The latest release of Autotag, version 9, has switched to a new way of tagging in Office. The tags are still the same, but instead of using a 'Field', we have switched to 'Content Controls'. The main reason we did this is because with a content control you can insert charts and images directly into the control, so for certain tags instead of seeing text, you get to see the actual object that will be in the final report.
Another benefit of switching to content controls was that with fields it was possible to delete some of the field text, the nickname of the tag, which in turn would delete some of the tag causing errors on report generation.
I have worked extensively with both types of tags, and personally I like the field tags more. Here are a few reasons why.
1. If you are in a content control it can be hard to exit and get back to editing regular text. I often find myself clicking outside of the content control, only to have the tag builder window open because word counts my clicks as a double click on the content control. This is because to exit a content control you have to click the mouse into an area that has regular text, if you click off to the side of the page it will not exit. The only surefire way around this is to use the arrow keys.
2. No intuitive way to delete tags. If you try to delete the content control it just deletes the nickname text, to fully delete the tag you have to hit the delete button.
3. Fields are easier to copy paste since they are easier to select.
4. Content controls are harder to select and move around
In a perfect world I would have chart tags, and import tags, still be content controls, but out tags and all the other ones should be fields.
Any feedback that you have going either way would be greatly appreciated because the company will be looking at the comments of this post to make a decision as to whether or not we will change the way tags work in autotag. But if you like the way they are now, then also please tell us that in the comments section.
Thanks.
