Reveal Codes in MS Word?

[dizzle]

I am used to WordPerfect at work which has a reveal codes feature. I heard that this is not part of Word. Is that true? Is there anyway around that cause that really stinks for secretaries.

[prgmrdave]

MS Word doesn't have codes, so there's no way to reveal them.

WordPerfect thinks in terms of how the text is presented (show the next words in the document as boldface), but Word thinks in terms of the text itself (this text is boldface). What you see is what you get. (Hm, I wonder if there's a cool acronym waiting in there? :smile:)

What is it that Word is making it unnecessarily hard to accomplish?

[prgmrdave]

[dizzle]

I am a tech idiot so I didn't understand a thing of that. To me the end user it appears the same, but sometimes there is a wierd formatting command that is impossible to figure out, and the only way as a secretary they do it is by reveal codes. Word is much hated amongst secretaries for this reason. At the law office where I work, there are threats of resignation if we switch to Word.

[Solly]

DD, I have sent your request over to one of our own legal secs; they use word.

[$cirisme]

I am a tech idiot so I didn't understand a thing of that. To me the end user it appears the same, but sometimes there is a wierd formatting command that is impossible to figure out, and the only way as a secretary they do it is by reveal codes. Word is much hated amongst secretaries for this reason. At the law office where I work, there are threats of resignation if we switch to Word.

Basically what Dave is saying is that WordPerfect and Word work in two entirely different ways. There are no codes in Word, but there are codes in WordPerfect.

[dizzle]

But that stinks. I don't like that.

[The Laughing Man]

Hee hee hee! When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about those lame "9/11" messages supposedly found in Word or Works or some other program.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion. :duh:

[$cirisme]

WORD stinks.

Office stinks.

M$oft stinks.

Any questions? :brow:

[Solly]

DD's a Luddite!!

That's progress DD; we have moved on from punch cards and ticker tape.

[dizzle]

Sigh.

[Solly]

The secretary told me that there is a reveal code, and a WP equivelant. But she doesn't need to use it.

[Solly]

it gives you this:

[dizzle]

Hey thanks Solly, I brought the Secretary over here to look at it though which just resulted in much snorting because although that does show the formatting, it does let you actually go into the codes and delete wierd thngs that the night transcriptionist did just to annoy the secretaries (like hitting 10,000 spaces instead of the tab key).....

[Solly]

Hmmm, I've had a look around, and although there is a document format view which shows things like new para marks and such, there is nothing that reveals spaces.
I seem to recall that the older version of word put a para mark at the end of the line so that you would be able to see such. But there is certainly no readily accessible format viewer that would tell you that info.

Sack the night trascriptionists!!

[dublczek]

I'm not sure which version of MS Word you are using, but if you click on Tools/Options/View, click on the formatting you want to appear in the document.

[prgmrdave]

If you want to see space characters, click the paragraph mark on the toolbar (the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-*).

You can also go to Tools->Options, and on the View tab you can select which formatting marks you want to see.

And the only reason you can sorta get away with calling yourself a "tech idiot" is that you have so many other important things like Neo-Hymanaeism (sp?) flitting about in there to bother with bowing to the almighty computer. :smile:

[johnransom]

The Office XP version works even better. Same keystrokes to enable it, but once it's up, it stays up until you close it and changes as you move the cursor around. It can also compare formatting of two pieces of text and change format from within the reveal panel. It looks like this (if a little distorted coz I had to shrink the gif):