Header/footer

Hi Helen

Thank you for your question. I'm going to work through some ideas and come back to you with a suggestion. I think the bookmark feature and associated bookmark field may prove helpful.

Kind regards,
Andrew

Hi Helen

Thank you for being so patient. I think I may have found an answer for you.

To make this work requires a couple of steps but it's worth the preparation as it avoids the use of VBA code and will automatically populate your header with text from the body of your document.

To make all this work we need the following:
A custom character style
A macro field (that shows the user where to enter the reference for the document)
A field in the header that displays the reference


So first things first being to create your document as far as typing in a dummy reference number.

Select your reference number and apply any formatting you need then, with it still selected, go to Format > Styles and Formatting and from the Task Pane that appears on the right click New Style.

We will create a style just for the reference of your document. This style might look exactly the same as the rest of your text but Word will be able to locate this style and repeat in the header anything formatted using this style

Give your style a name (e.g. myrefstyle)
Set the type of style to Character (rather than paragraph)
and click then OK.

Next we are going to replace the dummy reference you created with a special field. This is optional but it makes life easier when using this template.

Highlight your reference and delete it. Leaving your cursor in position go to Insert > Field and from the list select the field called Macrobutton. Before you click OK click into the cell called "Display Text" and enter something along the lines of Please type your doc ref here
Click OK and you will find the text you entered displayed where the reference used to be.

*single" click on this new text and it will highlight the whole phrase. Apply the style you created to this phrase.

Click in a blank part of your document to clear the highlight. Be careful not to click on the phrase again. It's designed so a user working with this document can click it once then type (in this case a reference) and the prompt text will vanish to be replaced by the user's input. Importantly for us it will also ensure the new text is styled with the custom style you created.

Finally, to bring all these elements together edit your header (View > Header and Footer)

In your header Type in the text that should include the doc reference e.g. Document Reference:

At the end of this text we are going to insert another field so go to Insert > Field and this time choose the field called StyleRef. As soon as you select StyleRef from the list the dialog box will show you styles in use in the document. You should be able to select the custom style (myreftstyle) you created earlier. Select it, click on OK and we are set.

Save your document. You might want to save it as a template (File >Save As then set the type to template) then make a new document from the template.

Either way you can now single click on the prompt text "Please type your doc ref here" and type your reference number. This will immediately appear at the point in the header where you inserted the StyleRef field.

If you want to bypass the clickable prompt text just tell your users to format the doc ref with your custom style and it will appear in the header.

Apologies for the long list of instructions but let me know how you get on and if this might work for you.

Kind regards,

Andrew