|
[Use your browser's BACK button to return to the PRIME FAQ Page or click here if you came directly to this page.]
We wrote this FAQ to answer the many questions we receive on this topic from our clients and other inquiring minds in the many electronic communities we frequent.
This FAQ is taken from Word 97 Annoyances (by Woody Leonhard, Lee Hudspeth, and T.J. Lee; ISBN 1-56592-308-1; O'Reilly and Associates). For additional information on this title, visit our site's page http://www.primeconsulting.com/annoyances.
Click here to order Word 97 Annoyances from Amazon.
The Word Letter Wizard rates as a marvelous idea fallen victim to very poor implementation. A list of the Wizard's major shortcomings would easily double the size of this chapter. In general, the intent is to give you a general helper-a Wizard-that will step you through the basics of creating a letter that conforms to your specifications. You can get the Letter Wizard going by clicking on Tools, then Letter Wizard. Or if you skipped our advice in Chapter 3, Office Bob will pop up every time you type "Dear Such-and-So" and offer to put you in the Letter Wizard.
If you find that the Letter Wizard saves you more time than it consumes-and that's a big if-there are two crucial little things that Microsoft neglected to mention in on-line help. Actually, neither Office Bob nor standard Word Help say anything about customizing the contents of the letter wizard. Given the basic stupidity of the wizard, one can argue that whatever customizations it supports are an enormous plus, or perhaps an enormous indifference. So be it.
First, the Letter Wizard has an opening panel called the "Page design list" that gives you the option of choosing any of a number of templates on which to base your letter. At first (and second and third) glance it appears as if the templates in that list are hard-coded into the Wizard, but that isn't true. Word will put your templates in the Page design list only when:
In Figure 7-39, the templates _P.I. Letterhead.dot and _Tibetan Children's Fund Letter.dot made the cut, along with all the "Letter" templates that ship with Word. If you were to choose either of those templates, the Letter Wizard would use the template when creating the letter. Well, that's a bit hasty. In point of fact, the Letter Wizard doesn't use much of the template at all. Which brings us to the second point.
Even if you get your template on the Page design list, the Letter Wizard ignores everything about it, unless you check the Include header and footer with page design box on the Letter Format tab of the Wizard.
Of course, your template must contain "real" headers and footers for them to come across.
Our best advice for the Letter Wizard: forget about it.
Some day somebody will build a real Letter Wizard. The world will beat a path to their door. Then Microsoft will "borrow" key parts of it for inclusion in the next version of Word.
|
Return to Top