Smart Tag Option: Places (XP 5.1.2600 SP2)

[diane1812]

I am writing documentation for Smart Tags and can find no example to give for the "Places" option. I have tried typing Washington, DC, Statue of Liberty, Dallas, TX, The White House, Pizza John's, and finally "over there" and have yet to trigger a "place."

I have read countless Internet articles, where a few mention "Places" but never give examples. I found nothing here with a Search. I have read several Microsoft Knowledge Base articles regarding Smart Tags, where they too mention "Places" but fail to give an example. I have browsed well-known Word 2002 and Word 2003 books without finding an example.

Can anyone here give me examples of a "Place"? Thanks.

Diane

[fburg]

Diane,

Since you only ask for an example of a "place" smart tag, that's easy. If you asked me for what the rules are to make Word recognize something as a tag, and a "place" tag on top of that, I can't help alot there.

The attached zip file has 2 screen shots in it:
- Dallas place tag.jpg
- Smart Tag recog.jpg

The first one is a screen shot of a file with just 2 sentences. You can't see either because I expanded the smart tag and that hid the text. However, you can pretty much see that the first sentence is "I like Dallas, Texas." The second sentence is "Have you ever been to Dallas, Tx?" I chose "Dallas, Tx" (or "Dallas, Texas") since you said you couldn't get that to work. (I also tried just "Dallas" w/o the state and got the same thing.)

Although you can't see the smart tag underlining, it's there. Trust me. <img src=/S/evilgrin.gif border=0 alt=evilgrin width=15 height=15>

What you do see (and it's the same for both sentences as well as just "Dallas") is the screen shot after clicking the smart tag and going down the menus. You can see that Word is treating "Dallas, Tx" and the other combinations as a "city" or a "place". Going down the menus reinforces that my installation of Word is certainly recognizing Dallas, etc. OK as a place.

The second file in the zip (Smart Tag recog.jpg) is a screen shot of what you'd get if you chose the "Smart Tag Options..." on the first menu (you can also get to this via Tools | Autocorrect Options and selecting the "Smart Tags" tab). As you can see there, the "place" is checked off. Is your "place" checked? Maybe that's the problem.

If I uncheck "place" and retype Dallas, I get no purple underlining. I'm not sure if I follow. It seems like Word thinks of "Dallas" as a city or a place from the first screen shot. So unchecking "place" would seem to suggest that Word should still recognize "Dallas" as a "city". On the other hand, maybe Word thinks of "city" as one kind of place so that unchecking "place" stops recognition of "place" as well as anything that is a kind of place, like a city.

If my sentence is "Have you ever been to Texas?" then "Texas" is regarded as a place only. It appears that there is no kind of place called "state" built into Word although you might be able to add it.

Anyway, that's about all I can tell about the problem. Maybe Word has some dictionary or some rule that tells it what kind of thing ("recognizer") various phrases are. That's beyond me.

HTH.

Fred

[diane1812]

Hi, Fred!

Thanks for a great reply. I believe I had everything set up correctly:

- At: Tools | AutoCorrect Options | Smart Tags ... all Recognizers, including Places, are marked.

- At: Tools | AutoCorrect Options | Smart Tags ... "Label text with smart tags" is marked (this makes the smart tags feature active -- turns it on)

- At: Tools | Options | View ... "Smart tags" is marked (this displays the purple lines)

- At: Tools | AutoCorrect Options | Smart Tags ... "Show Smart Tag Actions Buttons" is marked (this displays the buttons)

I have copied text from Outlook, Excel, Access and PowerPoint; all were marked with a smart tag accompanied by a button. I have tested every type of smart tag listed, and all have worked -- except "Places." Dallas, TX still doesn't work, nor any of the other dozen or so 'places' I've tried. When I move the mouse around the area of the names of the places, neither the smart tag (purple lines) nor the smart tag button appear.

My documentation for Smart Tags is complete except for my discussion of "Places" and a screen shot of the button options. I would like to use a screen shot of your screen shot of the expanded "Places" button, if that is okay with you.

After seeing that the places I thought qualified as "Places" work for you, it seems that there must be something wrong with my Office/Word 2002 or my computer -- unless, of course, I'm missing a setting somewhere. Do you know of any others?

Thanks, again, Fred for your help. At least I know that it 'should' work.

Diane

[fburg]

Hi Diane,

You certainly can use my screen shots for whatever purposes you need.

Let me add 2 additional items:
- I'm working with Office 2003 SP0. Maybe there's some bug in Office XP that you've run into ???
- When I added "Dallas, TX" or any of the other variants that worked but into an existing document, it took Word a relatively long time (much longer than recognizing a spelling error) to add the purple underline for the smart tag. In fact, it's not clear it ever would have added it except I started moving my mouse around to "get Word's attention" - then it added the purple underline. I figured it was taking some time to do the lookup in its "encyclopedia of places". So I started a new document with just the sentences described in my last email; in this case, the purple underlining came up almost instantly. Not that my first document was that big - a few pages with a table or two. Go figure.

The question is where does Word get these "places" or what is the rule it uses to figure out that some phrase is a place.

Fred

[diane1812]

Hi, Fred!

Thanks for permission to use your screen shots.

Your additional comments add even more to ponder. I would like to include them along with an explanation of my problem in my documentation. Will that be okay?

I read many Knowledge Base and other articles written for those in IT who want to create their own Smart Tags trying to find a cause and solution for my "Places" problem. I'd guess that the answer to your question of where Word gets these "places" or what is the rule is probably in some of those articles.

I'm just trying to teach the stuff -- put the key in the ignition and drive the car -- not how to build it. It often takes more words and pages to explain all the possibilities of why and how a feature may not work than to explain how to use it.

It's always helpful to have other perspectives and experiences. Thank you.

BTW, let me know if I can use your comments (but not your name). I will be publishing it ... just in case you don't want your words 'out there.' If I ever figure out the cause and solution (a possibility), I'll post it here.

Diane

[fburg]

Hi Diane,

You can use the words and the screen shots. No problems.

But my thoughts on Word not responding immediately with the purple underline in the existing document vs. doing so in the new document are very, very, .... subjective. Use them accordingly. As the saying goes, especially since you're doing car analogies, "your mileage may vary."

I teach Word also and have some friends who do as well. Usually it's a beginner's class although occasionally we do a slightly more advanced class. In these classes, people make use of very little of Word's features. Even things like styles are almost of no interest. Makes me wonder why they want a class. I worked in a corporate environment and learned Word pretty much on my own and use quite a lot of the features that my students never use (bookmarks, ToA, x-refs, etc.). I'm still not very convinced on the value of Smart Tags of any kind but maybe because I'm not smart enough to recognize their value. <img src=/S/grin.gif border=0 alt=grin width=15 height=15>

Fred

[diane1812]

Hi, Fred!

Thanks for your permissions. I understand that your comments are subjective, as will be mine regarding this issue, and I will present them in that light.

It is hard to believe how uninterested people can be in learning how to get the best "mileage" out of their software. My favorite groups to teach are volunteer monthly 2-hour Word sessions (Foundation & Advanced), and a 1-hour WordPerfect session. The classes are through the North Texas PC Users Group and are free (although they 'hope' for memberships to pay for room and equipment rental). The reason I enjoy teaching this so much is because everyone there yearns to know more and is willing to spend a Saturday morning of their personal time to do so. Ages range from probably mid-20s to near or maybe over 80. "They" make it worthwhile. I'm sure you're envious! <img src=/S/grin.gif border=0 alt=grin width=15 height=15>

I can sure see a lot of potential in Smart Tags, but after browsing through all those Internet articles in my current quest, I am now aware of potential (and probable) problems that "evil" people can create with them. We will probably have a new market for anti-Smart Tag virus software. Such is life today.

Thanks so much, Fred, for your help and enjoyable discussion.

Diane

[fburg]

Hi Diane,

>I'm sure you're envious!

Sure am. The crowd that my friend and I get is usually not very challenging to us nor interested in stretching their minds. We have a saying that we try to install on our students that I got from a teacher of mine: "out of your books and into your head." Unfortunately, it rarely works - they just take notes and never practice to become profficient.

Enjoy.

Fred