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User Guide / Training Manual

Client: The Coca-Cola Company

I was hired as a consultant to The Coca-Cola Company's Worldwide Program Development Group because of my expertise in template design and document automation. During this ten-week project I prepared fresh page layouts and complex macros to facilitate production of internal training manuals. After design and testing were complete, I wrote two user manuals for training the production and writing staffs. I kept the style and pacing as light as possible to prevent my less technical readers from suffering information overload and my very advanced readers from feeling patronized by my instructions.

 

Manual Excerpts:

Cover page:

SELLPM.DOT Reference Guide

You will learn how to apply the SELLPM template quickly and accurately using this document as both an instruction manual and a reference. The structure is as follows:

• List of styles used
• List of macros used
• List of AutoText entries
• Description of SDDETools toolbar
• Using the template
• Notes for Instructional Designers

You will reap the most benefit from the template's design and features by first reading through this guide to gain an overview of the process and then returning to it when questions arise.

Introductory text:

Notes for Instructional Designers

The Production Department is using Word 6.0, whereas you are using Word 2.0. Not all of the styles and macros will convert to Word 2.0 correctly, particularly the more elaborate ones on the SDDETools toolbar. The use of frames for this template is really only possible with Word 6, because it is frightfully difficult to properly align and format frames in Word 2.

Therefore, at this point it seems most logical to simply ask you to use a modified SELLPM template for your documents. The template uses styles of the same names and version-corrected macros for the bullets. When we copy your text into our SELLPM-based documents, the styles will convert almost effortlessly, thereby alleviating much of the text reformatting that we have had to do in the past. The text won't appear on your screen exactly how it will look as a final document, but the styles will be distinct enough for you to see what you are doing.

Please make use of the ProdInstr style whenever you need to specify a graphic or icon to be added or make other directions to the Production staff. Any time you intend to deviate from the standard layout or format, write us a brief note so we won't automatically standardize your text.

Macro instruction:

Table2Text

At the beginning of the reformatting process, you will take all text out of tables (except that which is to be tabular in the finished workbook). This macro will aid you in converting tables to text.

Position your cursor anywhere inside a table and click the Table2Text button. The entire table will be selected and converted to text, separated by paragraph marks. Don't worry about the extra paragraph marks at this point--you'll use the StripPara macro to remove them all at once when you've finished converting the tables. The macro only converts one table at a time, so you will scroll through the document, running the macro each time you come to a table.

Troubleshooting:

The Case of the Missing Paragraph Mark

Your full-page layout ends with a table, and there is no paragraph mark at the end of it. You can't put your cursor below the table, but you need to insert a section break using the EndActivity macro.

This is a common problem that is altogether confounding but easily solved. Place your cursor at the beginning of the next line of text following the table. Insert a page break (Ctrl-Enter). Then place your cursor before the page break and insert a paragraph mark. Voila! Run the EndActivity macro and then delete the page break and extra returns.

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