Word to Writer - part 3 - Fields (variables)

After my intro update the other night, I sat down that evening on my home computer and worked through some of things I was anticipating to be problematic - with the intention of re-familiarising myself with the specific problems I was having and then starting to identify some helpful websites that may have the answers, or at least some helpful hints.

As it turned out, either version 3.1.0 has made a whole lot of improvements from last time I tried to use Writer in any seriousness, or I actually learnt quite a bit last time around but just hadn't realised. My suspicion is that's a combination of the two. If I write up everything I went through, I'll be here all night, and I'll lose you in the fine print, so I'll just cover one aspect per post.

For your reading pleasure, the topic of the night is.....

Fields
Seriously - OOW seems to do this soooo much better than Word, once you know how. But lets face it, file | properties | fields is hardly intuitive now is it? (nor is Insert | Text | QuickParts | Fields as it is now located in word 2007 - that took a while to find! And Quick Parts???? Is that kind of like, ok, no, this is a family show).

Define A Field

1. Insert | Fields | Other (or Ctrl+F2)
2. Click the variables tab
3. Under Type, select User Field
4. Select a format (data type) (if you need a date, you can use the 'additional formats' option)
5. Down the bottom, give the variable (Field in Word speak) a Name, and then a Value, and then click on the tick.

If you're not ready to insert it, no problem, just click the close button.

To Insert a Field
When you reach a point in your document where you want to insert the field/variable:

1. Hit ctrl+f2
2. Click the name of the variable/field you want
3. Click insert (or double click the variable name)

Update A Field
And this is the bit I REALLY love about the way OOW does this.
If you need to change the contents of a field, say it's your name and you decide you want to include your middle initial: (and see below for tonight's revelation on a MUCH easier way to do this).

1. Ctrl+F2
2. Click the variable in the Name column
3. Down the bottom, change the Value, click the tick.

That's IT. Every single instance of the field will be updated throughout your entire document. No farting around with Ctrl+A, F9 then going into headers & footers and doing the same, and repeat for every different section header/footer containing the field. Update the value. That's it. Why was I so accepting of the hoops that Word made me jump through to do this????

OH MY GOD! It gets better!!!

I just went back to my test document, found a field, and I double clicked it - and now I can just update the value. Brilliant. And seriously, I am usually really really really hard to impress when it comes to software.

Also, after double clicking a field in a document, you can use the < > buttons to step through every instance of the field in the document. Bliss.

Next topic coming up some time during the week. It'll either be outline numbering, or the fascinating task of changing the orientation of a page in the middle of a document.