Word – OnPoint Legal Blog

Announcing the Symbioshare Modern Word Add-In

Announcing the new Symbioshare Modern Word Add-In with support for Document and Letterhead Templates, a new Clause Library, and MedChrono Report.

Microsoft has recently improved the Word Add-In API to allow for insertion of Headers, Footers and Content. Consequently, we are excited to announce the Follow-On to our popular com Word Add-In.

This adding brings the following new features:

The ability to insert Headers and Footers from the Letterhead Library
The ability to insert content from the Document Template Library
The ability to get a link to your Matter Document Libraries to simplify saving file
A new clause library to introduce reusable snippets that can be inserted into documents
A MedChrono report to easily create a Word Table populated with MedChrono data

Pre-Requisites: Office 2016

Help content is provided in the Add-In. To ensure that the add-in is loaded, review this sway:

Document Templates In a nutshell

Document templates are an important feature of any Legal Document Management system. OnPoint Legal provides document template capabilities through a Document Library and its word add-in.

Document templates are an important feature of any Legal Document Management system. OnPoint Legal provides document template capabilities through a Document Library and its Microsoft Word add-in.

Software pre-requisites:

Microsoft Word 2010 or Greater
OnPoint Word Add-In from your OnPoint Home Page

Typical Document Creation Flow:

Create a New Word Document with your letterhead.
Create your content template and save to your “Document Templates” library.
Merge your letterhead and content into a single new document.
Fill placeholders with data stored in SharePoint.
Modify remaining portion of document.
Save to SharePoint.

Beware of the Microsoft Word AutoSave Feature

The AutoSave feature was conceived to make it less likely that a user will loose data by saving each change immediately to SharePoint. But there’s a catch.
If you use existing documents as templates, you may accidentally modify the wrong document.

The AutoSave feature was conceived to make it less likely that a user will loose data by saving each change immediately to SharePoint.

PROBLEM: If you sometimes use existing files as templates by modifying and then saving the modified file to a new location, you will find that you have actually changed the original file. This is usually not a desirable outcome.

Currently, there is no way to disable the AutoSave Feature. It can be turned off for a single session, but it will be active on any future document opened.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Change your practice to copy files before modification.
For all files that are of historical value, always mark them as final under File => Info => Protect Document. This will prevent accidentally changing the document.
Digitally sign files rather than manually signing. This marks them as final.

HOW TO FIX A MODIFIED DOCUMENT:

Even if you accidentally modified a document, all previous version of the document are still available. Just roll back to a previous version. This can be done with the version option in SharePoint, or by clicking the “Version History” icon on the top right of Word 2016.