[comp.windows.ms] Positioning Paragraphs in Winword,

oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (Richard Oppenheimer) (10/21/90)

I think what you are looking for ( and I may be misinterpreting this) is the
paragraph position feature. This is only available to defined styles. (I sent
someone email that I thought this could be done through a simple
Format-Paragraph, but it can not) If you select Format-Define_Styles, you get
a dialog box that has a button called position. This allows you to specify
the vertical and horizontal positions of the paragraph relative to the margin,
page or column. 

I think you should look at this feature and RTM about it. One thing you will
have to do is set this up in advance for your forms, but since this is a
repetitve task you would have wanted to do this anyway. Each entry field on
your preprinted forms will have to have a style defined for it do that the
unique position can be set. The nice thing is that once you set up your 
style sheet, you won't have to play with it again. You could even write a
macro that would ask for the field information and assign it the correct
style and then automatically print it and save it. Or you could use the 
"fill-in" field feature and just open a new doc with that style sheet, choose
File-Print with the update fields option selected and before it is printed
you will be prompted to fill in the fields. Then it will print it and you can
save it.

These are really neat features. Let me know how you fair.

Richard.


-- 
Computer Science Center		Richard Oppenheimer
University of Maryland		oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (office)
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****** My employer cares not what I think and knows not what I say. ********

strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) (10/26/90)

oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (Richard Oppenheimer) writes:

>I think what you are looking for ( and I may be misinterpreting this) is the
>paragraph position feature. This is only available to defined styles.

No, I am looking for how to avoid that all my text which is not nailed to
a fixed position with the paragraph position feature, i.e. which has
the standard positioning attributes, floats and covers all the space
on the page which is between the margins and which isn't covered by
the positioned elements, already. 

I already reported my failed attempt to work around this (by covering
free space on the page where I don't want my floating text to float
in with empty, positioned paragraps), in my message you are refering
to. At least in the WfW-version I am using (i.e. 1.0 German) this does
not work reliable, because of the undefined order of how WfW repaints
overlapping, stacked paragraphs. Sometimes the empty placeholder
paragraph overpaints the paragraph which has the text content, some
times it doesn't. WfW 1.1 seems to be available in the US already.
Does it have the same bug?

> (short description of how to find the "Format Position" command omitted)
>I think you should look at this feature and RTM about it. One thing you will

The only thing my FM tells me is "as soon as you have positioned an
element, all text which is not positioned will be placed around the
positioned elements" (sorry for the ugly translation).

This is not what I want. I want my text to be placed around the
positioned elements, BUT I WANT IT TO START AT A CERTAIN POSITION, NOT
AT THE FIRST FREE SPACE ON THE PAGE. I want to start the body text of my
letter template at a fixed position, float around pictures, continue on
the next page. I don't want the position of the letter text depend on
the number of lines somebody types into the address field. I *do* want
to place something on the right of the address field, but I don't
want the letter text go there.

I haven't found a way to do that. Do you?

Wolfgang Strobl
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