I have 2 brochures in Microsoft Word 2016.
• English
• Spanish
I want to create a note/text for each title in the Spanish brochure:
- That shows the English title when I hover over the Spanish title.
a) This would help me to know where I am in the 11 page brochure. - I thought if I put a comment with the English title that would work.
a) But I have to click on the comment each time to see what it is which wastes time.
1 Answer
There are two methods of which I am aware; both involve repurposing fields designed for other purposes.
The fields are the Hyperlink field and the AutoTextList field. Both can give "tooltips" when the mouse hovers over them. Both are limited to 255 characters for the tooltip. Both have limitations.
I am showing the fields themselves here. They can be inserted manually using Ctrl+F9 (Windows) or Cmd+F9 (Mac). In a related article, I show how to insert them using Word's dialogs as well.
Hyperlink field
Essentially, when creating the field, the \o switch is added to create the pop-up text. A drawback is that it adds the language "Ctrl + click to follow link" or "Click to follow link". The screenshot above is from my Pop-Up Text Add-in which also looks at the Hyperlink field in the documentation. Note the blue underline indicating the hyperlink and the hint to Ctrl + click to follow link.
This method is explored further by Word MVP Lene Fredborg on her site. `Add Screentips to Text in Word. She supplies a macro to use to insert such a tip with shading for the underlying text. That macro eliminates the blue underline as well. She also has an Add-In available that provides for tips longer than 255 characters (2040 characters). Here is a screenshot from her page that shows pop-up text produced using her free macro.
Hyperlink fields and pop-up text do convert to pdf format, unlike the AutoTextList fields.
Traditionally, you bookmark the field and then hyperlink to that bookmark, but that is not really necessary. The field shown above has no bookmark and does not link to anywhere but still works.
AutoTextList Field
{ AutoTextList “Display text” \s NoStyle \t “This is a screentip” }
The syntax is: { AUTOTEXTLIST "Literal text" \s ["Style name"] \t ["Tip text"] }
Above is from my free Add-in Pop-Up Text in Microsoft Word.
Here is what such a tooltip looks like:
Here is another example of the AutoTextList field:
This screentip or hover text does not include the confusing language about clicking to follow the link. The pop-up text from an AutoTextList field, though, does not convert to pdf.
You cannot just type fields. The field delimiter braces { } are special characters that must be entered by Word's creation of a field. You can use the word dialog to insert a field or use Ctrl+F9 (Mac: Cmd+F9) to insert them. Using Fields in Microsoft Word On many computers, the Fn shift key must be added to these shortcuts.
This answer has been republished as an Article on the Microsoft Word Answers site: Pop-Up (Mouse-Over) Text in Microsoft Word. That article includes information on creating these fields using Word's dialogs as well.
