Associating a Name with a Position

Melissa has a document that includes, sprinkled throughout the text, various job titles from her company. She would like to somehow associate a person's name with each job title. For instance, if someone hovers the mouse pointer over a particular job title (such as "Project Manager") Word would show a ToolTip that showed the person's name (such as "John Smith").

There is no way to do this automatically. You can, however, simulate what you want by using bookmarks and hyperlinks in the document. Follow these steps:

1. Select the phrase that represents the work position. For instance, you might select the phrase "Project Manager."
2. Display the Insert tab of the ribbon.
3. Click the Bookmark tool, in the Links group. Word displays the Bookmark dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Bookmark dialog box.

4. Give the bookmark a name, such as Position1, and click on Add.
5. While the phrase you selected in step 1 is still selected, press Ctrl+K. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box appears. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

6. Click the ScreenTip button. Word displays the Set Hyperlink ScreenTip dialog box. (See Figure 3.)



Figure 3. The Set Hyperlink Screen Tip dialog box.

7. Type the text you want to use for your screen tip (such as the person's name, "John Smith") and click on OK.
8. Click the Place in This Document button, at the left side of the dialog box. Word displays a list of locations in the middle of the dialog box.
9. From the list of locations choose the name of the bookmark you created in step 4, then click OK.

What you end up with is a hyperlink for the individual. If someone moves the mouse cursor over the phrase, they will see a screen tip (or, what is sometimes called a ToolTip) that shows the name of the person in that position. They drawback is that besides the screen tip, you'll also see a prompt such as "Ctrl+Click to Follow" or "Click or Tap to Follow Link." (This is a hyperlink, after all.) If the person does what the prompt says, they aren't really taken anywhere because the target of the hyperlink is the same phrase that you turned into a hyperlink.

You'll need to follow these steps for every occurrence of a company position within the document which, depending on your needs, could be rather labor intensive. You could also simply copy the first hyperlinked instance of the company position (use Ctrl+C) and then use Find and Replace to search for other instances and replace them with the hyperlink. Just use ^c in the Replace With field, which replaces the position phrase with the hyperlink.

Another way to approach the task is to use footnotes or endnotes. You can easily insert notes throughout your document, as described in other issues of WordTips. Each footnote or endnote would refer to the name of the person who occupies the company position. When someone hovers the mouse pointer over the footnote or endnote marker in the document, then the contents of the footnote or endnote (the person's name) are briefly displayed. The drawback to this approach is that the person would have to position the mouse pointer over the footnote or endnote marker itself; hovering over the position title won't work.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10413) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Associating a Name with a Position.