When I take the 60-second tutorial, all of the SimplePrompts work except the Boilerplate prompts. What could cause this?

Boilerplate prompts rely on Word’s “Documents Folder” setting and won't work properly if the setting has been left blank.

The Documents Folder tells Word where you prefer to save documents. When you create a new document and save it, Word will offer to save it in your Documents Folder. You're free to save it elsewhere but Word will assume, initially, that you want to save it in your Documents folder.

Selecting a Documents Folder is easy to do. Please take a few seconds and make sure one has been selected, as follows:

1. Pull down the Edit Menu and choose Preferences. (In Word X, pull down the Word menu and choose Preferences.)

2. In the Preferences dialog, choose the File Locations tab in the upper right corner of the dialog.

3. In the file types list, choose Documents.

4. If no location is listed for Documents, then choose Modify and browse to an appropriate folder, then click Choose.

5. Close the dialog and quit Word.

When I choose an item from a boilerplate prompt, an empty paragraph mark is inserted immediately after the selected item. How can I prevent this?

Open the boilerplate item (using File|Open) and select just the material you want to be inserted, making sure you exclude any paragraph marks following the material. Then choose Insert|Bookmark and name the bookmark "bp" (without the quotation marks) and choose Add. Resave the boilerplate item and close it.

When I choose an item from a boilerplate prompt, the font and paragraph formats of the inserted material look different than they did in the original source document. Why does this happen?

This behavior, while not always expected or desired, is by design within Microsoft Word. The same behavior can be observed when copying material from one document and pasting it into another. To avoid this behavior, make sure the paragraph styles in the source document have the same properties as the like-named paragraph styles in the destination document.

Can I store my boilerplate items folder somewhere besides Word's Documents Folder?

Yes. By default, SimplePrompter looks for your boilerplate items folder inside Word's Documents Folder but you can specify a different location if desired, as long as the location can be identified by a standard filespec such as "HD3:Shared Files:Our Boilerplate Items:" (MAC) or "M:\Shared Files\Our Boilerplate Items\" (Windows).

On a Macintosh, you can specify a location for your boilerplate items folder by creating a file called SimplePrompter.ini in your System folder. This file must be a plain text file, not a Word document. Inside the file, place the following text, using the filespec for the desired folder:

[Version 1]
BoilerplatePath=HD3:Shared Files:Our Boilerplate Items:

In Windows, you can specify a location for your boilerplate items folder by creating a file called SimplePrompter.ini in your Windows folder . This file must be a plain text file, not a Word document. Inside the file, place the following text, using the filespec for the desired folder:

[Version 1]
BoilerplatePath=M:\Shared Files\Our Boilerplate Items\