Use rules (aka Named Ranges) to govern the content in your templates, ensuring that it only shows when you want it to
What is Conditional Content?
"Conditional content" is any content in your MS Word documents that may be removed from, or included in, a generated document depending upon the choices made by the user in the associated online form.
In the Rulestar platform, we call slices of conditional content "ranges".
What content can be conditional?
Your ranges of conditional content can be as small as a single character (eg, just one letter, or a single space, etc) or as big as you like, potentially spanning many pages and even incorporating multiple sections within your MS Word document.
You can define ranges of conditional content within table cells and even make entire rows in a table conditional. See here for more guidance on marking conditional content within tables.
If images are anchored within a range of conditional content, those images will similarly be removed from, or kept in, the generated document along with the content to which they are anchored. See here for more detail about merging images into your generated documents.
How to Mark a Range of Conditional Content
To mark a range of conditional content, simply select the content that you want to include in the range and then, in the Developer tab in the ribbon, hit the bold "Aa" button, as shown in the image below, to place that content into a content control.
Then select “Properties” in the Developer Tab and give your range of conditional content a name. Enter the name as the “Title” for the content control and click "OK" to save.
The range of content you selected will then be clearly marked with:
- opening and closing tags (which you will see when Design Mode is activated);
- a containing box, which will become visible when you click inside the range; and
- the range name you chose. See here for more information about range names and applying logic to them.
Our product developers prefer to write range names in Title Case (ie, the first letter of each word capitalized) and without spaces, but that is a personal preference – you can name your ranges however you like. Try to use range names that are descriptive and will make sense to people other than you.
Tagging multiple ranges with the same name
Part of the beauty of the platform is that:
- each range name and its associated logic only needs to be defined once;
- range names are managed separately from the MS Word content; and
- you can tag multiple ranges of content with the same name.
Removing Range Markers
To remove a range marker, simply right-click inside the range and choose "Remove Content Control".
