Contract Library Setup

If you need to understand more about how Microsoft Word integrates with Supplier Contract Management, such as paragraph styles, templates, formats, and XML schema, review the Understanding Microsoft Word Integration with Supplier Contract Management topic.

Sometimes, Microsoft Word's protection feature might prevent certain formatting, such as changes to the first or last line of the text, because protection start-and-end-indicator brackets are on the line that you are formatting.

When this occurs, you might be able to move the text (insert a blank line at top of the text or at bottom) next to the protection bracket to move you text away from the protection marker. Then, format the text and delete the blank unwanted line.

There may also be other cases where you are restricted from making certain edits to a Microsoft Word file, such as changing a style or accepting changes that have been tracked. You can frequently work around this by removing the document protection, making the change, and then setting protection again within Microsoft Word.

When you edit a clause and it looks okay, but when you preview the document the clause has an occasional special character, such as an upside down question mark, small square, or strange symbol translation for bullets, the system might have a multibyte data requirement.

Certain multibyte characters in Microsoft Word might not be supported when you integrate with a nonmultibyte PeopleSoft database for clause content in the library. If you are not using a Unicode Standard database, you should avoid using these special characters within the clause library. This exception applies to library setup because the system stores this content in its database.

PeopleSoft attempts to clear and replace these special characters with nonmultibyte representations for you when your system (database) is not configured for multibyte storage when possible; however, a reasonable substitution may not always be available.

When it's not possible for you to run in a multibyte/unicode environment you might need to remove special characters when editing the clause document and substitute a different and more common or simpler non multibyte character representation instead. For example, you might want to turn off smart quotes and retype the quote as a plain double quote in Microsoft Word.

When Microsoft Word prevents you from editing text or performing a function on text, such as accepting tracked changes or refreshing a table of contents, it means that Microsoft Word's Protect Document feature has been set to restrict certain types of changes to the document.

For some data elements such as bind variables, the PeopleSoft system places protection around the bind in the document so that you cannot edit it in Microsoft Word. This prevents you from changing the source value for binds that originate from the transaction system using Microsoft Word. When the system prevents you from editing or accepting changes for a reason other than PeopleSoft bind protection, you must stop the protection in Microsoft Word, apply edits or run the function, and then start the protection again using Microsoft Word.

When you cut and paste from a Microsoft Word document into PeopleSoft classic desktop browser UI clauses or sections, you can frequently lose the formatting and have corrupt characters when previewing or editing the clause or section.

Cutting and pasting content from Microsoft Word into PeopleSoft system pages for clause and sections content is not recommended because the text that appears on PeopleSoft pages does not support maintaining Microsoft Word's rich-text attributes. The system only allows plain text when you cut and paste into PeopleSoft pages. Therefore, it is recommended that you cut and paste from your current Microsoft Word file to an empty checked out version of your PeopleSoft clause or section (also in Microsoft Word) to preserve the document formatting that you want.

When you preview a clause, it appears correctly, but when you include it in a generated document or you preview it using the document configurator, the alignment indentation of the content is incorrect.

Possible causes and their solutions for an alignment (indentation) problems include:

• If the clause text in Microsoft Word is formatted normally without any special paragraph styles, the indentation problem might be caused by the incorrect set up of paragraph-style, outline-numbering indentation in the Microsoft Word template.

  As a possible solution for this cause, when you preview a document in the configurator, note the Microsoft Word paragraph style that was applied to the previewed clause that is not correctly aligned. Review the details of that paragraph style's outline numbering and indentation specified for each level and correct any issues in the Microsoft Word template that are associated with the configurator.

• When you edit a clause and apply custom paragraph styles or direct formatting, the preview and generate functions merge the formatting and could cause you to lose the automatic indentation feature.

  By overriding styles and numbering in a specific clause, you lose the advantage of predefined paragraph styles in the Microsoft Word template. In this case you can, if possible, remove the custom paragraph styles in the clauses and use a normal style. If this is not possible, you must use Microsoft Word to indent the information in the clause body definition itself so that it matches the outline position at which it is normally aligned in a generated document. You need to do this because the outline number and alignment from Microsoft Word templates are not used when you use custom styles within the clause.

When you page up and down in a Microsoft Word document and the page numbering increases just by paging up and down document, a problem might exist with Microsoft Word protection and change tracking. This problem can occur even if you don't change the document. An example of this problem is the page number might increases from 10 to 1,000 in a single scroll.

The character column alignment, for example, aligned columns and underlines for a signature page, appears correctly when you edit a clause, but when you preview the clause, the page has unaligned columns.

Hidden tabs used in the alignment of columns can cause problems when the clause is previewed and assembled with other content. This is because of the outline-numbering level at which the clause appears when it's previewed, or styles that the system applies during the preview. For example, the tab symbol can cause different levels of indentation based on the outline level, which in turn can shift values over.

To improve the alignment of column-oriented information, try using a hidden table in Microsoft Word instead of tabs.

When the Microsoft Word Research task pane does not return results from a search or is not working correctly, there are several possible causes, including:

• Messaging is not setup correctly.

• The client computer has not had the installation for client updates applied.

• The configuration file has incorrect information defined in it for client installation.

See Setting Up a Clause URL to Appear in the Research Pane.

The Research task pane might also just return some, but not all clauses. If a clause is too large for Research task pane integration, the search can fail. The system displays a warning if there is a potential for failure due to the size of the file. Clauses can become too large for XML representation and for visible clause text if there is a large amount of custom formatting or custom paragraph styles applied to the clause.

A possible solution is to simplify custom formatting of these clauses or divide the clause into smaller pieces.

You can enter a valid bind variable into a Microsoft Word document or select it from the Microsoft Word Research pane and place it into the document. But, when you check in the document, the system displays validation errors for the bind variable. This happens because Microsoft Word has features that do automatic correction and tracking of grammar errors in documents that may be visible as you type names. When a field has the grammar underline beneath it, it normally means extra values are included in the XML bind value being checked in and is making the bind value no longer valid upon check in to the PeopleSoft system.

Because there are multiple versions of Microsoft Word, and a variety of user settings for each client, there are several possible resolutions for this issue. The first and simplest resolution is try to cut the bind variable text within Microsoft Word, and then paste it back to the same location. But, after pasting the variable, click the small Microsoft Word clipboard (Paste Options) that appears when you paste the variable and click the 'Keep Text Only' button. This can often remove any special formatting so that the bind will validate correctly when you check in the document.

If the problem persists, the next action to correct the issue is to change the spelling and grammar setting while editing the clause having the error. Use these steps to correct the issue:

1. Select Tools on the Microsoft Word toolbar.

2. Select Language, and then select Set Language.

   The Language window appears.

3. Select the Do not check spelling or grammar check box for English when maintaining bind variables to avoid having special character inserted into the bind names.

4. Delete and retype the bind variable.

   Verify that no grammar check underlines appear for the bind variable.

5. Check in the document again.

If this does not resolve the issue, you can try indicating not to store random numbers within the document. This Microsoft Word feature has at times inserted random numbers within the bind variable name XML and causes bind validation errors during check in of the document. To clear the setting because the location might change depending on versions of Microsoft Word:

1. Select Tools on the Microsoft Word toolbar.

2. Select Options, and then select the Security tab.

3. Deselect the Store random number to improve merge accuracy check box.

Finally, you can use the Microsoft Word Research task pane as a possible alternative. You can search and insert the bind variable using the Research task pane lookup for binds. In some cases, this alternative bypasses Microsoft Word's behavior of inserting grammar checks that can cause the problem.