filing comments

[tontoncois]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi,
Is there a way to create a table that places the added comments in one column and the highlighted section of text in the other column.

Not sure if that's quite clear.

When I have edited a document, I have all these comments in balloons and each is linked to a section of highlighted text. I want to be able to create table with each row being a highlighted section of text in one column and the linked comment in the other column. Yes it could make for some long table, but that's ok.

I'm not partial to Word either, if it can only be done with an Exel chart that be great too.

My other question is:
Is there a way to create a keyboard short cut for adding comments?
Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

Effectively, that's what Word's standard display does. The comment balloons
will appear on the right, the commented text on the left.

It's risky to add commented text to a table, you can get document
corruptions, with the loss of text (or the whole document). So I would
advise against it.

To create this as a real table automatically requires VBA, and Office 2008
doesn't have any, so "No" to that question. Next version...

The comment command is "InsertNewComment". You will find it only in the
"All Commands" list. You can use Tools>Customise to add a keystroke for it.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hi,
Is there a way to create a table that places the added comments in one column
and the highlighted section of text in the other column.

Not sure if that's quite clear.

When I have edited a document, I have all these comments in balloons and each
is linked to a section of highlighted text. I want to be able to create table
with each row being a highlighted section of text in one column and the linked
comment in the other column. Yes it could make for some long table, but that's
ok.

I'm not partial to Word either, if it can only be done with an Exel chart that
be great too.

My other question is:
Is there a way to create a keyboard short cut for adding comments?
Thanks

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[tontoncois]

Thanks John.
Any possible work arounds?
This is my dissertation research so we are talking hundreds of pages with at least one comment for each line. It would take me a long time to cut and paste all those comments and the text linked to the comments into a table. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

Yes, the work-around would be to code this up in AppleScript.

Coding it up in VBA would take an expert coder about a week of effort (say
$5,000.00 worth...). If you have to learn the language from scratch... Ummm
.... Quite a bit longer (at least six months of full-time effort...). It
would be slower on a Mac because the VBA Editor very limited.

Coding it up in AppleScript would take longer, because help and advice from
people who know both Word AND AppleScript is very difficult to find, and
this is NOT a simple macro to write: the level of error-checking required to
ensure that you handle all the strange things authors can get up to in a
piece of text is "extreme".

In case you hadn't guessed, this is one of those "Just because we 'can',
does not mean we SHOULD" answers.

My work-around would be to go with the standard display: the text will
appear on the left, the comments on the right (if you choose "Use Balloons"
in your Preferences).

But if you tell me what you hope to achieve when you HAVE got this into a
table, maybe I can suggest an alternative approach. I think we're missing
the big picture here. I suspect that "comments" was the wrong place to put
this information, but if we use some ingenuity, we can probably get them
into another format with a little thought-work.

Cheers

Thanks John.
Any possible work arounds?
This is my dissertation research so we are talking hundreds of pages with at
least one comment for each line. It would take me a long time to cut and paste
all those comments and the text linked to the comments into a table. Any
suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[tontoncois]

Thank John.
I tried to respond but somehow it didn't post. So here's take two.
The big picture is I coded my dissertation data in Word. This means that I have 50 or some documents ranging from 1 to 30 pages that I went through and highlighted section of texts and attached a comment to. The comment is the code or category that selection of text relates to. I have conducted line by line coding which means that there are a lot of comments!
My hope to transfer this to a table was to have each highlighted section of text and its respective comment be on the same row of a two column table.
This would allow me to more easily transfer the segments of text and its code to a data analysis software. I was looking at Tams to stay with mac but I also have access to Nvivo at school. I'll go with whichever is easier.
But all of it depends on me being able to transfer the code and the associated segment of text out of Word.
Does this make sense? So let's say I am looking at around 500 pages of text with an average of 8 comments per page. That's a lot of awkward cutting and pasting if I can find a solution.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[John McGhie]

Thank John.
I tried to respond but somehow it didn't post. So here's take two.

Yeah, we have email disabled because too many bad people tried to do bad
things.

The big picture is I coded my dissertation data in Word. This means that I
have 50 or some documents ranging from 1 to 30 pages that I went through and
highlighted section of texts and attached a comment to. The comment is the
code or category that selection of text relates to. I have conducted line by
line coding which means that there are a lot of comments!
My hope to transfer this to a table was to have each highlighted section of
text and its respective comment be on the same row of a two column table.
This would allow me to more easily transfer the segments of text and its code
to a data analysis software. I was looking at Tams to stay with mac but I also
have access to Nvivo at school. I'll go with whichever is easier.
But all of it depends on me being able to transfer the code and the associated
segment of text out of Word.
Does this make sense? So let's say I am looking at around 500 pages of text
with an average of 8 comments per page. That's a lot of awkward cutting and
pasting if I can find a solution.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

Sorry: I know how to do this, but it's five grand's worth of coding. If
you had chosen almost any attribute other than "Comments" it would be
straightforward, but Comments are a linked list with pointers
cross-referencing the text, which is also a linked list. Unravelling it is
not easy!

There must be a Research Assistant somewhere who has annoyed you
sufficiently to give them the job of cutting and pasting

Sorry.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[Neil T]

Yeah, we have email disabled because too many bad people tried to do bad
things.






Sorry:  I know how to do this, but it's five grand's worth of coding.  If
you had chosen almost any attribute other than "Comments" it would be
straightforward, but Comments are a linked list with pointers
cross-referencing the text, which is also a linked list.  Unravelling it is
not easy!

There must be a Research Assistant somewhere who has annoyed you
sufficiently to give them the job of cutting and pasting

Sorry.

 --

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected] Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Take a look at the macro offered at http://www.thedoctools.com/index.php?show=macros&lang=us
.. I think it does what you want.

 

[John McGhie]

Well... Word 2008 has no ability to run macros.

But yes, there is a macro on Lene's page which does exactly what you want if
you can find a way to run it in any version of Word EXCEPT Word 2008.

Cheers

Take a look at the macro offered at
http://www.thedoctools.com/index.php?show=macros&lang=us
. I think it does what you want.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[tontoncois]

Thanks John and Neil. I will try to move the files to a PC to run the macro.
I hope it works. You guys just saved me a lot of work.
Francois