Hello,



I am looking for a way to associate metadata to sections of text in MS Word. The metadata consists of keyword lists and free-text fields. The purpose of the metadata is to discover sections of text in very long and complex documents using a separate application.

This custom software would extract metadata, full-text and structural information from the Word document, and insert it into a database which powers a search engine.

I am looking for a way to associate the metadata to sections of text using MS Word. It appears to be important to use MS Word for both text editing and metadata input, as text changes require metadata updates and also to maintain the association of metadata to a particular section in a changing document.

An example workflow:

A new section of text with a heading 2 and some standard text is input. The section of text (heading and text?) is selected and then a button "add metadata" is pressed which opens a form that assists the editor with metadata input (dropdowns etc.).
The metadata is stored inside the Word document and its presence somehow visible in MS word.
Updating existing metadata is possible using a similar form.
The metadata is not shown in the final version of the text, but it can be extracted using a custom script processing the XML.

I was wondering if such a thing could be implemented using MS Word on-board means and/or a plugin.

best regards and thanks
Kurt

Sounds like a job for document variables. While it is probably not a good idea to assign large amounts of text to document variables values, you certainly could:

1. assign a bookmark to a big chunk of text (including a heading)
2. assign the bookmark name to a document variable

It would then be easy to identify, or retrieve, the chunk using bookmarks.
That is precisely what bookmarks do; they are named ranges.

I think I need more flexibility than what document variables offer, but maybe I'm wrong.
The way I understand document variables is that one externally defined value is inserted at the document variables place, such as the author's name or so.
What I require is the ability to select upon insertion of the field/document variable one or more values from a list of keywords and to store these in the document. What is more, there may be multiple keyword lists and also some free-text fields.
The process should be easy enough so that a document editor can also maintain the associated metadata through Word.

Perhaps I would have to develop a plugin that opens a form where the metadata is captured and which then stores the metadata in a field/document variable.
Would that be a feasible approach?

thanks
Kurt

Not sure if I am following you, but you might want to look at the idea of mapped content controls. See Mapped Content Controls.

Not sure what you mean by free text fields.

Document variables do not have a place. they are simply variables. They are strings containing whatever you like. You could piece together multiple entries (for whatever purpose) and then parse out those entries (for whatever purpose). They never show in the document, and they never show in the Properties (unlike Author for example).

I am quite unclear about what it is exactly you want to capture.