Hi Peter,
I haven't come across an add-in or a ribbon tab to hold the different Building Block galleries, but there is still a hierarchical
structure to them, it's just not necessarily as obvious in some of the galleries as most of them use a single dropdown list to
choose entries from by clicking on a preview.
Office 2007 Building Blocks are driven by the Office AutoText engine and managed through the Building Blocks Organizer.
There are 36 Building Block Galleries. Not all are assigned to the Ribbon to start, but those that are were placed on the Ribbon
Tab that MS determined was a suitable context for its use. You can place any of the 36 galleries on the Quick Access Toolbar as
well.
In each gallery the organization structure is
Gallery
Category
Entry
Within a gallery, Categories are listed alphabetically and within each Category, Entries are listed alphabetically. You can, by use
of naming conventions you choose, organize your entries for the AutoText gallery, or QuickParts, or other galleries.
For example if you want to to create your own Header Gallery entries
(Insert tab=>Header & Footer Group=>Header[Gallery] ),
and if you were to name your headers category in the Header gallery
~My Headers
Then the category you created would appear ahead of the 'Built-In' category entries and each entry in that category would be listed
alphabetically.
In prior versions of Word the program used the 'Style name' to create a 'category' for you, so renaming a style could change the
category name. It was basically the same approach, just handled more internally and with Word in mind.
In Word 2007 categories are no longer taken from Word style names, as the building blocks can be available in all of the Office 2007
ribboned apps. From the User Interface you can use the Building Blocks Organizer to create, name, rename and delete categories and
entries to suit your needs.
If you you import your prior version 'Normal.dot' Autotext entries (you can place a copy of your old Normal.dot in the Document
Building Blocks Folderto do this [renaming it the copy to something like [2003Autotext.dot first is suggested] the AutoText
[gallery] entries keep the same names and are placed in the AutoText Gallery under the General Category. You can still create a
listing that follows style names by manually editing the category names to be the same as Style names in the Building Block
Organizer.
While each of the galleries follows the same basic organizational structure, the program does display the content in specialized
ways for different functionallity.
For example the Page Numbers menu on the Insert tab, has within it four separate galleries
Page Numbers [appears a 'Current Position' choices]
Page Numbers (Bottom of Page)
Page Numbers (Margin)
Page Numbers (Top of Page)
Except for the first choice, Word 'knows' to place the content of the gallery in the Header/Footer/Margin, without you going to the
Header, Footer or Margin. You can add to, move, modify, remove, categorize, or rename entries within each gallery and each
gallery's categories.
If you also still have access to Word 2003 or earlier you can create a toolbar that will put the old style flyout menu to display
your entries in Word 2007 from the Quick Access toolbar, where the 'style' names will instead be the 'category' names you create
(which can mimic the style names if you choose).
================
Has anyone created a custom toolbar or or Ribbon Add-In to insert quickparts
via a hierarchical menu based on Categories? This woudl be similar to the way
Autotext worked in word 2003 if the autotext enteries were created with
differnt styles
Any assistance gratefully received
Peter Evans>>
--
Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*
