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Subject:RE: Link to Excel table with filtering enabled From:Paul Hanson <twer_lists_all -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:John Posada <jposada99 -at- gmail -dot- com>, "Weissman, Jessica R" <WeissmanJR -at- state -dot- gov> Date:Tue, 5 Jun 2018 11:53:38 +0000
It occurred to me that if you don't want to go through the work of making the glossary terms fields, you could add a reference to the entire Glossary document at the end of each of your 200 files as a field. I don't know the number of pages your Glossary file would be when converted from Excel to Word or if there is a likelihood of the users printing it or if the number of glossary words in a typical document is 0-50, 51-100, or 100+. It was just a thought I had this AM on my 5 minute drive to work.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Paul Hanson
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2018 1:26 PM
To: John Posada; Weissman, Jessica R
Cc: Tech Writers
Subject: RE: Link to Excel table with filtering enabled
Jessica Weissman wrote:
|
> If you think you'd be revising the glossary wording and want to keep it
> updated, you might be able to transfer the Excel sheet into a Word doc and
> use bookmarks to grab current text.
|
I know the approach Jessica mentioned is what I use for 300ish Word documents that are associated with my disaster recovery documentation that I maintain with RoboHelp. Those 300ish Word documents are linked from RoboHelp to a network folder structure. Like John, I knew I did NOT want to copy and paste my standard headings into those 300ish documents, only to have to update 300ish Word documents if one or any number of those standard headings needed to be changed. This is how I implemented Jessica's suggestion:
1) I created a "DRStandards.docx file" and typed all the standard headings. This would be the Glossary file in Excel.
2) I created a bookmark for each of the headings. This was easy to do.
3) I edited the 300ish linked Word documents and replaced whatever headings were in the Word document with my standard headings as a field.
4) I found a Word macro that will search for all Word documents within a specific folder structure and update all the fields within those Word documents. For example, if I update the DRStandards.docx text for the "Overview" bookmark and save the DRStandards.docx, and then run that macro, all of the Word documents get updated with that change.
It would require moving your glossary from Excel to Word, if that's an option.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of John Posada
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2018 12:57 PM
To: Weissman, Jessica R
Cc: Tech Writers
Subject: Re: Link to Excel table with filtering enabled
Thanks
I don't want copy in because there are almost 200 documents that will get
reviewed every 12 months (they are procedures and my governance says they
have be reviewed every year) and when they are, I might have to update that
section all over again. As a link with filter, all I have to do is update
the Excel.
On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Weissman, Jessica R <WeissmanJR -at- state -dot- gov>
wrote:
> John:
>
> I think you'd have to do this with a Word macro that calls Excel and
> passes parameters that indicate which entries to show. On the Excel side
> it would filter the big table and make a temporary sheet with the filtered
> results. The link in the Word doc would be a button that executes the
> macro to do all this.
>
> Might not be worth the trouble to create or maintain. Why not just copy
> the relevant items manually into each Word doc?
>
> If you think you'd be revising the glossary wording and want to keep it
> updated, you might be able to transfer the Excel sheet into a Word doc and
> use bookmarks to grab current text.
>
> Disclaimer: these are just ideas and there may well be a much simpler way
> to do it. No matter what way you chose, you'd need to find a way to
> indicate which glossary items are relevant for the document.
>
> - Jessica
>
> Personal
> UNCLASSIFIED
>
--
John Posada
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