Dear all,
I've just got a file back from a Word user, and noticed that when you export to .doc format, all my bookends references drop out. So I looked for an 'unformat citations' option, and found there doesn't seem to be one. I've searched through the forum, and it seems this has been rumoured for a while, but nothing as yet (although I don't know about 2.5). If I can't unformat mellel citations back to temporary ones, how is it possible to work with non-Mellel users? Does anyone have any ideas?
Best,
Ian
Sharing files with Word users
Moderators: Eyal Redler, redlers, Ori Redler
Re: Sharing files with Word users
By "unformat citations" do you mean unscan the document or remove citations as special objects and replace them with text?
If you mean simply unscan the document, then go to the Edit → Bibliography → Unscan document, and the final citation will be replaced with the temporary citations.
I tested exporting a scanned document to Microsoft Word 2004, and it worked. Could you be more specific about the problem?
If you mean simply unscan the document, then go to the Edit → Bibliography → Unscan document, and the final citation will be replaced with the temporary citations.
I tested exporting a scanned document to Microsoft Word 2004, and it worked. Could you be more specific about the problem?
Re: Sharing files with Word users
Hello again,
Thanks for offering to help with this. From closing the mellel file and opening it in Word I can now see what the 'unscan document' produces - I get the curly brackets back, but with rather ungainly temporary citations {author, date, title} in place that my collaborators are going to be a bit baffled by. Is there any way to limit them down a little bit? It would be much easier for people to work with me if they were just {author, date}. Equally, unscan of course removes the bibliography so far which isn't great. What I guess I really want is relatively brief temporary citations and a working bibliography at the bottom.
I've noticed that the Sente web-site advertises 'Sente makes it easy for you to collaborate with others during the writing process, even if they do not use Sente. You can send a draft of your document to your colleagues and they can edit it freely. When they return the document to you, Sente will update the citations and bibliography to reflect the changes.' This is explicitly under the Mellel section of the web-page http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/inde ... bPage=cite. It sounds rather good - does anyone have any experience of this, or can I get it to work with Bookends in a similar kind of way?
Hope that's reasonably clear.
Best,
Ian
Thanks for offering to help with this. From closing the mellel file and opening it in Word I can now see what the 'unscan document' produces - I get the curly brackets back, but with rather ungainly temporary citations {author, date, title} in place that my collaborators are going to be a bit baffled by. Is there any way to limit them down a little bit? It would be much easier for people to work with me if they were just {author, date}. Equally, unscan of course removes the bibliography so far which isn't great. What I guess I really want is relatively brief temporary citations and a working bibliography at the bottom.
I've noticed that the Sente web-site advertises 'Sente makes it easy for you to collaborate with others during the writing process, even if they do not use Sente. You can send a draft of your document to your colleagues and they can edit it freely. When they return the document to you, Sente will update the citations and bibliography to reflect the changes.' This is explicitly under the Mellel section of the web-page http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/inde ... bPage=cite. It sounds rather good - does anyone have any experience of this, or can I get it to work with Bookends in a similar kind of way?
Hope that's reasonably clear.
Best,
Ian
Re: Sharing files with Word users
Ian, what do you have BE's temp citations set to? It sounds like author, date, title. Author, date, unique ID would be shorter to use.
I haven't tried the Sente thing, but am interested to hear anyone else as well. I would think, though, that if your collaboration partner added temporary citations (with the { } delimiters) but just did author and date, you could then take the document and verify the citations with BE on your computer. BE should recognize the ambiguous ones (without unique id's) and update them. I say none of this from experience mind you.....
I haven't tried the Sente thing, but am interested to hear anyone else as well. I would think, though, that if your collaboration partner added temporary citations (with the { } delimiters) but just did author and date, you could then take the document and verify the citations with BE on your computer. BE should recognize the ambiguous ones (without unique id's) and update them. I say none of this from experience mind you.....
Re: Sharing files with Word users
Thanks for this reply Danzac. How do I change BE's temporary citation format? I can't see anything in preferences etc or anything in the manual.
Thanks again,
Ian
Thanks again,
Ian
Re: Sharing files with Word users
In BE's preferences, under the Scan & Bib tab. You first choose the delimiters and then the Copy Citation format. choose Author, Date, Unique ID there.
Re: Sharing files with Word users
Ah, yes. Thanks again for this.
Right.....so here's how I think it is. If I write in Mellel and export files with temporary citations through bookends, then the citations remain, but I'll need to 'convert text to citations' upon them coming back over again from Word later (and probably confuse anyone I collaborate with because of the curly brackets and lack of a bibliography at the end). However, if when I'm collaborating with others and use Word and Bookends, I can send them a scanned .doc where the citation information is preserved upon sending to them, they can add to it, and I can still retain all of the bibliography information when it comes back.
The answer from this is that, if I'm writing alone, Mellel and Bookends works best, as I prefer Mellel and auto-title keeps me organised. However, if working with others, I'm going to have to use Word and Bookends because I don't want to spend time having to explain about curly brackets with everyone I work with, and we need things like word length to be accurate, but they won't be with temporary citations and no bibliography at the end. It seems a shame that Mellel can't work across the boundary with Word better and preserve citations if Word is able to. Having to work with Word users is a fact of academic life.........
Best, and thanks everyone who has helped.
Ian
Right.....so here's how I think it is. If I write in Mellel and export files with temporary citations through bookends, then the citations remain, but I'll need to 'convert text to citations' upon them coming back over again from Word later (and probably confuse anyone I collaborate with because of the curly brackets and lack of a bibliography at the end). However, if when I'm collaborating with others and use Word and Bookends, I can send them a scanned .doc where the citation information is preserved upon sending to them, they can add to it, and I can still retain all of the bibliography information when it comes back.
The answer from this is that, if I'm writing alone, Mellel and Bookends works best, as I prefer Mellel and auto-title keeps me organised. However, if working with others, I'm going to have to use Word and Bookends because I don't want to spend time having to explain about curly brackets with everyone I work with, and we need things like word length to be accurate, but they won't be with temporary citations and no bibliography at the end. It seems a shame that Mellel can't work across the boundary with Word better and preserve citations if Word is able to. Having to work with Word users is a fact of academic life.........
Best, and thanks everyone who has helped.
Ian
Re: Sharing files with Word users
I use Google Docs for collaboration and make the changes in my Mellel files.
