Thanks, Daiya. This was very helpful. I had already had a conversation
with a friend who's pretty Word-savvy, and between that conversation
and your note I was able to negotiate this task. Of course, one wonders
why a person could not find out anything about doing this in Word Help.
One does...though, actually, regardless of terminology, I don't think Word
Help explains this.
As it turns out, Arial 14 or Arial 16 worked fine - large enough and
clear enough. The sans serif quality make it more readable in the
comment balloons, even though serif type is usually more readable for
longer text bits.
New information. I would imagine Arial 14 and 16 looked the same to you?
(if not, let me know, that'd be interesting) The size of the comments is
changeable by changing the style Balloon Text, which sets the size of the
Balloons, and by default is Lucida Grande 9pt. Balloon Text controls the
size of that Comment: and Deleted: prefix. So you can increase Balloon Text,
and then the Comment Text will increase in size. However, you may not want
to, as larger balloons may run out of space on the page. (I did, see the
very end)
Anyway. I will also take you up on the macro offer, since I have never
done one and would like to be able to start creating them.
Ooh, fun, people who want to learn.
Though I'm by no means expert--in
fact, I've just been experimenting with this because you suggested a good
idea.
This is all the code you need:
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Comment Text").Font
.Name = "Arial"
End With
This changes the font of Comment Text to Arial.
See here for what to do with that code:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/InstallMacroMac.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)
And the second part of this page for making the code easy to use over and
over again by putting it on a toolbar or keyboard shortcut.
http://daiya.mvps.org/pastemacros.htm
Right, you should be set up with a one-click way to change the comment text,
after following those directions and webpages. You can stop reading at this
point, if you have absorbed enough information--the rest is frills,
refinements, and details.
Read on to learn more. (part 2)
Or, you can run through the experimentation yourself. To get that code, I
just recorded a macro (Tools | Record New Macro, then go through the steps
of changing the style, until you are done, then hit stop on the record macro
toolbar). To see the macro you recorded, use Tools | Macros, select the
name, then Edit.
However, the macro recorder records *everything*, see below. If you look at
all that code, you will see how it recorded a setting for everything you saw
in the dialog boxes while changing a style. But you can delete all the
minor specifications that aren't necessary, and then those settings will be
ignored, not changed at all. So I just kept deleting and testing until I had
a nice short macro. (With...End With has to exist in a pair, though, like
parentheses--I deleted the entire first With...End With segment, but for the
second With...End With segment, I just deleted stuff from the middle of it)
(more info on editing recorded macros:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/ModifyRecordedMacro.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)
_____
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Comment Text")
.AutomaticallyUpdate = False
.BaseStyle = "Normal"
.NextParagraphStyle = "Comment Text"
End With
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Comment Text").Font
.Name = "Arial"
.Size = 11
.Bold = False
.Italic = False
.Underline = wdUnderlineNone
.UnderlineColor = wdColorAutomatic
.StrikeThrough = False
.DoubleStrikeThrough = False
.Outline = False
.Emboss = False
.Shadow = False
.Hidden = False
.SmallCaps = False
.AllCaps = False
.Color = wdColorAutomatic
.Engrave = False
.Superscript = False
.Subscript = False
.Scaling = 100
.Kerning = 0
.Animation = wdAnimationNone
End With
______
(part 3, final comments)
*My* final macro, because I decided to change both the Balloon Text and the
Comment Text, was actually this, in one macro:
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Comment Text").Font
.Name = "Century Gothic"
End With
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Balloon Text").Font
.Name = "Times"
.Size = 11
End With
Balloon Text had to be a pretty tight font to not distract my eye with the
prefixes.
The reason you might not want to increase the Balloon Text is because if
there are so many balloons Word can't display them all, it shows the first
line and you have to finish editing in the Reviewing Pane. This wouldn't be
a problem, Word automatically dumps you in it when necessary, but the
Reviewing Pane is totally buggy and some basic editing functions don't work
in it, so it's annoying to use. Increasing the Balloon Text would increase
the chances that this happens. Depends on how many comments you write, and
the resolution of your monitor.
