How to create 2 independent columns (one for marginal notes)

[PaulTricheco]

dear all,


I need to create 2 different columns which have to be independent. In the first I will put my text whereas in the second some comments/short summaries (like some manuals).

I've already tried using a 2 columns table but my document is almost 400 pages, full of tables, graphs, paragraphs and so on and it becomes very slow and crashes a lot.

Other options??

thanks you!

[JimP]

Creating a table to become your 2 independent columns is an option...

[PaulTricheco]

As I wrote..I've already tried but everything become slow and crash ( and it is not an hardaware inadequacy)...I am wonder if there is a more straighforward method to deal with this issues .. otherwise it is a quite serious lack :-(

[PaulTricheco]

maybe there is any plug-in or add-on to do this?

[Charles Kenyon]

No Add-Ins or Plug-Ins to do this. You might want to limit the size of your tables to a page or three.
Tables

One other way to speed up your document would be to use Styles exclusively for your formatting. Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

You may also want to consider using Picture Placeholders for your images.

Do you, by any chance, have track changes turned on?

[PaulTricheco]

gosh...no way to limit my tabs to 3 pages... I am looking to a professional edited document. There is one summary, 3 different indexes, tons of graphs and picture, 5 levels of pparagraphs, a plenty of cross-references, the hyperlinks by mendely cit manager...I am around 400 pages...maybe I am bringing Word to its limit...anyway it seems to me quite an easy and useful function to implement (see attachment to understand what I mean)... using tables can work for easy tasks, non for sure in cases like mine... so sad

[Charles Kenyon]

You may be bringing a Table to its limits. Word can and does handle much larger an more complex documents.

First, are you using Styles exclusively for formatting your text?
Second, you could use text boxes in the margin for your tab notes. These can be anchored to the text and need not have any border. This might do away with the need for the tables altogether. It would make your document much more manageable.
Third, why can you not end a table and start a new one? If you have tables going on and on, it stretches the construct. I am guessing you have tables spanning more than ten pages that simply hold text.

and, from my last post... Do you have track changes turned on?

[PaulTricheco]

maybe if I create a model whit a text box on the right...how can I use it for all the pages?

[Charles Kenyon]

Create the text box you want. Save it as AutoText or as a Text Box Building Block. (I think AutoText would be better because you can use a shortcut to insert.) To save an AutoText entry (or other building block) in a template, select it and press Alt+F3.
Automated Boilerplate Using Microsoft Word

If you name your AutoText entry "mytb" you will can type, as a separate word, "mytb" and press the F3 key to create another text box for you to type in. That text box will be anchored to the paragraph you were in when you pressed F3.

[Charles Kenyon]

By the way, I do not know that a Table can't handle this. I just know that even trying to do it interferes in major ways with things like section breaks and other things that make it much easier to format a large project.

According to Paul Edstein, whom I trust, the maximum number of characters for a single table cell is 2^25 (about 32,000,000).

[PaulTricheco]

your solution with the text blocks seems working....ok, it is not very intuitive but I realize that is the best way to do it..

Thanks!!

[macropod]

Originally Posted by Charles Kenyon

According to Paul Edstein, whom I trust, the maximum number of characters for a single table cell is 2^25 (about 32,000,000).

Basically, it's the same as the text limit for a document, minus 2 characters.

What the OP is describing a requirement for is Margin Text, for which see: http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/MarginalTex...ueMarginalText

[Charles Kenyon]

Originally Posted by PaulTricheco

your solution with the text blocks seems working....ok, it is not very intuitive but I realize that is the best way to do it..

Thanks!!

Take a look at the page on marginal text to which Paul linked. A Style may be easier to handle than a text box. Styles can also be set to insert with a keyboard shortcut.

In Ribbon versions of Word you can find the control for adding a frame on the Developer Tab.

This can be much more flexible than a text box if you are duplexing your final result with mirror margins. It will still require manual editing but you can have one style for the left margin and another for the right. (You could have two textbox AutoText entries as well but if changing sides you would have to drag the text box into the other margin. Doing that would make it difficult to maintain constant positioning.) You can find a comparison of Textboxes and Frames here: Frames and Textboxes in Microsoft Word

Again, with larger documents, using Styles consistently for text formatting can cut out a lot of overhead in the document.