PRIME 97 for Word 97 is PRIME Consulting Group's latest Office add-in for Word 97. PRIME add-ins have a rich history, going back to the halcyon days before Office was Office. In fact, the very first version of PRIME ever published was designed for Word 1.1, released in 1991.
For the next few issues we'll be highlighting one PRIME 97 utility per issue. Let's kick off this series with Bookmark Manager.
Bookmark Manager goes far beyond Word's native user interface and reporting capabilities for bookmarks. Bookmark Manager displays a dialog box containing the following controls:
Bookmark Names -- alphabetical list of all bookmarks
Rename to -- a text box for renaming any bookmark
Bookmark Contents -- a text box showing the bookmark's contents
Statistics frame -- dynamically reports statistics for the bookmark selected in the Bookmark Names list control: character count, section and page number, bookmark number (name order), and bookmark number (location order)
Command buttons -- a variety of command buttons we'll discuss shortly
One of the many neat things about Bookmark Manager is that you can use your mouse or arrow keys to browse the document's list of bookmarks and see the dialog dynamically and instantly update itself, displaying the contents and statistics for each bookmark as you select it.
If you need to see precisely where a bookmark is inside the document, just click the Goto Now & Wait button and your cursor jumps right there, leaving the dialog running. (You can click the Goto Now & Close button to jump to the desired bookmark and exit Bookmark Manager.)
In Word, if you want to rename a bookmark you have to delete it and recreate it, a clumsy and error-prone process involving seven mouse stokes. With Bookmark Manager this is as simple as selecting the bookmark to be renamed, typing a new name, and clicking the Rename button. Bookmark Manager also makes it a one- click operation to delete a bookmark. After the deletion, the dialog box automatically updates its list of, and statistics for, the remaining bookmarks.
Log All is perhaps Bookmark Manager's most innovative feature. Word has no provision for listing bookmarks and their contents by name or location. Bookmark Manager's Log All does this and more. It works through the current document and produces, in a separate log document that you can save or print, a table of the following information: name order, location order, character count, section number, page number, name, and the contents -- including formatting! So you can easily see how your documents and templates are organized, even sorting by name or location order, page, section, and so on. This is a powerful tool for folks who develop, use, or debug Word online form templates, since you can instantly inventory all your form fields and sort them any which way, all without disrupting your master document or template (since the log is a separate document).
If you click the Redefine Contents button you can change any bookmark's text contents right inside the dialog. You can also use the Toggle Bookmarks button to do in one click what takes four in Word (Tools / Options / View / Bookmarks / OK). There's plentiful online Help, too.
The majority of Bookmark Manager's features simply are not
available in any form or fashion in Word. PRIME 97's Bookmark
Manager is the Swiss army knife for Word bookmarks. Check out a
free 30-day trial at
http://www.primeconsulting.com/software/p97wd.html
or order your copy via our secure server at
