Description Boxes

[Jill]

In Word 2003, is it possible to add description boxes - whereas you put your
cursor over the title of something in a document and a description or
definition pops up? (Similar to the way you can add "comments" in Excel.)

--
Jill

[Henk57]

Yes, you can create "screen tips" (small text blobs) in combination
with hyperlinks (Ctrl+K) but depending on what you want to achieve I
believe hyperlinking to a help page or some text box might be a better
option.

--
Henk57

[Jay Freedman]

Insert a field with a field code like this:

{ AutoTextList "display text" \s NoStyle \t "Put the definition here" }

The display text is what appears in the document body (the quote marks are
necessary in the field code, but won't appear in the document body).

The switch \s NoStyle makes the field do nothing (normally it would display a
dropdown with a list of AutoText entries).

The \t switch defines the text that appears when you hover the mouse over the
field. It can display up to 255 characters.

It works in Word 2003 and 2007. It works if the field is in a header/footer, and
it still works in the protected text of a protected form (but not in the
header/footer of a protected form).

The field can be built from scratch (press Ctrl+F9 to insert the field markers)
or it can be created from the Insert > Field (or Insert > Quick Parts > Field in
Word 2007) dialog. If you use the dialog, the display text goes in the New Value
box; the NoStyle switch goes in the Context box; and the help text goes in the
Tooltip box (I wish that was bigger! You can type out the text elsewhere, copy
it, and paste it into the box with Ctrl+V).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

[Shaun]

Jay,
Thank you for the tip, I can use this but hope you may be able to better
satisfy my need. I would like to have a Box (text/description box) that
displays instructions/tips either next to, above or below a specific area in
the document, but does not print. Eg. They read a title and below the title
is a description of what the user might place under it. This gives them
directions/suggestions that they can see on screen, but when printed it is
not visible, the document closing up to where the comment was????

Thanks heaps,
--
Shaun

[Jay Freedman]

There is something you can do, but it takes some setup on each computer
where it would be used. You can create a macro to do it, but that won't do
anything if the person's copy of Word is set to disable macros.

The manual way to set it up is this: Go to Tools > Options > View and check
the option to display Hidden text. Then go to the Print tab of the same
dialog and uncheck the option to print Hidden text. That way, any text
that's formatted as Hidden will appear on screen but won't print. Then
format all the instructions (preferably by using a paragraph style) as
Hidden text.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Shaun wrote:
> Jay,
> Thank you for the tip, I can use this but hope you may be able to
> better satisfy my need. I would like to have a Box (text/description
> box) that displays instructions/tips either next to, above or below a
> specific area in the document, but does not print. Eg. They read a
> title and below the title is a description of what the user might
> place under it. This gives them directions/suggestions that they can
> see on screen, but when printed it is not visible, the document
> closing up to where the comment was????
>
> Thanks heaps,
>

[Shaun]

Thanks Jay, again you have provided a very good solution, but the problem I
will encounter is as you have pointed out, that a macro may not "Just Work"
on all computers unless activated to view them. I know that one could say to
activate them, but we are talking about thousands of users, a large amount of
which are not computer savy and just want to fill out the form.

Can it be achieved in any other way??

I know I'm asking the world, but if I can do it then many will get the
benefit.

Thanks in advance.
--
Shaun

[Jay Freedman]

I don't know of anything else. Word doesn't provide any out-of-the-box
functionality like the one you asked for, and _the_ mechanism for providing
new functionality is macro programming. If you can't accept that, you have
no solution.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Shaun wrote:
> Thanks Jay, again you have provided a very good solution, but the
> problem I will encounter is as you have pointed out, that a macro may
> not "Just Work" on all computers unless activated to view them. I
> know that one could say to activate them, but we are talking about
> thousands of users, a large amount of which are not computer savy and
> just want to fill out the form.
>
> Can it be achieved in any other way??
>
> I know I'm asking the world, but if I can do it then many will get the
> benefit.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>