What Hunter said. I understand the two separate columns flowing separately. But when the content of the teacher side of the page is too long for one page, where do you want that excess content to go? And what happens to the corresponding student content? And the student content on the next page?
Also: Do you need parts of the teacher content and parts of the student content to be in the same position vertically, or can they flow completely independently?
Think of the following as text blocks. If e.g. the teacher's content is longer than the student's content, should it be aligned like this:
Teacher Student
---------- ----------
aaaaa aaaaa
aaaaa
bbbbb bbbbb
ccccc ccccc
...or is this okay:
aaaaa aaaaa
aaaaa bbbbb
bbbbb ccccc
ccccc
I apologize if this has already been suggested…I’m finding this thread a little confusing to follow. I would just use two separate text boxes (tool in the drawing toolbar). I’m not sure if you can flow from text box to text box (as on the next page). I guess it depends on how long the document is. You would have to visually align teacher/student text, but given the tool it doesn’t seem like to bad a solution.
Using tables to do what it looks like you’re trying to do would drive me nuts.
First, get a piece of plain white paper. Next a ruler and a pencil. :smack:
Microsoft word can be hard to explain. I think your trying to merge the top cells? No.
It can be done, I’ve done it, I can’t remember where to find it, but its easy enough in Excel. I’d do the chart in Excel and then paste it into word.
Sorry for the delay and the confusion.
Hunter Hawk, your second example is more of what I was thinking of.
Actually, it’s more likely that the student side of the text will run longer that the teacher side. Here’s a rough idea:
Teacher | Student
Aaaaaaa | Aaaaaaa
| Aaaaaaa
Bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb
| Bbbbbbb
Ccccccc | cccccccc
| Cccccccc
| cccccccc
The teacher side is about 2.5 inches wide and the Student side is about 3.5 inches. The rest is margin. There is also a header and a footer on the page.
The layout of this whole project was originally done by a professional in InDesign. In the original, the header has a horizontal line along its bottom and the footer has a horizontal line along its top. These horizontal lines match exactly with the vertical line running between the teacher and student sections, forming a sarif “I” shape that divides the page into Header spanning the top, teacher section on the left, student section on the right, and footer spanning the bottom.
Since this document is meant to be shared and modified by others, I’m trying to make the layout as stable and user friendly as possible. Linking bits of text to outside documents isn’t an option.
The student section will be full of text on pretty much every page.
What I want to happen when someone adds new text into the middle of the student section is for the text to shove the text that was there downward, making it flow onto the top of the next page, into the top of that page’s Student section. Basically, the exact thing that happens when you add new text into the middle of any normal document, except only on the Student half of the page. It would be great if the notes on the Teacher side slid down as well to stay matched with the sections they reference, but that might be asking too much.
If I used a table to create the body of the page, and then I add another paragraph of text in the middle of the page, the table will stretch onto a new page, creating a page that has a little bit of table at the top and and pushing table that defined the body of the next page onto a completely separate page. That’s no good.
Columns won’t either, since any text moving down from the student side of the page will bump into the teacher side on the next page, a feature known as snaking. Useful when making a newsletter, but not what I need.
I would use linked text boxes like you suggest, Heart on My Sleeve, which is the proper way to get the text flow action that I want. But, I need that damned vertical line between the teacher section and the student section. In Word 2003, I can’t customize the border of a text box to get just one line. I could draw the line in by hand, but then it will likely shift out of position when the document is opened on a new computer. The text boxes themselves might swim, too. Also, Word considers text boxes to be pictures instead of real text. So, we won’t be able to do some of the fancier tricks like self-updating Table of Contents.
Looking over the links that E. Thorpe provided, frames might be the best way to go. There would just be are 2 inch margin on the left side of the page for the teacher notes. And, another user can easily slide the teacher notes around to match the student sections if they need to.
Anyone else tried to do something like this before? Are frames too much trouble? Can text boxes be relied upon more than I think?
Ok, new question:
I’m trying the text box thing on the off chance that it might be more accessible to other folks.
I’ve got my header and footer, and I’ve got two text boxes that run the length of the body of the page.
For some reason, Word is stretching the usable area of the header to include my text boxes. So now the header can be anywhere down the page, all the way to the footer.
Any ideas on why this is happening? It’s not a big hassle, but it’s perplexing.
Thanks.
Never mind.
Just pasting my pre-typed text into the text box caused everything on the page to shift around. 10 minutes arranging text boxes and lines down the crapper.
I really really hate not using the right tool for the job.
Carry on.
Pullet, this might sound very strange, but how’s about using PowerPoint? If your boss can be flexible about the appearance, PowerPoint offers you the functionality you need. Make a presentation with the student material on each slide. Then type the teacher comments in the Notes frame. The text flows are completely independent, won’t run over pages, and can be printed out together neatly on the same page. Most of your teachers probably already know how to use it, too. The presentation will be vertical instead of horizontal, but it can still be very clear. Each printed page would look something like this:
**[CENTER]Student**
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
Teacher Notes
Point out the use of every letter in the alphabet.[/CENTER]
An interesting idea, xnylder, but I absolutely have to have the teacher stuff on the left and the student stuff on the right. I have to match the layout of a file that was made by a professional designer in InDesign.
Maybe I’m not envisioning what you describe correctly? When I ask Powerpoint to print slides with the notes, it puts the slide spanning the top of the page and the notes spanning underneath. Is there a way to change that? I have Powerpoint 2003.
Good to know that it is possible to make headers and footers in powerpoint, though.
Update:
I’ve decided to forge ahead with my idea of a table with only 2 cells as big as the body of the page. I discovered (don’t know why I didn’t realize this before) that I could just let the table break across multiple pages as the text got longer and longer. Sorry if some of you suggested this and I overlooked it. In effect, I now have a dinky 2 celled table that is 4 pages long. All the student stuff is flowing along nicely in the cell on the right.
The only disadvantage: since it’s all within one cell of a table, I can’t insert page breaks to make the Headings in my Student section appear at the top of a fresh page. The only solution I’ve found so far is to add extra blank lines by hitting “return.” Anathema, I know, but it’s something. And if the text is going to swim on a new computer anyhow, even the most basic user will know how to add more blank returns to adjust the layout. In fact, that will probably be their first resort.
If my boss comes back with barely any text for the Teacher side, I’m going to junk the table and make it all into Frames.
Anyone out digging ditches want to trade?
Why not make each Student Section its own table row? Instead of having one table row for the entire document, have a new table row for each section. If new Student text gets added to a previous page (table row), and it rolls onto a new page, your new row will now roll to the next page (or at least with page breaks between rows).
AZCowboy, I think I follow you. So each new heading will be the start of another table with only two cells, right? That could solve my page break problem.
Thanks!
No, I think AZCowboy was recommending what I just came in to suggest…in the following design
Teacher | Student
Aaaaaaa | Aaaaaaa
| Aaaaaaa
Bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb
| Bbbbbbb
Ccccccc | cccccccc
| Cccccccc
| cccccccc
…start each aaa, bbb, ccc section in a new row within the same table. This will be a better approach than trying to handle vertical alignment via linebreaks.
If the sections could get really long, you could still allow the rows to break across pages, but it would be less of an issue this way.
Your theory is sound, Hunter Hawk. I remember reading that idea on one of the links E. Thorp suggested. Can’t remember why I discounted it at the time. Perhaps I’ve gone mad with LCD photon overexposure.
Thanks, everyone!