If the content is in text boxes I believe you're best bet is to copy &
paste... you might check in the Tools menu for a Merge & Compare feature or
that version most likely does have an Insert> File command.
HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
There IS a "Merge Documents" tool, but it doesn't appear to have an
effect. Once I selected -- through the dialog box that appears upon
selecting the "Merge" tool -- the document to merge into the one that
is open nothing happens. It appears that the open document (or perhaps
BOTH documents) may actually have to have some text on it (rather than
in text BOXES) in order for some effect to take place. If that is the
case then I'm toast, and will have to rethink this.[/QUOTE]
Nah. It doesn't do anything like you want. It is difficult to find out
what it does, because if you type "merge document" into help you get a
lot of explanation of merge fields. It seems to be the ugly stepchild
of compare documents which is track changes in bulk.
So we won't go there!
Basically what I had hoped to do here was to place a color highlight
behind a block of text on one side of the document only. For this task
it seemed that a text box was the best option. If that is wrong I'm
open to suggestions. (BTW I'm really not accustomd to working in Word,
per se. At least not for this type of document. InDesign and XPress
are my weapons of choice for this sort of thing.)
And *much* better they are at that kind of work.
I'd avoid text boxes at all costs, unless I deliberately wanted an
ill-designed ransom note.
You might try a section break continuous, choose double column, and
then place a rectangle of appropriate colour nominally in the page
header, but placed in such a way as to be behind the column you are
highlighting. (format picture » wrapping style = Behind text.
It is *so* ugly compared to ID. Why bother with Word for work like this?
You are really trying to wrestle Word into being a page layout program.
Text boxes are Microsoft's first feeble steps in that direction. All
they do is cripple the whole concept of "word processor".
If you must use text boxes, you can hit format » Text Box » Colours and
Lines where you get an opportunity to set fill colour and transparency.
If you set the line's transparency to 100% you can make the ugly border
disappear while you are at it.
Hmm. It is not *that* evil. I still hate text boxes. The central
problem is they have this half and half property of being stuck to both
page and paragraph, where Word has no idea of page until you go to
print it. (Page view ameliorates this, but the whole idea is as
slippery as hell.)
One more thing: when I try to open the "Text Box" documents in Normal
rather than Page mode it appears as a blank document, without any text
or text boxes. Is this normal, or have I forgotten sonmething?
That might be because text boxes behave like anchored graphics, and you
don't get to see anchored graphics in normal view, only those in line
with text. Text boxes anchor themselves to paragraphs of normal text
(even empty ones, as you have seen) but they cannot be formatted to be
in line with text. They truly are an abortion.
Ahh. That was a fine rant. I'm teaching myself some more LaTeX and
emacs. ‹ and playing with InDesign CS3. Word is getting up my nose
lately.
I'm going strictly on my [poor] memore here!