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Old 10-13-2010, 09:26 AM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Default Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007

It would help me greatly if I could somehow make categories for large sections of text, interspersed throughout a large document, so that I can easily delete all sections relating to a specific category by simply removing the category itself, rather than go through the document and delete each section individually. For example, if I had a document with a whole bunch of recipes, and there were recipes for steaks and chicken, but also other recipes without meats, could I label all sections of the document relating to meats (which are interspersed throughout the document) as a "meats" category. Then, say if I wanted to send the document to my vegetarian friend, who obviously doesn't want me to include the recipes with meats, I can easily just remove the "meats" category and all recipes under that category are suddenly deleted. I would prefer not to use VB or macros of any sort, since I'm preparing a document for someone who likely has no understanding of how to use them. Thank you and I hope there's an easy fix for this!
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Old 10-19-2010, 07:14 AM
Ulodesk Ulodesk is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Other than naming sections with a heading label that would allow you to easily identify and delete them in Outline view, the only other idea that occurs to me, is using a separate Style. If you are not familiar with styles, you'll need to look up this option in Help, but here's a starter:

Everything you enter in a Word document has a style attached. A style is a group of formats applied all together; a little package of formats with a label on it. If you open Word "out of the box", and simply begin typing, your words will be in Normal style.

If you don't apply other styles, that's what you get. Let's say that's the case, and it's 11 pt Times New Roman font, with "automatic" as the color applied. You can create another style that looks exactly the same but has a different name. (Look up creating styles from existing ones.) Apply this new style to the sections you wish to be able to delete easily.

When you need to delete, use Word's Find and Replace to replace that style with nothing. (Again, look up replacing styles.)
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Old 10-19-2010, 08:48 AM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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I've checked on a number of different forums and sites, and aside from outline view, like you mentioned, and possibly styles (one guy mentioned using quick parts, but I see no way how that could help), the big issue is that in a long document, any of these methods are still time-consuming work, which is exactly what I was trying to eliminate. So far the best answer I've gotten from experts is that MS Word simply doesn't have an option for what I'm looking for, which is odd to me because I know that Excel has that exact feature, a couple times over actually. I guess there's just not as much work put into the functionality of Word as Excel, but then again given how they're usually used, that shouldn't really surprise me. Thank you for the response, and the help though!
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Old 10-20-2010, 06:37 AM
Kimberly Kimberly is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2010 (Version 14.0)
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Quote:
I know that Excel has that exact feature, a couple times over actually.
How do you do it in Excel?
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Old 10-20-2010, 09:00 AM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kimberly View Post
How do you do it in Excel?
The easiest way that I know would be the query function. You can make a seperate column for categorizing information, and then add or remove categories at will. I remember there are other ways, but I'd have to play around with Excel again to remember, and query is probably more efficient anyways.
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Old 10-20-2010, 02:20 PM
Kimberly Kimberly is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2010 (Version 14.0)
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Just wondering what feature you were talking about... I was concerned I might be misunderstanding the original question.

In any software product, you would have to provide a criteria for the removal of the text... you want portions of the document deleted if they meet some condition. But what condition? I'm with Ulodesk... create a style for each category and apply the styles as you go. What could be easier than selecting text and clicking a "category" (style name)?

Then you can replace all text with the Meat "category" with empty strings.

I think in Word, it might be easier than Excel, because in Word you can replace with empty strings, but it takes code to delete worksheet rows.
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Old 10-20-2010, 02:46 PM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Well, I suppose query in Excel isn't the EXACT same thing, but it gets the same thing accomplished. In Excel I can have a list of items, and just add an extra column with categories. Then I can query out the categories that I don't want and bam, the spreadsheet has everything I want and nothing I don't.

In word, I was hoping for some function, maybe buried in the program somewhere, that let me simply highlight, say, a paragraph. I could then say that that paragraph belongs in "Category 1" (I'll just call it that, but theoretically if such a feature existed, it should have a category manager where you could add and delete custom categories). I can then repeat this precess for any number of paragraphs, adding them to "Category 1". This category would act as the criterion that you speak of. The condition that I'm talking about would be belonging to the category itself. Categorizing the text would have to be done manually, but at least it would only have to be done once.

If my document was 100 or more pages, going through and deleting those paragraphs individually would be a pain, and even if different styles would work (and I still have no reason to suspect that they do), then I'd still end up with each category of paragraph looking totally different (due to the nature of different styles).

What I'd like would be to categorize all those paragraphs, and, if possible, delete them all simultaneously by going to the category manager (which doesn't exist, to my knowledge) and deleting the category. It doesn't even have to be deleting (although that is what I'd like to actually do). A category manager as described here would be able to select all categorized text and apply a specific style (much like the current system already does, except that this would not be for a section of text, but an entire category).

I think the real problem is that what I'd like to do, I'd like to do to a number of different paragraphs randomly dispersed throughout a large document.

Sorry that was a bit long, but hopefully that makes my question more clear. As for what you suggested, I'm not sure what Ulodesk is (never heard of it).

-----WAIT-----

I was messing around more with styles as you suggested, and I think that I figured out what you were talking about. I'd delete the above text, but some of it may still help you understand my concern, and I really don't want to go through and rewrite what makes sense and what doesn't anymore.

I found out by messing around with styles (as both of you had suggested) that you can right-click a style on the Word 2007 ribbon and simultaneously select every instance of that style (would have thought I'd have seen that before...). Okay, the hard part's over, but one concern still. Is it possible to make a bunch of styles that look EXACTLY the same (same font, size color, etc.) but is still recognized by Word as different styles?

I italicized rather than struck through the text, because I couldn't find strike-through on these font options in this forum (ironic, considering the forum). I tested it, indeed you can save new styles that all look like one another, except that Word calls them "Quick Styles", and they don't seem to exist after I close word. Can I permanently save a new style in Word? If so, how? Also, if I CAN permanently save a new style, what would happen if I opened that document on another computer with Word 2007? Does the document itself save the style, and it would show up with those styles already available (much like PDFs keep fonts over multiple systems because they build a font table), or would it not save the styles and I'd be stuck doing this on one computer?

Oh, and thank you so much, for both of your suggestions and help!
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Old 10-20-2010, 03:18 PM
Kimberly Kimberly is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2010 (Version 14.0)
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Yes, we are talking about making identical styles that have different names... names that match your categories.

After you close and re-open Word, the styles should still be available when you open that document, but by default not in other docs. To make a style available to other documents:
Either click the Modify button as you are making the style, or after you make the style, right-click on the style name and choose Modify. In the lower-left of the dialog box is an option "New documents based on this template". When you close Word, you might be prompted to save the changes to the template.

You can select all text that has that style and press Delete, or you can use the Replace tool on the Home tab to remove the text that is of a style... (In the Replace dialog box, with the insertion point in the "find what" box, click the More button then the Format button then click Style and choose your style to delete. Leave the Replace with box blank. Click Replace All.)
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Old 10-20-2010, 03:25 PM
Kimberly Kimberly is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2010 (Version 14.0)
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I don't know if this will help, but you can modify a style so the text doesn't print. Then you can print the doc without the undesired text, but without actually deleting it from your file. You can modify the style back when done.
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Old 10-25-2010, 02:12 PM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Yay, I finally completely get and understand what you are saying, and I am able to delete "categories" (I'm still calling them that) using styles. Only one problem left (it's always something, isn't it?).

Once again, I still think that MS Word would be improved with the categories tool that I suggested earlier, because although styles do work for what we've been talking about, it's a little complex (at least for me) and more importantly, it has at least one big drawback, as I'm finding out now.

Alright, so I can make different styles that all look the same and select the specific section of text that I manually label as a specific style by right-clicking on that style in the menu and selecting all of that style. Good and all, but I want to take that further. Styles are just that, a style. When you use a style, everything in that style looks the same. If the style is underlined, everything in that style will be underlined, bold will be bold, etc. What if the selection I want is partially underlined, and partially not? And partially bold and partially not? And some text is blue, and some is highlighted? Going back to the recipes document, styles still don't seem to work in this regard because if I make the style "meats", then ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in that section has to be the exact same style. It's either all underlined or none of it is. Now yes, I could make two styles, one for "meats - underlined", and one for "meats - normal", but then I also may need to add "meats - bold", and "meats - underlined and bold", the list goes on. It defeats the entire purpose, which was to save me time. Once again, I think that the only real solution would be a category manager. Does any other program (i.e OpenOffice, Adobe Acrobat, etc.) have any similar feature to what I'm looking for?

It feels like I keep asking for more and more, but then I think about it, and the biggest factor in adding features to a program is user demand, so hopefully I'm doing Microsoft a favor by pushing the limits of their program, even if it's not in a particularly interesting way. If indeed it turns out that I can't do what I'd like, I'm definitely going to let Microsoft know what I'd like in their next revision.
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Old 10-25-2010, 03:01 PM
Kimberly Kimberly is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows 7 Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2010 (Version 14.0)
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Quote:
What if the selection I want is partially underlined, and partially not? And partially bold and partially not? And some text is blue, and some is highlighted?
Then select the desired text and format it using the Ribbon. It will still be included in the selection when you choose to select all text of that style. You can pile on more formats on text that has a style applied without the additional formatting being part of the style.
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Old 10-26-2010, 09:42 AM
BLM1234 BLM1234 is offline Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Windows Vista Categorizing Text in Microsoft Word 2007 Office 2007
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Thank you SO MUCH! It sure worked alright. Still some problems (for example, when I select all instances of the style and try to delete them, it doesn't delete tables), but they are very minor problems and the bulk of what I needed is done. Thank you immensely.
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