Fixing bookmarks for Word?

[BobHughes]

I need to do a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between Nisus and Word (for why, see below).

I've saved the document as a .doc. When I pick it up in Word, most of the cross-references (to bookmarked sections) no longer work. That seems to be because Word doesn't allow non-text characters in bookmarks, whereas my excellent Nisus bookmarks have spaces, hyphens and all sorts of other useful luxuries.

Q1: is there a quick 'n' easy way to Wordify my Nisus bookmarks and cross-references all in one go?
Q2: Has anyone got any useful protocols for working between Nisus and Word?

I am working on the gargantuan first draft of a book, and Word's ability to open multiple windows on the same document is really, really useful for shifting chunks of text around when I reorganise it. I'd like to use Word for that purpose some of the time, and dive back into Nisus for the main writing work. (A separate thread, really, but I want to get back to the writing).

Any thoughts?

Bob Hughes

[xiamenese]

I need to do a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between Nisus and Word (for why, see below).

I've saved the document as a .doc. When I pick it up in Word, most of the cross-references (to bookmarked sections) no longer work. That seems to be because Word doesn't allow non-text characters in bookmarks, whereas my excellent Nisus bookmarks have spaces, hyphens and all sorts of other useful luxuries.

Q1: is there a quick 'n' easy way to Wordify my Nisus bookmarks and cross-references all in one go?
Q2: Has anyone got any useful protocols for working between Nisus and Word?

I am working on the gargantuan first draft of a book, and Word's ability to open multiple windows on the same document is really, really useful for shifting chunks of text around when I reorganise it. I'd like to use Word for that purpose some of the time, and dive back into Nisus for the main writing work. (A separate thread, really, but I want to get back to the writing).

Any thoughts?

Are you "Saving" as Word from the <Save> menu option? That gives you RTF with a changed creator code. Have you tried exportin to Word from lower down the <File> menu as that creates a Word binary doc?

Mark

Bob Hughes

[BobHughes]

Mark asks:

Are you "Saving" as Word from the <Save> menu option? That gives you RTF with a changed creator code. Have you tried exportin to Word from lower down the <File> menu as that creates a Word binary doc?

I've tried it both ways (and done "update all fields"). The 'save-as' option seems to produce a slightly better result, but neither can handle bookmark names that include spaces. A hyphen in one of the names seems to cause no problem but I read somewhere that only text characters are allowed.

Cross-refs to bookmarks that contain spaces produce:

Error! Bookmark not defined.

If I do "Toggle field code", I find that spaces have been replaced with underscores.

So it appears to be a question of trawling through all my bookmarks (about 100 of them) to remove spaces before exporting. Is there an easy way to do that?

All the best,

Bob

[martin]

Hi Bob- which version of Word are you using? I just tested some bookmark names with space characters and they come through (cross-references and all) in Word just fine.

Also, although Mark already asked about it, I want to make sure on this point: are you saving your file using the RTF file format? That will always produce the best results when transferring files to/from Word.

[BobHughes]

I'm using Word 2004, v 11.1. and I've exported as .doc, 'saved as' .doc and saved a copy as .rtf.

All seem to work more or less; rtf seems a bit better than .doc; but none of them seems very happy with my verbose and self-explanatory Nisus bookmarks. Spaces seem to be a no-no. I'm trawling through them, shortening them all, which is a bit annoying but there we go ...

How long are the bookmarks you're using?

B

[martin]

Thanks for the additional information Bob. I just tried some very long bookmark names with spaces (eg: "This is a very long bookmark name with spaces and run on sentences that keep going and going, why won't it stop"), and it came through intact in Word.

However, once I add a single regular hyphen to any bookmark name, the cross-references using that bookmark are no longer connected. I tried some other more exotic dashes (eg: non-breaking hyphen, em dash, etc) and they too prevent Word from preserving bookmarks and cross-references. So it looks like this is something we'll have to get fixed.

So it appears to be a question of trawling through all my bookmarks (about 100 of them) to remove spaces before exporting. Is there an easy way to do that?

Unfortunately macros don't yet have this capability, so the best I can recommend is to open up the Navigator pane, set it to Bookmark mode, and skim through looking for dashes. Sorry for the busy work and hassle.

[BobHughes]

Many thanks. That's really helpful.

B