styleref in header conditional logic

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to use the styleref field code to dynamically populate a header in a Word template.

My challenge is that the appropriate heading text will be be in one of two styles; depending on the intended audience for the document. How can I have Word look for style1 and if it doesn't find it, look for style2 and use that instead?  

Thanks in advance for your help!

Christa

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Answer 1

Basically, you'd use a field coded along the lines of:

{IF{STYLEREF "Heading 1"}= "Error!*" {STYLEREF "Heading 2"} {STYLEREF "Heading 1"}}

where 'Heading 1' and 'Heading 2' are the Style names.

Note: The field brace pairs (i.e. '{ }') for the above example are all created in the document itself, via Ctrl-F9 (Cmd-F9 on a Mac); you can't simply type them or copy & paste them from this message.

Answer 2

With the current logic, it doesn't seem to be updating as the styles switch. 

It's not meant to - the field code supplied addresses only the issue described in your initial post, which was the potential absence of a given style in the document as a whole.

As for toggling between, styles, you'll have problems with that, since the STYLEREF field inserts a copy of the nearest matching material formatted with the specified style; there is no switch to toggle it on/off if there's content in another Style.

Answer 3

Thank you both for the help. Is there anyway to modify the header logic so it checks and updates on each page? For example, the title for page 1 may use style1 but the title for page 6 might use style2, and then page 10 might switch back to style1. With the current logic, it doesn't seem to be updating as the styles switch.

Answer 4

Oops - of course. Fixed.

Answer 5

Paul of course meant to suggest:

{IF{STYLEREF "Heading 1"}= "Error!*" {STYLEREF "Heading 2"} {STYLEREF "Heading 1"}}