Auto formatting procedures

June 2, 2020 6:57 AM

I have to write a lot of procedures and I spend way too long fighting with the formatting in word. Is there a way to input my procedures somewhere and then have a program spit out a final formatted document? I don't care if the end result is word, a pdf, or something else, I just need it to look right (details below).

Most of the document is composed of the numbered steps of a procedure. Usually it is just straight numbering (1., 2., 3...) but once in a while there may be a need for nested numbering (1., 2., a., b., 3., a...). There are also multiple lines that are not part of the numbering, such as section titles and notes. There are usually one or two sections that use bullets instead of numbering. There may also be graphics or tables, sometimes as part of a numbered step and sometimes as one of the non-numbered standalone notes. Each numbered step and bullet point need a line or checkbox on the right-hand side of the document to check off the step, but the section titles and notes do not.

Is there somehow I can input all of my formatting requirements for each kind of line, then input all of my steps, titles, notes, and pictures/tables, indicate if it is a step/note/title/bullet point, and a program will spit out a document formatted how I want?

Is this something I can do with macros in excel, or something else? I don't think it should be too hard but the pictures/tables are throwing me off. I'm pretty technical and am willing to put work and time into this, but it's a little out of my wheelhouse and I'm not really even sure what search terms to use. Any info even just to get started on a productive google search is appreciated!

Thanks!

posted by sillysally to Technology (12 answers total)

I use "Styles" in Word for this kind of thing -- it takes some work to define the type of styles at the beginning -- but then I assign keyboard shortcuts (I'm on Mac so, like command+1, command+2) and then zip through the document and assign styles.

There may be a more automatic way to do it, but this was my first thought. (Not as familiar with Excel, I'm afraid.)
posted by profreader at 7:09 AM on June 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

This seems like a fantastic use case for markdown and pandoc.
posted by rockindata at 7:14 AM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would use markdown or LaTeX for this. LaTeX will be more powerful and better at handling images and tables, which markdown struggles with a bit for print.

The entire concept of LaTeX is that you separate content from layout. You edit a plain text document then tell each part if it should be a numbered item, sub item, table, graphic, etc. Then you run LaTeX and it compiles it all and spits out a publication-ready pdf with nice and consistent layout. It takes care of all the numbering and formatting etc automagically, even if you move stuff around.

LaTeX has a rep for being hard to learn, but for a limited use case like this you mostly just need to learn a few commands and get your template together.

If you can post a short sample (or a fake example) I can make up a starter template for you.

LaTeX is also freely available on all platforms, stable, essentially future-proof, and nearly free of bugs. On OS X you’d start with TeXShop, maybe TeXMaker for Windows.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:19 AM on June 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

+1 for LaTeX. I agree with SaltySalticid that the learning curve is not overly steep, and the output is world class.
posted by jmfitch at 7:24 AM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would do this in emacs org-mode which can export to PDF. It too has a learning curve.
posted by bdc34 at 7:27 AM on June 2, 2020

Word is an utter pig about images. Otherwise, styles are a good way to deal with this sort of thing. In Word, some formatting is by paragraph, and some is by document, which is why if you want to change the orientation, you have to use a document separator. It helped me once I figured that out.
posted by theora55 at 7:43 AM on June 2, 2020

Markdown + Pandoc was my first thought. You can output to a lot of different formats from Pandoc, including DOCX and HTML. Some of your formatting requirements (like the checkboxes on procedure steps) would need to be realized through stylesheets (either in Word or CSS). Word can be problematic when dealing with complex auto-numbered lists, and this would insulate you from that.

Handling images is more complicated this way, but more flexible and predictable (you could target multiple output formats, with different images for each). You'd be free of Word's janky image-placement issues.

Another possibility is InDesign, which can have very complex procedural styles. And you can output from Pandoc to ICML. I have produced manuals this way: write in Markdown, format in InDesign.
posted by adamrice at 8:27 AM on June 2, 2020

Each numbered step and bullet point need a line or checkbox on the right-hand side of the document

The right-hand side explicitly?
posted by clew at 9:29 AM on June 2, 2020

Response by poster: clew: Hmmm, hand't thought about that. That's how our format is now but I don't see a reason off the top of my head why it has to be on the right.

Everyone else, thanks for the answers so far, I am looking into them!
posted by sillysally at 9:42 AM on June 2, 2020

I might just not have found it but there doesn't seem to be a good way to go from latex to word. If you need that, be wary.

Otherwise latex is where it's at.
posted by klanawa at 9:59 AM on June 2, 2020

LaTeX was my first thought as well.
posted by Alensin at 10:37 AM on June 2, 2020

Affinity Publisher might be the way to go. They have a demo and is on sale right now.
posted by Sophont at 12:57 AM on June 3, 2020