[277355] in TECHWR-L
Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Keith Soltys)
Fri Sep 19 13:07:18 2025
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:07:18 -0400
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From: Keith Soltys <keith@soltys.ca>
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I'm not the Keith who posted the first message in this thread, but I
have successfully used conditional text in Word but I did it using a
tool called SmartDocs from 360Software. I was able to create multiple
versions of a protocol specification that was more than 300 pages long
and quite complex. You can use it for other things, like creating
templates for users and managing variables. and text snippets. I was
quite happy with it and it made my life a lot easier.
https://www.36software.com/smartdocs/features
It is expensive, or was, when I was working at the Toronto Stock
Exchange I've been retired for seven years now so I don't know how the
product has changed or what the current pricing is like.
Regards
Keith
On 2025-09-19 8:33 a.m., Diane Pol wrote:
> I had started on this 25 years ago and was advised to stop, because I was "reinventing the wheel". I wish I had ignored that advice. Good Luck to you, Keith!
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
>
> Diane L. Pol
> Technical Writer
> Morbark, LLC
> 8507 S. Winn Rd. | P.O. Box 1000 | Winn, MI 48896
> P: (989) 866-2381 ext. 1120 | F: (989) 866-2280
> www.morbark.com | diane.pol@morbark.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+diane.pol=morbark.com@lists.techwr-l.com <techwr-l-bounces+diane.pol=morbark.com@lists.techwr-l.com> On Behalf Of Hanson, Paul R
> Sent: Friday, September 19, 2025 7:01 AM
> To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l@techwr-l.com>
> Subject: RE: [External] Question about a publishing company
>
> Keith!
>
> Dude! Don't tease me like that!
>
> Can you share your TOC for the book about MS Word code fields?
>
> In my environment, and for the foreseeable future, my SMEs use Word files, with standardized headings of course, to capture Disaster Recovery information about their system, including actual recovery procedures. Those Word files are all linked from the network drive to my RoboHelp project to generate & publish a browser-based output. Within the Word files, I'm already using field codes to control the text in the standardized headings by including a reference to a bookmark in my "standards" Word file. I also have a macro that I run to set the TITLE and SUBJECT property for each Word file in a folder to the file name and then I run a 2nd macro to update all the fields for each Word file in a folder. I'm genuinely curious if there's something I'm not doing now, that I could be, just because I've not read your book.
>
> Thank you in advance!
>
> Paul Hanson
> IT Manager - Disaster Recovery (as of 8-25-2025) | Technical Support & Implementation University of Iowa Health Care Information Systems
> 0405-C28 HSSB | Coralville, IA 52241
>
> Useful Links:
> Helpdesk-HCIS@uiowa.edu | macdesk-hcis@healthcare.uiowa.edu | Customer Feedback?
> Change Healthcare Password | Change HawkID Password | HCIS Web Request Epic Training Resources
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+paul-hanson=uiowa.edu@lists.techwr-l.com <techwr-l-bounces+paul-hanson=uiowa.edu@lists.techwr-l.com> On Behalf Of Keith Hood
> Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2025 9:54 AM
> To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l@techwr-l.com>
> Subject: [External] Question about a publishing company
>
> <snip>
> I've been trying to interest publishers in printing a book I cooked up, about ways to use MS Word code fields to create conditional content in Word documents.
> <snip>
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--
--
Keith Soltys
Email: keith@soltys.ca - Alternate Email: ksoltys@gmail.com
Web: http://www.soltys.ca
Blog: http://coredump3.blogspot.com
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