Hidden text won't stick

[Gary Burton]

I am using Word 2002 and a later version of word. Both are on
Win XP machines, and both have the same problem. It's important that I find
a solution because it affects a lot of documents.

I am a teacher, working with other teachers; and I am making up
a homework book to be used by several teachers. The homework book has 2
basic styles: 1. "Numbered question" for the questions and, 2. "Lettered
answer" for the answer choices. There is hidden text at the end of both
styles with no carriage return separating the hidden text from the visible
text.

Sometimes the format gets messed up by me or one of the other
teachers, and I want to be able to just click on the appropriate style form
the styles window and fix it. That usually works, but there are some
paragraphs in both of these styles for which I have a common problem. The
problem is that while clicking on the appropriate style does reformat the
numbered question or the lettered answer, it also makes the hidden text
visible. I sometimes make changes to a large number of paragraphs at once,
so I can't even tell which ones are getting visible answers. The students
appreciate that because it shows them the answers, but I don't like it.

The paragraphs that are bad (show the hidden text whenever I
click on the style in the styles window) are consistently bad, and the
paragraphs that are good (fixable without showing hidden text) are
consistently good.

I have looked very hard to find a difference between the good
paragraphs and the bad ones. It seems that there must be a hidden control
character that is in one paragraph and not the other, but the only
difference I can see between good and bad paragraphs is the wording of the
questions and the point within the paragraph at which the answer begins and
the text becomes hidden.

I have compared the fonts at several places within the good and
bad paragraphs and found no settings that were different between the visible
text of one paragraph and the visible text of the other. Likewise, with the
hidden text.

I have used the "Reveal formatting" tool to make comparisons
between good paragraphs and bad paragraphs. The tool could find no
differences.

I have used the format painter to copy the formatting from a
good paragraph to a bad one, copying first the visible text then the hidden
text. That doesn't work either.

I now have many hundreds of pages, and I can't tell which
paragraphs are good and which ones are bad until I try to reformat them.
Then I have to read every question and every answer to find the problem
spots. If I find an answer to the basic problem, there might be something I
can use as a search criterion to find all the bad paragraphs.

Sorry this was so long, but it's a complicated problem. Any
help would be greatly appreciated!!!! This one is baffling me and everyone
I work with.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Gary:

Eeeewwww.... This is not going to be easy.

Generically, the paragraph mark stores all of the formatting properties for
the text preceding it up to the previous paragraph mark. This amounts to
several hundred pieces of data that collectively describe all of the
formatting, numbering and layout of the paragraph.

So: The numbering is stored IN the paragraph mark. If it's "hidden" the
operation of the numbering becomes VERY unstable.

So one problem you have is that in order for the numbering to function, the
terminating paragraph mark MUST be "non-hidden". If you want part of that
paragraph's text to be "hidden", you need to apply the hidden property to
the TEXT you want hidden, but not to the final paragraph mark.

The problem you will run into, is that if you hack around in this way long
enough, the paragraph mark itself corrupts. At that point, it may corrupt
the document, preventing Word from opening it. More often, it will simply
turn the paragraph mark "read-only". Once Word can no longer write to the
information store contained in the paragraph mark, you get these paragraphs
you can't fix: nothing seems to work.

The cure there is to create a NEW paragraph AFTER the bad one (so it does
not inherit the properties of the bad para) then copy the text into the new
para.

The approach you are using (partially hidden paragraphs with list numbering
applied) is highly dangerous. I strongly suggest that you find another way
to achieve your aim.

Look up LISTNUM fields in the Help: I think these are a better option of you
need to have bits of hidden text in the paragraph. The other alternative is
to use the built-in "Heading 1" through "Heading 9" styles for numbering
purposes. You can change the formatting to suit yourself, but the Heading
series have special hard-coded properties that makes them FAR more reliable
when they have numbering applied as part of their style definition.

Hope this helps

I am using Word 2002 and a later version of word. Both are on
Win XP machines, and both have the same problem. It's important that I find
a solution because it affects a lot of documents.

I am a teacher, working with other teachers; and I am making up
a homework book to be used by several teachers. The homework book has 2
basic styles: 1. "Numbered question" for the questions and, 2. "Lettered
answer" for the answer choices. There is hidden text at the end of both
styles with no carriage return separating the hidden text from the visible
text.

Sometimes the format gets messed up by me or one of the other
teachers, and I want to be able to just click on the appropriate style form
the styles window and fix it. That usually works, but there are some
paragraphs in both of these styles for which I have a common problem. The
problem is that while clicking on the appropriate style does reformat the
numbered question or the lettered answer, it also makes the hidden text
visible. I sometimes make changes to a large number of paragraphs at once,
so I can't even tell which ones are getting visible answers. The students
appreciate that because it shows them the answers, but I don't like it.

The paragraphs that are bad (show the hidden text whenever I
click on the style in the styles window) are consistently bad, and the
paragraphs that are good (fixable without showing hidden text) are
consistently good.

I have looked very hard to find a difference between the good
paragraphs and the bad ones. It seems that there must be a hidden control
character that is in one paragraph and not the other, but the only
difference I can see between good and bad paragraphs is the wording of the
questions and the point within the paragraph at which the answer begins and
the text becomes hidden.

I have compared the fonts at several places within the good and
bad paragraphs and found no settings that were different between the visible
text of one paragraph and the visible text of the other. Likewise, with the
hidden text.

I have used the "Reveal formatting" tool to make comparisons
between good paragraphs and bad paragraphs. The tool could find no
differences.

I have used the format painter to copy the formatting from a
good paragraph to a bad one, copying first the visible text then the hidden
text. That doesn't work either.

I now have many hundreds of pages, and I can't tell which
paragraphs are good and which ones are bad until I try to reformat them.
Then I have to read every question and every answer to find the problem
spots. If I find an answer to the basic problem, there might be something I
can use as a search criterion to find all the bad paragraphs.

Sorry this was so long, but it's a complicated problem. Any
help would be greatly appreciated!!!! This one is baffling me and everyone
I work with.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Gary Burton]

Thank you for your timely response.

I won't have time to study this until tomorrow. I will reply tomorrow
evening and let you know how it went.

 

[Anne Troy]

Gary... I doubt this will help much, but you said you couldn't tell the
difference between hidden/non-hidden text. Whenever I hide text, I also put
it in red font, so I can easily tell the difference... It'll also stick out
like a sore thumb if you print the doc.

************
Hope it helps!
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com
Check out the NEWsgroup stats!
Check out: www.ExcelUserConference.com

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Gary

I am using Word 2002 and a later version of word. Both are on
Win XP machines, and both have the same problem. It's important that I find
a solution because it affects a lot of documents.

I am a teacher, working with other teachers; and I am making up
a homework book to be used by several teachers. The homework book has 2
basic styles: 1. "Numbered question" for the questions and, 2. "Lettered
answer" for the answer choices. There is hidden text at the end of both
styles with no carriage return separating the hidden text from the visible
text.

Sometimes the format gets messed up by me or one of the other
teachers, and I want to be able to just click on the appropriate style form
the styles window and fix it. That usually works, but there are some
paragraphs in both of these styles for which I have a common problem. The
problem is that while clicking on the appropriate style does reformat the
numbered question or the lettered answer, it also makes the hidden text
visible. I sometimes make changes to a large number of paragraphs at once,
so I can't even tell which ones are getting visible answers. The students
appreciate that because it shows them the answers, but I don't like it.

See John's remarks!

What might work is the following: if you use a character style for your
hidden formatting, and make sure that you never apply it to a paragraph
mark, then you could use a makro that resets a paragraph to its para
style but preserves char styles.

But I agree with John, it's probably easier just to use hidden paragraph
styles for hidden text and use "Tools | Options | View" to manage its
visibility, and "... | Print" wheter it's printed or not.

Not letting other teachers work with carefully drafted numbered
paragraphs might be an idea, too!

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Gary Burton]

I already do that. You misunderstood me. I should have been more clear.
Thanks anyway.

 

[Gary Burton]

I expect I will switch to using headings instead of styles based on your
warnings, which I appreciate. I don't want to make any changes to my overall
approac yet, however, because I still have my problem.

More information that may apply:

I left this out before because my posting was already pretty long. I have
invented a pretty convenient system here, and I don't want to give up the
convenience unless I absolutely have to. I tried very hard to make it easy
for my fellow instructors to use. I use a lot of macros.

Once I select text to hide, I have a macro (Alt-M) that hides it,
capitalizes it, and turns it red.

When I want to put a paragraph in in the numbered question style, I hit
Alt-N. Likewise Alt-L for the lettered answer style. Alt-H hides the text
marked as hidden, Alt-S shows all text. There are more macros that don't
relate to this.

Besides the problem I told you about, there is smaller one that may be
related. It consists of the fact that sometimes when I have a paragraph of
visible text followed by hidden text, the number or letter itself turns red
and becomes hidden even though it was never selected to get that way.

Here is what happened today:

I looked at the LISTNUM help. It looks like a safer way to go, but it seems
would require a lot of extra manipulation compared to the way I do it now.
My macros and styles now preserve the indentation and font. This is my first
introduction to fields, so I may be wrong; but it looks like a lot more work
if I go that way. It would surely be too much for my colleagues unless I put
it in macro form. A macro that uses fields to accomplish what I do with
styles seems like it would be very complex.

I tried using the headings instead of styles. I can accomplish the same
thing I do now. And after reading your warnings I will probably wind up
switching to the headings, although it will take a lot of time.

When I programmed the headings with the same style information as my former
styles, however, there was no improvement in terms of the problem I first
wrote about. The second problem mentioned above (number also becoming
hidden), is also still there.

If I have exhausted your supply of ideas, I will edit all the documents to
place all the hidden text in separate paragraphs and switch to the headings
instead of styles. The downside to moving the hidden text (besides the time
involved) is that it is much harder for the instructors to associate the
questions with the answers that way. I work at a military training facility,
and we have to move through this stuff very quickly to save the taxpayers
money. When in front of the class we don't have much time to read and
cross-reference things. If you have any more ideas, I would love to pursue
them. If not, I will proceed with plan B described above.

I have not experienced any of the problems you described with styles, but I
believe you and I don't need those problems. If you can't help me otherwise,
please feel good about the help you gave me by suggesting headings.

 

[Gary Burton]

Thanks! I wish I could keep the other teachers from editing the document,
but that isn't an option. I just have to make it as safe as possible.

Please read my last response to John, and make any comments you deem useful.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

To add to what John and Bob have posted - while it's possible that you do
have a more complicated numbering style problem here, I think you might find
the solution to this is simply to use Ctrl-Q (reset paragraph formatting) to
clean up the formatting instead of reapplying the style - this will do what
Bob's proposed macro does, and leave character formatting alone. I suspect
the difference between "good" and "bad" paragraphs is that the "bad"
paragraphs have more than 50% of the text hidden - when you apply a
paragraph style to those, Word "kindly" assumes you want the font applied
too, but if you have less than 50% it leaves it alone, and you have to
explicitly use Ctl-Space to clean back to para style font.

Bob's other suggestion of using a character style to apply the hidden
characteristic is even better, if you are prepared to change the documents
and train other editors to use it (a nice easy button will normally work as
well as a sharp stick <g>). Where font formatting is applied with a
character style, it will stay put even if you do (re)apply a paragraph style
in the over 50% case.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This was my first guess, too (the 50% or more part), but I couldn't
reproduce it in a blank document, so I stayed mum.

 

[Gary Burton]

You were RIGHT ON TARGET!

Thank you very much!!

This newsgroup saved my bacon again. What would I do without you people?