How to keep my 'master' docs from being edited accidentally

General comments and questions. Technical support.
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andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

How to keep my 'master' docs from being edited accidentally

Post by andygrunt »

I’m looking for a solution to a minor problem.

I have a set of documents that I use as ‘form’ letters. I have these all listed in my Favourites. These rarely change but I do occasionally make the odd tweak here and there to improve them and keep them up to date.

What I usually do is open the relevant doc, copy its contents, close the doc, paste the text into the clippy bank (shudder), make any changes needed for that particular mail, copy it into my email client and send.

This is all fine except I want to do more to avoid changing my ‘master’ documents accidentally. It would be all too easy for me to absent mindedly miss a stage out and edit the master doc, saving it before I realise what I’m doing. I’ve come close to doing this several times.

I don’t want to ‘lock’ the documents (not sure if that works when it’s a favourite anyway) as there are times I do want to amend it. Ideally, I could lock it then have to take some minor action (like OK’ing a confirmation dialogue box) before being able to change and save it.

An alternative might be to change the look of these master docs so it’s different to the version I change in the clippy bank (shudder). So it would be good if I could change the ‘paper' colour for my master docs but I don’t think that’s possible is it? I’m only aware of the colour scheme which changes the paper colour for all docs.

I don’t want to use the highlight colour to make the master docs look different as A) that would look scrappy and B) I already use it to highlight areas of the doc I need to edit before sending.

Hope that all makes sense.

Any suggestions what I could do?
VJF
Posts: 82
Joined: Sat Aug 30, 2003 9:25 am
Location: Amsterdam

Post by VJF »

Use a template?
Vincent van Gool, Amsterdam
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi Andy,
First, and by the way, you don’t need to use copy/paste with the Clippy Bank. Pressing “Ctrl+F8” or the corresponding toolbar icon will automatically “Append (the current document selection) to the Clippy Bank”.
The other Clippy Bank hot keys are:
Cut to Clippy Bank “Shift+Alt+F8”
Clear Clippy Bank “Ctrl+Alt+F8”
Paste from Clippy Bank “Shift+F8”

Now as Vincent suggested, you could use templates instead of ‘form’ letters. Here is how to go about this:

1. Open one of these ‘form’ letters.
2. Click “File | Save Special > Save As Template…” Save your form letter under any suitable name.
3. Repeat steps 1 + 2 for each of your ‘form’ letters.

From then on, you can use any of these templates to create a new document with same contents and formatting: simply click “File | New > Create From Template…” (or use the corresponding toolbar icon), and choose a template. The new document that Atlantis will create will have same contents and formatting as the template, but you will be able to edit it/save it without impacting the original template in any way: templates are never modified automatically by Atlantis, they are only used as “templates” to create new documents. If you want to modify your Atlantis templates themselves, you have to use a different command, i.e. “File | Document Templates…”

When you’ve edited the document created from the template, you can copy/paste it into your email client window. Note that Atlantis has a “File | Email > Send by Email…” command: you can attach the current document to an email message directly from Atlantis.

Also note that you can add the templates that you use most to your Atlantis Favorites: simply open the target template through “File | Document Templates…”, and click “File | Favorites > Add to Favorites".
HTH.
Cheers,
Robert
andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Post by andygrunt »

Thanks for the suggestions.

File/Email/Send by email
The text I’m editing is used in the body of the email so attaching the doc to an email wouldn’t do what I need.

Ctrl+F8 to Append to the Clippy Bank
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are second nature so I’m not sure Ctrl+F8 would be much of a speed up for me (probably more of a speed hump) but it’s a good tip to know and I’ve added the icon to my toolbar.

Templates
The idea of using templates did cross my mind but I’m not making new documents from them exactly – I’m just grabbing the text, twiddling with it a bit before pasting it into an email so it doesn’t feel quite right for me.

I don’t think it would give me any advantages over the setup I currently have plus it would add the extra hassle of being more work to change the master document when I need to. I also have all my docs (including my master documents) under a c:\work folder so it’s easy to backup – templates need to be kept in a different folder.

I use clippy bank (shudder) a lot to work on chunks of text I don’t need to save permanently (emails, forum posts and other odd things) but I do have to keep a big, bold title at the top saying ‘Clippy Bank (shudder)’ so I’m aware of where I am as I’m forever flicking between ‘proper’ open docs and the clippy bank (shudder). So this is another place I’d like to be able to change the paper colour (or paper texture perhaps?) to act as a visual cue to show me the nature of the document I’m working on at that moment.

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to be able to visually identify different docs. My first thought is to have different paper colours or textures but having different page edges (colours, line thicknesses or something) would also do the job if it was obvious enough (I always use ‘Print Layout’). I could have one type for my master docs and another to show when I’m in the clippy bank (shudder). Maybe I could extend it to show the state of some docs – one colour to show a first draft, another type for a second draft, and so on.

I’d also like some changes to the functionality of opening a doc as read only. First, some visual indication that a doc is read only would be good (something along the lines I list above, perhaps). Second, if I edit a read only doc and then go to save it, I’d like the option to overwrite the original file (with appropriate confirmation needed).

Edit: I've added those two wishes to the feature requests forum.
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

The idea of using templates did cross my mind but I’m not making new documents from them exactly – I’m just grabbing the text, twiddling with it a bit before pasting it into an email so it doesn’t feel quite right for me.
When you have created a new document from a template, you can edit its contents and formatting, then copy/paste it into an email. When you’re done, press “Ctrl+W” to close the document. Atlantis will ask if you want to save the changes. Simply answer “no”. Alternatively, you could click the “Undo All” toolbar icon, then press “Ctrl+W”. The new document won't be saved.
I don’t think it would give me any advantages over the setup I currently have plus it would add the extra hassle of being more work to change the master document when I need to.
The document changes can be saved to the original template if you click “File | Save Special > Save As Template…”, and save it as a template under the same name.
I also have all my docs (including my master documents) under a c:\work folder so it’s easy to backup – templates need to be kept in a different folder.
You can create automatic or semi-automatic backups with a number of free utilities. For example, you could use “Fbackup” (http://www.fbackup.com/).
I use clippy bank (shudder) a lot to work on chunks of text I don’t need to save permanently (emails, forum posts and other odd things) but I do have to keep a big, bold title at the top saying ‘Clippy Bank (shudder)’ so I’m aware of where I am as I’m forever flicking between ‘proper’ open docs and the clippy bank (shudder). So this is another place I’d like to be able to change the paper colour (or paper texture perhaps?) to act as a visual cue to show me the nature of the document I’m working on at that moment.
When the current “document” is actually the Clippy Bank, the Atlantis title bar says “Clippy Bank”.
I’d also like some changes to the functionality of opening a doc as read only. First, some visual indication that a doc is read only would be good (something along the lines I list above, perhaps). Second, if I edit a read only doc and then go to save it, I’d like the option to overwrite the original file (with appropriate confirmation needed).
When the current document is read-only, the document name on the Atlantis title bar is followed by “(read-only)”.
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