Generate Two Documents from a Single Document ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kirk Stephens
  • Start date Start date
K

Kirk Stephens

I teach and for each of my classes I need to generate both a course
OUTLINE and a SYLLABUS -- one stays in the departmental office, the
other goes to students.

The student copy is longer and contains several "fields" or "sections"
of information about the course. The office copy contains only a few
of the "sections," but they are exactly the same as those in the
student document.

I'm looking for a method that allows me to type all of the information
only once, then generate/print the two required documents with the
least amount of editing or re-typing.

I'm trying to think long-term as to the best way to handle future
changes. Should I give up on a creative solution and just make two
documents by copy/paste? Should I consider some other application?

Please post a response if you have any ideas. I've just completed a
curriculum review and I need to complete this process for every course
in my department.

Thank You,
Kirk Stephens
 
You might look into use of the IncludeText field. If most of the text in the
shorter document is contained in the longer one, then make the longer one
the source document. Bookmark the text you need to include in the other
document, then use Insert | File to insert portions into the target document
(using the bookmark as the "range"). You'll probably need to reapply
bookmarks when you change the text, but it will be updated in both
documents. If there is text in the shorter document that is not in the
longer one, you can just add it as plain text and update it without regard
to the longer one.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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Hello Kirk

Kirk said:
I teach and for each of my classes I need to generate both a course
OUTLINE and a SYLLABUS -- one stays in the departmental office, the
other goes to students.

The student copy is longer and contains several "fields" or "sections"
of information about the course. The office copy contains only a few
of the "sections," but they are exactly the same as those in the
student document.

I'm looking for a method that allows me to type all of the information
only once, then generate/print the two required documents with the
least amount of editing or re-typing.

I'm trying to think long-term as to the best way to handle future
changes. Should I give up on a creative solution and just make two
documents by copy/paste? Should I consider some other application?
Click to expand...

An alternate approach is to use hidden text. You can either mark the
student-only parts with direct font formatting (Format | Font: Hidden),
or a character style which has this property set. Or you can use a
separate set of ordinary paragraph styles with this property.

Afterwards, you have basically two options:

1. you can distinguish through Tools | Optiones | View whether hidden
text is display, and through .. | .. | Print whether hidden text is
printed or not, or

2. you can change the hidden property of the marked text (this really
only works more than once if you use styles).

In both cases, you can use a short toggle macro to do the switch for you.

HTH
Robert
 
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