Getting the best from Open in Word Processor

One of the handiest features in Visual Liturgy is called Open in Word Processor. When a service is open, simply right-click over the text, choose Open in Word Processor, and there it is in your word processor, where you can easily reformat or edit the text, and print using all the rich facilities your word processor provides.

That said, Open in Word Processor takes a bit of work to configure. The reason is that Visual Liturgy does not know what word processor you use, and defaults to the Windows accessory WordPad which is probably NOT what you want to use.

In order to set this up properly, choose Preferences from the Edit menu in the top bar. On the General tab, you will see an entry for Word processor and a button marked Change.

If you have not yet configured this, click Change. This opens a file selection dialog. Your challenge is to select the application file which runs your word processor, then click OK. For example:

Microsoft Word is a file called WINWORD.EXE and is usually found in:

c:\program files\Microsoft Office\Officenn

or on 64-bit systems usually:

c:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Officenn

where Officenn varies according to the version of Office. The latest, Office 2010, is in a folder called Office14. You can usually just pick the highest number if you have several folders called Office followed by a number.

Open Office is a file called swriter.exe which is usually located:

C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program

or on 64-bit systems usually:

C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program

A few more tips about Open in Word Processor

Once you have Open in Word processor working, there are a few more settings you may find useful. Once again, these are in the Preferences dialog, on the Edit menu on the the top bar. This time though, choose the Services tab on the left selector, and review the settings for Copy and Export.

Here is what these options do.

Enforce full returns replaces all line breaks with paragraph breaks. This is NOT recommended unless you find that liturgy in your exported service is all run together as one paragaph. Do not use this option unless you have to.

Include styles in RTF sets up your service with styles such as vlreading, vlrubric and so on. These can be useful. For example, if you wanted all rubrics in blue rather than red, you could modify vlrubric to be blue, and all the rubrics change.

On the other hand, if you are not intending to use the styles, or want to apply your own styles, you can uncheck this option.

Replace diamond with asterisk is a workaround for a problem occasionally encountered in the Psalms, where the diamond symbol can appear as a box or missing in your word processor. Only check this option if you need it.

Preserve wide margin brings the wide margin in Common Worship services into your word processor. This can be a nuisance if you want to set your own margin, so uncheck this to have the service formatted without a wide margin.

Allow HTML is an interesting option. Visual Liturgy actually stores services in a form of HTML. However, we found that for copy and paste to a word processor HTML is a disadvantage, because many word processors either lose the formatting or change into a web editing mode when HTML is pasted. We therefore recommend that you do not check this option, unless you are preparing web content, in which case it can be useful.

However, Open in Word Processor always uses Rich Text Format (.rtf) to transfer text so the Allow HTML option does not affect it. It only impacts copy and paste.

A couple of further tips

When you Open in Word Processor, Visual Liturgy creates a document called ~vlservice nn.rtf, where the nn counts upwards each time you use it. If you want to save the service as a word processor document, you will probably want to use Save As, in order to select a better title. You can then delete all the ~vlservice nn.rtf documents. We don’t delete them automatically, just in case you make changes to them.

Finally, there are other options for exporting Visual Liturgy services, which you can find by choosing Export Service from the File menu in the top bar.