David is using hidden text to produce student tests (hidden text not printed) and teacher answer sheets (hidden text printed). He has a need, however, to print a placeholder, such as a series of underlines, on the student test and the answer on the teacher's sheet. For instance "Stop when you see a _________ light" would be on the test printout, but "Stop when you see a RED light" would be on the answer sheet printout. Hidden text doesn't seem to handle this need, so David wonders if there is a better way.
Actually, there are several ways this can be approached. Hidden text cannot be used in the way that David envisions, but there are other ways to tackle the problem.
First, you could modify how you use the hidden text. Simply set your question like this:
Stop when you see a ___RED___ light
The only thing to be formatted as hidden text would be the word "RED." When your printout has hidden text included, then you've printed an answer sheet. When your printout has hidden text excluded, then the two underline segments join together because "RED" doesn't print, and you have a student test. There is the added benefit that when you print the answer sheet, the underlines draw the eye to where the answer is located.
Another approach is to creatively use styles. Create a single character style which I'll call (for example) "Answer." Set up the style so that it is underlined and, perhaps, something like bold or bold red. Then create your questions, like this:
Stop when you see a RED light
Select the word "RED" and apply the Answer style to that selection. The answer should now appear formatted exactly as you specified in the style. When you are done, what you then have is the teacher's answer sheet. When you want to print a student test, just modify the Answer style so it uses white font color. When you then print the test, you end up with the answers being white-on-white, which means invisible. However, the underline in the style (which is colored independently of the font color) still prints, so you have placeholders for the student answers.
If you decide to go this route, you can avoid giving your students clues about the length of the correct answer by simply padding the answer with spaces, both before and after. Assuming they are also formatted using the Answer style, you end up with a longer space for the student to write their answer.
A third potential approach is to use mail merge to create both the student test and the answer sheet. Use an Excel worksheet as your data source, and in one column put underscores of whatever length you desire for the student answer space. In the next column put the actual answers to each question. When you set up the merge document, use the conditional merge field structures (or even the Ask field) to determine whether the underlines or the answer should be printed.
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2020-03-04 11:53:31
Patrick Verhaeghe
You could also use Hidden tekst in combination with tabs with an interpunction before it. In that case the answer is no lange visible if wanted but te rest of the tekst ande the underlining should still be there.
Not useble in every situation (if every line has a different place for the answer, could it get quit labor-intensive) but for some occasions doable.
2019-10-16 08:55:56
Jen Thomas
This is a bit off-topic, but when I was teaching high school cheating via copying each other was an issue. So in addition to doing this sort of formatting (I used a macro like Des') I would also produce the same test but sort the paragraphs in different orders e.g. by first letter, second letter, or third letter so that they couldn't copy their neighbor without it being really obvious. Once they figured out how I 'tricked' them they were annoyed, but grudgingly impressed … it was amusing, and stopped them even trying to copy. Blessings on all you teachers out there - you are appreciated!
2016-02-15 09:32:41
Jim-ski
So much easier to do in FrameMaker and conditional text...
2016-02-15 04:12:12
Des Lavender
Even though when I submitted the post it closed up the gaps of blank text I'd input!!
2016-02-15 04:10:10
Des Lavender
Well, when I hide text in Word10 it closes up the gap where the hidden word had been, both on screen and when printed; so that's no good!
I've just recorded a macro that changes the font colour to white and adds an underline in black and put it on a button on the Quick Access Toolbar. Just type the test complete with answers and click in each word or select all the text you want to hide and click the macro button. The downside that I could see to this is that the space left would give an indication of the length of the required answer, so I just added another 8 characters at the end of the selected text.
Sub UnderlineWhiteText()
'
' UnderlineWhiteText Macro
'
'
With Selection.Font
.Underline = wdUnderlineSingle
.UnderlineColor = -587137025
.Color = -603914241
End With
With Selection
.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
.TypeText Text:=" "
End With
End Sub
2016-02-15 02:49:33
Richard Price
The second approach (using a white font for the answer text) is neat, but the statement that the underline is coloured independently of the font colour is not automatically correct. When you change the font colour to white, either leaving the underline colour as the default "No Color" or changing it to "Automatic" makes it go white (and therefore invisible) as well. You have to explicitly set the underline to black or some other visible colour.
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