/Paste may provide all you need.

Incidentally, there are NO help files that mention ANYTHING about
"Coordinated Forms," either in Word, or on the mactopia site, or in the land
of Google. Some basic documentation would be nice, otherwise this feature -
which obviously someone in the MacBU spent a lot of time on - will go
completely unused.

No argument here - as John noted, the Help throughout Office 2008 leaves
much to be desired. The good news is that there is a dedicated team working
on it quite diligently so you will see ongoing improvement.

Regards
Michael Jardined

Please do as John suggested & relay your comments via Help> Send Feedback.
Your positive attitude will have a corresponding effect, I'm sure.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Michael Jardine]

Thanks, you two. I do have Office 2007 which I run on Parallels. Truth
being, and I don't want to turn this into a rant (although I looks like I
just did), I'm switching to Apple Pages for the simple reason that I cannot
even create a basic letter-style document in Word2008. The line at the end
of a paragraph mysteriously disappears, then re-appears crunched together
with the previous line, etc.

Regarding the solution, I'm quite familiar with Powerpoint and will create a
color theme there. In the meantime, I have to design these business cards
today so they can be printed in time for Apple's WWDC which starts next
weekend. Anyone going to be there?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

Well, feel free to get back to us when you want to learn to solve this.

Sounds like you may have applied a style you did not intend to that
paragraph. Give us a bit more detail and we can help you through this.

Cheers

Thanks, you two. I do have Office 2007 which I run on Parallels. Truth
being, and I don't want to turn this into a rant (although I looks like I
just did), I'm switching to Apple Pages for the simple reason that I cannot
even create a basic letter-style document in Word2008. The line at the end
of a paragraph mysteriously disappears, then re-appears crunched together
with the previous line, etc.

Regarding the solution, I'm quite familiar with Powerpoint and will create a
color theme there. In the meantime, I have to design these business cards
today so they can be printed in time for Apple's WWDC which starts next
weekend. Anyone going to be there?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Michael Jardine]

Alas, I am not referring to any one paragraph but to each and every document
that I create in Word. I have tried the usual uninstall/re-install. Some
people have suggested that it has something to do with my graphics card. As
of now, there is no solution for me. I believe it's not possible to attach
images to these emails so I am including links to a few screen shots that
show what I am talking about.

If you have any suggestions, I am all ears

http://www.almostanalog.com/x1.png
http://www.almostanalog.com/x2.png
http://www.almostanalog.com/x3.png
http://www.almostanalog.com/x4.png

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

Yeah, OK, thanks for the screen shots. This is a really interesting one

I need to be able to see the paragraph marks, text boundaries, and
non-printing characters in order to be able to see what is happening.

Would you please email me a copy of a document that is doing this, I need to
have a look at the code.

Now: You have not specified the hardware and software information. Without
that, we can't go any further. I need processor type, memory, OS version,
level, and patch (e.g. OS X.5.3) and the Word version (e.g. Word 12.1.0).
Ideally, run the System Profiler, switch its View to Full, and send me the
file you get when you Save As. XML format is best.

If it WERE the graphics card, changing the screen resolution or colour depth
downwards would change or remove the problem. And everyone with that
graphics card would have the problem, and they don't. It's easy to get
sucked in by the bleating that goes on in support forums and start thinking
that the whole world has your problem, when in fact the problem is confined
to a tiny but very vocal minority. In your case, yours is the ONLY report
of this problem we have from more than a million installs.

Please try changing the colour depth and/or screen resolution, and tell me
what happens.

I am sure you already know that re-installing never does anything on a Mac,
because the installer does not replace files that already exist. You have
to run the Remove Office tool, and then manually take out all the remaining
preferences, to make a difference to this kind of thing; because the thing
that gets damaged is normally the preference files.

Mac OS X has a depressing track record of corrupting preferences

I'll wait on your file.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Brent Lang]

Looks like a redraw problem. I'm guessing this isn't visible just on opening the document. In what views do you see this (e.g. the default Print Layout, Draft, Web)? Is scrolling involved? Any steps you can give starting from an empty document might help. I'm also guessing that toggling "Show all nonprinting characters" will at least make it look fine until you do something else again; is that true?

 

[Michael Jardine]

It shows up in all views, in all documents, at all resolutions. I use a
Macbook Pro with 1440x900 resolution but also have external monitors at
1680x1050 and 1920x1200. My current workaround is to toggle back and forth
between Draft View and Print Layout View. That redraw allows me to see the
document correctly. However, as soon as I either move the cursor to do an
edit, it all goes haywire again.

As I said, it occurs in every document I have ever opened in Word2008. It
only occurs in Word2008, not in any other program including the beta of
Word. I have updated to SP1 and OSX 10.5.3, also to no avail.

 

[Michael Jardine]

How do I remove the remaining preferences after doing a full Remove Office?
Thanks, Michael

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

They're scattered all over the place like a mad person's breakfast...

Try this:

1) Quit all Microsoft applications.

2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and has
no extension.

3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/

4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)

User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.* (basically, take out anything with
Microsoft in its name)

User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)

5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.

Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a
new, clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.

Cheers

How do I remove the remaining preferences after doing a full Remove Office?
Thanks, Michael

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Michael Jardine]

John,

This seems to have worked without having to do a Remove and Install. I
don't want to "jinx the dirt," but if you don't hear back from me, you know
the saying... No news...

Regards,
Michael

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

It "should" work without a Remove, provided the problem is not with the
executables.

If the problem is a bad or missed update, then you must also do the Remove.

Cheers

John,

This seems to have worked without having to do a Remove and Install. I
don't want to "jinx the dirt," but if you don't hear back from me, you know
the saying... No news...

Regards,
Michael

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]