Building Blocks
Quick Parts
What happened to AutoText?
Backing up and sharing Building Blocks
Using fields with Building Blocks
Building Blocks and Quick Parts are new Word 2007 features that are consistent with the broad array of galleries that adorn many parts of the ribbon interface. The basic idea is to provide you with a menu of ready-to-use document parts that you can use to quickly develop a finished document.
Rather than slave away for hours trying each of the different formatting options to achieve the desired look, Word provides a number of ready-made document parts in which the bulk of the work has already been done for you.
Moreover, if none of the prefabricated Building Blocks suit your needs, you can modify them or design your own from scratch. Once you have slaved away, the Building Blocks feature provides a quick and easy way for you to save your work investment, by adding it to the Building Blocks Gallery. The Building Blocks feature also enables you to name and categorize the parts you create, as well as place them into any of a number of galleries.
To insert a Quick Part into your document, choose Insert
If you see what you want, click on it to insert it into the current document. Or, for more precise control over how it's inserted, right-click the item for the list of options shown in Figure 13.2.
Figure 13.1. Selections you save to the Quick Parts Gallery are displayed at the top of the Quick Parts drop-down menu.
Figure 13.2. The right-click context menu provides a number of different ways to insert a Quick Part.
Tip
If you know the name of the Quick Part or Building Blocks Gallery item you want to insert, type enough of its name so that it won't be confused with something else, and then press F3. This works the way AutoText entries did in Word 2003 and earlier (see "Whither AutoText," below). If pressing F3 doesn't insert the item, then type a little more of it. If you have two items named Calendar 1 and Calendar 2, then you'll need to type the full name of either. If one is named 1Calendar and the other is named 2Calendar, however, you can save yourself some typing by entering only 1c or 2c (unless you have other gallery items that begin with those names). Note that F3 works on all Building Block items, not just those in the AutoText Gallery.
Are you confused about the distinction between Quick Parts and Building Blocks? Don't be. Quick Parts are a special subset of Building Blocks. If a Building Block belongs to the Quick Parts Gallery, then it will appear in the drop-down menu when you click on Quick Parts in the Insert ribbon. Items assigned to other galleries (tables, equations, headers, etc.) must be accessed using the full Building Blocks Organizer.
How do you decide what to assign to the Quick Parts Gallery? It's entirely up to you into which gallery you put something. However, you probably want to limit the Quick Parts Gallery to items you need more frequently and for which you need more flexibility regarding insertion location (see Figure 13.2), as Quick Parts offer more options than do other Building Blocks.
Warning
If you work in compatibility mode, Building Block features work in the current document only as long as it is open. If you attempt to save Building Block items to a legacy .dot file, however, it will revert to an AutoText entry, and will not appear in the Quick Parts Gallery the next time that document is opened. This might look like a bug, but it's not. Legacy .dot files do not have the means for storing and using gallery information, as that feature does not exist in the .dot file specification.
If what you want isn't in the Quick Parts Gallery, choose the Building Blocks Organizer to view the entire range of what is available, as shown in Figure 13.3. Click any of the headers—Name, Gallery, Category, or Template—to sort the list.
Click the item you want to insert and then click Insert. Note that when you insert in this way, you don't have the array of options shown in Figure 13.2. Instead, the item is inserted in the way prescribed when it was created or added to the Building Blocks Gallery.
Note
Note that some Building Blocks are automatically inserted into headers or footers (as page numbers, for example), while others are inserted at the insertion point. For Building Blocks supplied with Word, the gallery name tells you where the item will be inserted. For example, three items are named Accent Bar 1, and each is in a different gallery: Page Numbers (Bottom of Page), Page Numbers (Top of Page), and Page Numbers. There are two additional items with similar names: Accent Bar, Left and Accent Bar, Right. Those two are in the Page Numbers (Margins) Gallery.
Adding a new Quick Part or Building Block is easy. If you have text, URLs, structures (tables, pictures, charts, content controls, etc.), and so on that you frequently reuse in different documents, you can save time and effort by saving those as distinct Building Blocks or Quick Parts.
Moreover, using Building Blocks can help prevent mistakes and embarrassment. Have you ever inadvertently transposed two letters in your own company's URL? Have you ever mistyped a contract clause, leasing a building for 10 years instead of 1? By using Quick Parts, you won't risk random careless errors. Instead, you make the same consistent error each time. Well, if you insert the wrong thing into the gallery, you do; but you won't do that, will you? You will carefully proofread what you add to the gallery so you don't shoot yourself in the foot later.
Tip
Rather than create Building Blocks from scratch, open a document that contains elements that you'd like to reuse. Select the element and then add it to the appropriate gallery.
Once you've created and formatted or otherwise found something you want to save as a gallery item, select it. Then choose Insert
Figure 13.4. If you organize your building blocks when you create them, they will be easier to find and use later.
Note
The Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery command is really a misnomer. You're not saving to the Quick Parts Gallery. You're creating a new Building Block, which you optionally can save to the Quick Parts Gallery, if desired.
In the Name filed, type a name to use for the Building Block. As indicated earlier, if you have a series of items you intend to call Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3, it's better planning to call them 1Item, 2Item, and 3Item so you can use F3 shortcuts more efficiently. Note that omitting the space in the name increases the chance for creating unique and unambiguous names for quick insertion using the F3 shortcut.
In the Gallery box, choose one of the gallery names provided. To have the item appear at the top of the Quick Part drop-down menu, add it to the Quick Parts gallery. You should reserve this "privilege" for items you need frequently and for which you need insertion flexibility.
In choosing which gallery to use, make sure that you don't add items intended for a specific document area to the wrong gallery (for example, don't put a header item into the Footers gallery). You also should be consistent in order to make it easier to find things later. Note that you cannot create new gallery names. It's not a bad idea, however, to put things that are purely text into AutoText, and actual structures into the appropriate gallery (Tables, Text Boxes, Headers, Footers, and so on). Note that all Building Block items can be inserted using AutoText methods, even if they aren't in the AutoText gallery.
Using the Category box, you can add your own organizational scheme. The default single built-in category for user-created Building Blocks is General. Don't use that category. Instead, click the arrow next to General, and choose Create New Category. In the Create New Category dialog box shown in Figure 13.5, type a descriptive name that will help you stay organized. If you dump everything into General, you'll quickly find yourself with too many generals and not enough sergeants.
In the Description box, if the Building Block is a structure or non-text object of some kind, write a little about what it is and where you'd use it. If the Building Block is a text item, before you summon the Create New Building Block dialog box, it's not a bad idea to copy the text into the Clipboard, and then paste it into the Description box. The text itself can be an excellent description.
In the Save in box, the default location usually will be Building Blocks.dotx. In Windows XP, this file usually is located in C:Documents and Settings[user]Application DataMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033. In Vista, it usually will be in C:Users[user]AppDataRoamingMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033. However, you can instead choose to store Building Blocks in the template on which the current document is based, Normal.dotm, or in any other currently loaded global template.
Tip
The original unmodified Building Blocks.dotx installed with Office 2007 usually is located in C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12Document Parts1033. If your version becomes damaged or if you simply want to revert to the original, delete your copy and Word will automatically restore it using the version stored in the Program Files location.
Use the final setting, Options, to choose a default insertion method for the Building Block you're adding. Insert Content Only inserts the Building Block at the insertion point. You can also choose the default to insert the Building Block into its own paragraph or page. Of course, if you put the item into the Quick Parts Gallery, you have the additional insertion options shown in Figure 13.2.
If you upgraded from an earlier version of Word, you might be wondering what happened to AutoText. In Office
AutoText is not gone, although it has been changed. It's now part of the larger feature set called Building Blocks. AutoText has now taken up residence as one of the Building Block galleries. If you upgraded from an earlier version of Word, you should now find your AutoText entries in the AutoText section of the Building Blocks Organizer. A selection of the hundreds created by one Word user are shown in Figure 13.6. Note that these include not only user-created AutoText entries, but also many that came with Word 2003 and earlier.
Figure 13.6. If you upgrade from Word 2003, your AutoText entries are herded into the AutoText gallery in the Building Blocks Gallery.
In a way, the Building Blocks Gallery is Word 2007's replacement for AutoText. In Word 2003 and earlier, AutoText provided a quick way to insert frequently needed, boilerplate pieces of documents, such as complementary closings to letters, various ways of opening letters, and stock phrases and other items (such as page numbers) useful in creating headers and footers.
In another sense, however, this is an imperfect replacement for AutoText. Shown in Figure 13.7, some of Word 2003's AutoText features are now gone. As noted above, the AutoComplete feature is history (disabled, actually). When you start typing an AutoText item, you're flying blind, as there is no AutoComplete there to remind you.
Note
AutoComplete was disabled due to the large number of Building Block entries that can trigger it. Microsoft decided that the large number of situations in which AutoText entries were popping up was too distracting. Perhaps they're right, but some users might still like to have the option, so they could leave it on if it weren't too distracting. Or, they might take it upon themselves to rename everything in the Building Blocks Gallery using more efficient names, so that they don't inadvertently trigger AutoComplete. Alas, the Application.DisplayAutoCompleteTips VBA command doesn't seem to have any effect, so cross that devious workaround off your list.
Note that in Figure 13.7, Word 2003 did not provide a way to store or insert AutoText entries as plain text or unformatted. Neither does Word 2007. If you have a Building Block item that you want to insert, but need to suppress the formatting, you will have to effect it by other means.
If you want Building Block items to be inserted in the most vanilla way possible, clear all formatting from the selection before adding it to the Building Blocks Gallery. Or, on an ad hoc basis, you can selectively remove the formatting after inserting the item.
Either way, a favorite new way to strip formatting from a block of text is to use the Home ribbon's Clear Formatting tool, shown in Figure 13.8.
Figure 13.8. Use the Clear Formatting tool to remove formatting from a Building Block item, if necessary.
Note that the Pasting settings in Office
Working with Building Blocks can make you more productive. Initially setting things up might take a few extra minutes of thought and care, but ultimately the extra organization and thought will yield dividends. Of course, if you're going to invest the time to create and enhance a resource, you're going to want to know how to protect that investment, as well as how to share the resource with others.
Building Blocks, as shown above under Templates, can be stored in any template that is accessible in the current document window. A template is currently accessible for any of five reasons:
It is a Building Blocks template located in your Building Blocks folder. This folder usually is named
C:Documents and Settings[user]Application DataMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033in Windows XP, orC:UsersHerbAppDataRoamingMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033in Vista. The default storage vessel is namedBuilding Blocks.dotx.It is
Normal.dotm(stored in the location specified in OfficeIt is attached to the current document and is a template other than
Normal.dotm.It is a global template located in your startup folder. The startup folder location can be set or found by choosing Office
It is open in the current document window.
To find out where all of the currently available Building Blocks are stored, in the Insert ribbon, choose Quick Parts
Figure 13.9. The Building Blocks Organizer shows the template locations where all currently available Building Blocks are stored.
To back up your Building Blocks, back up all of the template(s) where they are stored. Note that files cannot be backed up while they are in use, so once you determine the name and location of the template(s) you need to back up, you need to close Word, use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location(s) of the template files, and copy them elsewhere (tape, backup drive, network backup location, CD, DVD, or other target).
Warning
If Always Create Backup Copy is enabled (Office
When you start developing Building Blocks, particularly ones that you plan to share with others, it can be useful to deliberately create a new .dotx file to store your Building Blocks. To share your Building Blocks, give it a name other than the default Building Blocks.dotx. It's not a bad idea to date it too so that someone to whom you give it will have a reference point with respect to earlier Building Block template files. For example, I might name one Herb Tyson Building Blocks 7-7-2007.dotx.
You can then copy this file across a network, copy it to CD/DVD or other removable media, or e-mail it to those with whom you want to share it. To use it, they should copy it to their own Building Blocks folder. In Windows XP, Building Blocks are stored in C:Documents and Settings[user]Application DataMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033, where [user] is replaced by the user name (in Vista, the location usually is Y:Users[user]AppDataRoamingMicrosoft).
In sharing this file with others, make sure that they copy it to the Building Blocks folder, and do not replace their own local copy of Building Blocks.dotx with it.
Note
Above, 1033 is the default location for English (U.S.) files. For Spanish, French, and other languages, the number will be different.
You can, of course, store all the Building Blocks you create in the default Building Blocks.dotx that is created when you install Word 2007, but don't do it! Here are several good reasons why you shouldn't.
First, given that this file comes with Word, storing your own Building Blocks in it for sharing with others is redundant, as other Word 2007 users will already have their own Building Blocks file.
Second, other users may already be storing their own Building Blocks in their respective Building Blocks.dotx file, as well as modifying built-in Building Block items. Replacing it with a different one will overwrite their own changes. Moreover, even if you install your own Building Blocks.dotx instead of the one that comes with Word when Word 2007 is first installed, there is no non-destructive upgrade path. As others add their own Building Blocks to those in the custom Building Blocks.dotx, there would be no way to later "upgrade" just the shared set. This is because of the third good reason.
Third, Word 2007 does not have a built-in way to copy Building Blocks from one template to another. Therefore, all of your items will need to be stored in an independent module that can be given to other users. In Word 2003, this wasn't a problem. AutoText entries could be copied between templates using the organizer, shown in Figure 13.10.
Figure 13.10. Word 2003's Organizer provided a method for copying AutoText entries between two different templates.
In Word 2007, however, choose Developer
There is no built-in way to mass-copy Building Blocks from one template to another, but there is a way to move them one at a time. If you make a throw-away copy of the source file before moving the Building Blocks, then you can simply discard it at the end of the process.
First, make a backup copy of both the source and destination templates. In the case of the source, this is not a mere precaution, because the process actually removes Building Blocks from the source file. Make a throwaway copy of the source that you will use for this process, and maybe even name it throw-away-copy-source.dotx.
Second, make sure that the throwaway copy of the source and the destination templates are both available. You can do this by putting both into the Document Building Blocks folder (C:Documents and Settings[user]Application DataMicrosoftDocument Building Blocks1033 in Windows XP, or Y:Users[user]AppDataRoamingMicrosoft in Vista).
Third, choose Insert
Select an entry you want to move and click Edit Properties. In Modify Building Block, click the arrow next to Save In to access the drop-down list of available template locations, as shown in Figure 13.12. Set the Save In template to the destination where you want it moved.
Figure 13.12. You can move Building Block entries between templates by changing the Save In template.
Lather, rinse, repeat. One at a time, select each entry you want to move. At the end of the process, all of the entries will now reside in the new Save In location.
Although they've renamed the feature from AutoText to Building Blocks, Word 2007's basic infrastructure still treats Building Block entries the same way that Word 2003 treated AutoText entries.
This means that in addition to inserting Building Blocks into your documents in the manner indicated in this chapter, you can also insert them using the AutoText field. Suppose, for example, that you have a series of templates in which the identical Building Block name is used for a variety of different formulations of the same concept. For example, you might have a Building Block entry named Exposure Quote. In one template, it might say one thing, in another something else, and in another, still something else.
In place of an actual exposure quote in a document, however, you could instead use an AutoText field to refer to the Exposure Quote Building Block. That way, whenever the Building Block for the underlying template changes, the Exposure Quote in all documents based on that template changes as well, simply by updating the field in the document.
To use a field rather than insert the actual Building Block itself, choose Insert
Note that even though this says AutoText, it works for all Building Blocks. Fields are discussed in detail in Chapter 21, "Field Guide."
In this chapter you've learned about Word 2007's new Building Blocks feature. You've also learned about Quick Parts and the relationship between these new features and the legacy AutoText feature. Among other things, now you know the following:
How to create your own Building Blocks
How to make some Building Blocks appear in the Quick Parts Gallery
How to back up your Building Blocks
How to share your Building Blocks
How to move Building Blocks from one template to another
Why AutoText's AutoComplete feature doesn't work
How to use fields to insert dynamic copies of Building Blocks that change when the underlying Building Blocks change