import Word comments

[pdenchfield]

I have pages and pages of release note issues in Word, with each tiny issue tracked by Word comment. Is there a way to import those Word comments into Flare?

[SteveS]

You can review the comments in the reviewing pane in Word. From there you can copy the comments to the clipboard and make a new Word document (or, I guess HTML document in Flare).

This will list the comments, not integrate them with the Word document.

Not sure if this is what you want...

[pdenchfield]

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. Unfortunately, I need to retain the comment integration with the related release-notes issue. Maybe someone knows a way!

[SteveS]

Saving as HTML from Word creates popups of the comments...

Any help?

Of course, you'd have to weigh up the value of HTML created by Word (unless you can run it through DreamWeaver to clean up Word's HTML).

HTH

[pdenchfield]

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve! I tried your suggestion but am currently lacking a tool (such as Dreamweaver) to clean up the HTML formatting output by Word. Good idea, though. Wonder what other good ideas are out there!

[GregStenhouse]

You can save the word doc as text. This will place the reviewer's initial next to the text as [...1], [...2] etc and place all the comments at the end of the file. Then just copy and paste the text.

Another option, if you have Acrobat, might be to print to postscript, and select "Document showing markup". Then distill to PDF, and try the various "Save As" options from Acrobat, such as HTML, RTF etc - or copy and paste from the PDF.

Finally, you could also try opening the word doc in OpenOffice.org's Writer. I think Writer has a lot more Save As options, and may have better support for showing/saving comments inline as plain text.

Whatever you do, I expect you'll end up with a fair amount of clean up in Flare.

Cheers
Greg

[wclass]

Do you want to import the whole document, with the comments with the paragraphs they relate to? Or do you just want the comments?

Here is an idea.
You could do a bit of macro processing on the Word document to extract the comment and make it ordinary text - then import that as per normal. Luckily, I have an example ...

This macro searches for each comment, and then writes it as a paragraph in a style called "showComments" - you would have to create that style yourself (macro does not extend that far). This means that when you import the document you can assign the comment paragraphs to a style that can be hidden in the output.

Code: Select all

Sub extractComments()
' for each comment, convert to paragraph text with style "showComments"

Dim oComm As Comment
Dim cText As String
Dim tRng As Range
Dim pos As Long

Debug.Print ActiveDocument.Comments.Count

For Each oComm In ActiveDocument.Comments
    Debug.Print oComm.Index, oComm.Author, oComm.Range.Text
    cText = oComm.Range.Text
    pos = oComm.Scope.End
    Set tRng = ActiveDocument.Range(Start:=pos, End:=pos)
    tRng.Select
    Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1
    Selection.Collapse direction:=wdCollapseEnd
    Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=-1

    Selection.TypeParagraph
    Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("showComments")
    Selection.TypeText "Comment: " & oComm.Index & " " & cText
'    Selection.TypeParagraph
    
Next

MsgBox "Total comments: " & ActiveDocument.Comments.Count, vbOKOnly, "Convert Comments"

End Sub

And if you need to get rid of these comment paragraphs, here is a removal macro ...

Code: Select all

Sub ClearCommentsText()

        Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
        Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("showComments")
        Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
        With Selection.Find
            .Text = ""
            .Replacement.Text = ""
            .Forward = True
            .Wrap = wdFindContinue
            .Format = True
            .MatchCase = False
            .MatchWholeWord = False
            .MatchWildcards = False
            .MatchSoundsLike = False
            .MatchAllWordForms = False
        End With
        Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

End Sub

[Madcap Guru]

Looks like that would be a great Knowledge base article, Hint Hint, Ryan, Alvaro