Line identifiers

T

Tom

Hi,

I often write documents that contain proprietary
information. For identification, these lines, paragraphs,
and/or sections of text are labeled with an asterisk or
some other symbol in the left hand margin. I have been
accomplishing this with a simple text box, but if the
document is edited, I have to go back and modify the text
box to maintain the alignment between the symbols and the
corresponding lines.

I have tried to automate this by using text borders with
only the left hand border turned on, but the border styles
are limited to simple lines and not real symbols like
asterisks, stars and the like. I have also tried using
page borders applied only to a given section, but for
continuous section breaks that occur in the middle of a
given page, the page border continues on to the bottom of
the page, past the section break. This behaviour is
similar to how the header and footer formating works with
the continous section breaks, but seems rather limiting
and inappropriate for borders.

Am I missing something, or is there another method to
accomplish what I think should be a simple and straight
forward task of marking lines with symbols in the margin?

Any help would be appreciated.

Tom
 
S

Shauna Kelly

Hi Tom

This has been one of those annoyances since word processors first
replaced typewriters! The way I do this is to put the asterisk (or other
symbol) in a frame in the left margin, and anchor it to the relevant
paragraph. Here's now I do it:

First, we need to do some maths. Write down:
- left margin for your text (let's call it LM)
- the distance you want from the edge of the paper to your asterisk (let
's call it AM) (eg LM might be 2.5cm, AM might be 2.0cm)
- calculate the distance between the two, ie LM - AM, eg 0.5cm (let's
call it X)

It *really helps* if LM is a multiple of X (eg 2.5cm is a multiple of
0.5cm). So choose nice, round numbers.

Type an asterisk and select it. View > Toolbars and tick Forms. On the
Forms toolbar, click Insert Frame.

Click the edge of the frame so you see the 8 little black squares. Right
Click the frame, choose Borders and Shading. Click None and click OK.

Right Click the edge of the frame again > Format Frame and set the
following settings:
Text Wrapping = Around
Width = Exactly at X (eg 0.5cm)
Height = Auto
Horizontal Position = AM (eg 2.0cm). Set it Relative to Page.
Horizontal Distance from text = 0
Vertical Position = 0 Relative to Paragraph
Vertical Distance from text = 0
Tick Move with text
Un-Tick Lock Anchor
Click OK.

Turn on the viewing of text boundaries and anchors (Tools > Options >
View. Tick Text Boundaries and tick Anchors). You should now see that
your frame's right side is flush against your left margin. And the frame
's top is flush with the top of your paragraph. And if you click within
the frame, you can see that the frame is anchored to the paragraph.

To insert a framed asterisk easily, select the frame again and choose
Insert > AutoText and give it a name. For ease of insertion, you can
give your AutoText a keyboard shortcut by choosing Tools > Customize >
Keyboard. Or, you can create a toolbar button for it by choosing Tools >
Customize and from the Commands tab, dragging the AutoText to a toolbar.

So, we have an asterisk against the top line of a paragraph. If you want
it to align the frame with a different line in a paragraph, you'll have
to drag the frame vertically. To make it easy to have all the asterisks
line up horizontally, remember that when dragging, Word snaps objects to
an invisible grid. So, set up your grid to suit your needs. On the
Drawing toolbar, Draw > Grid. Tick the box "Snap objects to grid". Set
the Horizontal Spacing to equal X (eg 0.5cm). This is why you needed LM
to be a multiple of X. You'll now be able to drag the frame up and down
and it will appear to "slide" up and down the left margin. (Just
remember that Word is aligning the left side of the frame with the grid,
whereas you and I kind of want to think about the right side of the
frame being positioned relative to the text. Does that make sense?)

If you want to be *really* cool, set the style you use for your body
text to have Exact line spacing (eg Times New Roman 11pt text looks OK
with 13.5pt line spacing). Then, set the Vertical Spacing on the grid to
be the same as the line spacing (you can type, eg "13.5pt" in that box,
even though it may display the measurement in centimetres or inches).
Now, when you drag your frame up and down, it will "snap" into position
with lines of your text. However, conceptually the frame is anchored to
the paragraph, and by dragging, you changed its vertical position
relative to the paragraph.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
 
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