Document Creation
RadioT...@gmail.com
I am working with a North Texas ham on a Technicians course that he is
going to start teaching this month.
I was able to create a document for him that he is to making into
PowerPoint slides or handouts with just the questions and Answers from
the pool.
Here are the steps I used to make the Doc File.
I opened the XML File technician.xml in Excel then saved it as a spread
sheet. I had a friend help me with the syntax of the IF statement in
Excel.
After that I sorted the file so only the questions and correct answers
were at the top of the file. I then deleted all of the rows of the
Excel file that had the distracters. I then consolidated
(concatenated) 3 columns of the file into the Question Number.
After this I waved the file as "Technician pool edit 2.xls".
After a minor edit I saved the file as "Technician pool Q# Q and
A.xls". This file has the Question number then a column called Bang
with "!!!" in every cell. This followed by the question text and
another Bang column then the answer column. After that the other
columns are ignored.
I only know certain ways to do things so here is next part.
I copied the first six columns with EDIT | COPY on the menu and pasted
them into notepad. This made the file TAB delimited with no
formatting. If I pasted them directly into word it would make a table.
So I copy the text from the notepad file and pasted it into word.
This pasted as text not as a table. Yes, I could have "Pasted Special"
Word has a great search and replace feature. So I searched for
"?^t!!!^t" and pasted "?^l^l".
The ^t is a tab the ^l is a line break. I did a similar edits for the
rest of the file.
This made a word file but with all of the same text font and color.
But he mentioned that he was going to edit the file so that the
Questions font color was Black and the answers Blue in Rockwell 12pt
font. I said why do all that work by hand.
So I had to rethink the process.
I went to the Excel and changed it to Rockwell 12pt and highlighted the
Answers and made them Blue.
Then I copied the column required for just Questions and Answers with a
Bang column in the middle.
I pasted it into Microsoft Word but I could not see the entire pasted
table since the questions and answers are so long. I thought...Why not
make the paper as big as it can go. That was 22" by 22"
After that I could see the whole table. Questions in black and answers
in blue. Then I converted the table to text in Word.
After this I searched for "?^t!!!^t" and pasted "?^l^l". This
got rid of the "!!!" and put a blank line in between the Question
and Answer. Then I searched for "^t!!!^t" and pasted
"?^l^l^t". This put two blank lines between the Answer and the
next Question. One other edit I did was to replace three blank spaces
with one blank space. Eighty-three lines of the Question Pool and
three spaces where only one is needed.
I was so excited about the output I sent it out without changing the
document back to Letter sized paper from 22" by 22".
Later I opened the file and noticed the error and sent him the
corrected file.
This is why I was so happy to get the pool in XML file format so that I
can put into Excel. I am by no means an expert in Word or Excel.
As a child, I used to go with my father to work in the summer. He
co-owned a mid sized construction company here is San Antonio, TX.
One statement I heard over and over was "If you want to find the
easiest way to a job, give the job to the laziest person.
I am that lazy person. I find it easier to create the file with
software in ten minutes then to type it and edit it in ten hours.
There are faster ways to do this I am sure. Probably with Crystal
reports or Access but I do not own copies of those programs.
73
Paul Guido, N5IUT