FORMATTING and PRINTING DOCUMENTS CONTAINED IN EPlan

Formatting and printing documents from EPlan can be done in several ways, depending upon the needs of the jurisdiction.

There are two primary methods of printing.

1. Directly from the browser
2. From MS Word (or similar word processor)

This document will step you through the various methods. Because there are several different browsers that EPlan will work with and because there are several word processors, we will choose to work with the most common and the user will need to adapt his/her method from these. Please be advised there is no single button to print the entire plan.

First, formatting and printing are processes of your browser or word processor and your printer, not EPlan. We hope this document will help you, but, as always if you have specific issues, please call us at 704-546-2703.

SECTION 1.      FORMATTING

All jobs to be completed begin with preparation. The same can be said of printing documents from EPlan that you wish to print.

Decisions:

1. Decide what you want to print.
   
   Each document in EPlan is a separate file. The Basic plan is a separate file, forms are separate files, legal documents, annexes, procedures and checklists are all separate files.
   
   If you only want to print certain portions of your plan, (example: Terrorism Annex) you may do so and stop there. If you wish to print the entire plan, you may do so, but the process is the same.
    
2. Decide how you want to print.
   
   Do you want headers and footers on each page? What about page numbers?
   
   Do you want color or will black and white be sufficient?
   
   Do you want an index?
   
   Do you want the fastest way to print or do you want a more "book like" print?
   
   Are you going to distribute the printed copies to field personnel, who are concerned only with content, or are you going to present to elected officials who also care about "how it looks?"

3. Layout.
   
   Think about how you want the final printing to look and if it will be placed in a binder or simply stapled (such as a single annex).

Format Tables using an HTML editor:

EPlan uses tables, which is a design function within HTML and ASP pages. Notice the example below.

On rare occasions an html editing program such as FrontPage will use the default layout for a table to specify the height and width of a table. The default is in something called pixels. Do not use pixels unless you are highly competent in document formatting and have a complete understanding of how pixels affect your printer.

If a document does not seem to print correctly, such as words or letters are "cut off" in the printed version, then the odds are very high that the table properties are set in pixels, not percent. You want percent.

To change how the table behaves...anywhere in the table that is not printing correctly...right click with your mouse and a menu, will appear. On that menu locate and select Table Properties and click on that. Another type of menu will appear. It should look like:

You want to do two things.

1. Uncheck Specify height
2. Change Specify width from pixels to percent.
   1. To do that click the button beside In percent
   2. Click Apply (at the bottom)
3. Specify width may now indicate 100%. Change it to 90%.
   1. To do that in the box that is indicating 100% type 90.
   2. Click OK (at the bottom)
4. Your table properties should now look like:

You will see the table "move" slightly. The table is re-aligning itself to the behavior you just assigned to it. This is normal.

Save your changes.

Preview how your document will look like printed.

To do this:

 

1. Open the document in your browser (Internet Explorer). You can do this by using your EPlan menu to locate the document you just changed.
   
    
2. On the browser menu:
   1. Click on File
   2. Click on Print preview
      
       

SECTION 2.            PRINTING DIRECTLY FROM THE BROWSER PRINT COMMAND

Open EPlan in your browser (Internet Explorer) as if you were going to just read or review. You can do this even if your plan is on the internet, your intranet or if you have a copy loaded on your PC or laptop.

Make sure your computer is attached to either a local or network printer.

Locate (using your EPlan menu) the part of your plan you wish to print. There is no single button to print the entire plan. You need to do this for each document you wish to print. It will take some time and depends on the speed of your printer and whether you determine if you want single side or double sided pages.

We recommend the following:

1. From your browser menu, click on File
2. Click Print Preview
3. Scroll through the document to ensure that everything lines up the way you want it to.
4. If it looks good...click Close
5. From your browser menu, click on File
6. Click Page Setup
7. A menu will appear that looks similar to:
   
    

8. We recommend that you remove anything that is in the Header box and Footer box.
9. IF you want a Header on every page (example: Fictitious County Emergency Operations Plan), type what you want in the Header box. If you do not want anything, simply leave the box blank.
10. IF you want the Header centered, you must tell the printer that you want to do that. It defaults to left justified. To center the header you must use the command &b before the Header text (example: &bFictitious County Emergency Operations Plan) If you do not want anything, simply leave the box blank.
11. The following is a list of Header and Footer codes that you can use to "dress up" your printed documents from your browser.

You can also use F1 to get help.

Let's suppose that you want no Header, but you want a Footer that includes page numbers starting at Page 1 and you want the Date printed as well. The proper code for this in the Footer box is:

&b&p&b&D

12. Once you have your page(s) setup the way you want them to look then;
13. From your browser menu, click on File
14. Select Print
15. Select your printer (assuming you have more than one)
16. Click Print

We recommend you start with a small document that has only two or three pages and test your code, print margins etc.
 

SECTION 3.            USING Microsoft WORD TO PRINT DOCUMENTS

You may have a need to print documents that are formatted to be used in a binder, or you need to print the entire plan, index it and make a formal "hard copy" presentation to elected officials.

If you are very familiar with MS Word you should have no difficulty with this and converting your entire plan to MS Word should take less than a two hours. Converting documents is usually a matter of Copy and Paste. However there are some variables such as graphics (pictures, headers, charts and graphs) and dates.

EPlan embeds an automatic "update" date into each document in your plan. When this is formatted in HTM, HTML or ASP, the code is in a web format, not a Word format. You may need to change this and we will explain how in this section.

Open EPlan in your browser (Internet Explorer) as if you were going to just read or review. You can do this even if your plan is on the internet, your intranet or if you have a copy loaded on your PC or laptop.

Make sure your computer is attached to either a local or network printer.

Locate (using your EPlan menu) the part of your plan you wish to print. There is no single button to print the entire plan. You need to do this for each document you wish to print. It will take some time and depends on the speed of your printer and whether you determine if you want single side or double sided pages.

1. From your browser menu, click Edit.
2. Click Select All
3. Click Edit again
4. Click Copy

You have now copied the entire document to your computer "clipboard."

5. Open a new (blank) MS Word document.
6. Right click on your mouse
7. Select Paste
   1. Depending on the document and the size of the document and the speed of your computer, this can take a only a few seconds to perhaps as much as 30 seconds to complete.
8. You have now pasted the entire document into MS Word.
9. Save your file.
   1. On the MS Word menu (tool bar) click File
   2. Click Save As
   3. Change the document name if you wish and the location of the file
   4. We recommend creating a new file folder with a name you can remember and placing files there.

Now let's change it and format it the way you want to present it.

For the purposes of example, let's assume you want to print the entire plan. It is not practical, nor advised to copy and paste every document into a single Word document. The document will be too large for most computers to process and if you page number each page and wish to change something later, you may have to re-print the entire plan. This is costly and if you have planned your document format, it will not be necessary. We highly recommend that you print your plan in "sections". By "sections" we mean the Basic plan becomes a single document, each of your annexes become single documents, each checklist is a single document, etc.

When you pasted the EPlan document into MS Word, you noticed that the table was also copied. The table now appears as light gray solid lines. This is normal. The table(s) borders will not show on your printed copy. To double check this.

·         On your MS Word menu (tool bar) click File

·         Click Print preview

The table is included to help ensure that everything "lines up" in your printed copy.

1. Scroll through the MS Word document you just created.
2. Look for sections that need adjustment. Usually you will find these toward the end of a page.
3. Simply use the enter and delete keys as appropriate.
   
    

Example: In this example some of the duties of the Finance Officer are listed on Page 14 and some are on Page 15. You would like them all to show together and you want them to show on Page 15 (the next page).

Page 14

4. To move the entire portion for the duties of the Finance Officer from Page 14 to Page 15, place your cursor above the section for the Finance Officer and simply tap your enter key (possibly several times) until the section is on Page 15.
5. Now everything for the Finance Officer is moved to the next page. 

Example

6. This is formatting your document to appear as you wish it to appear.
7. Be sure to review the entire document to ensure it aligns the way you want it to.

Let's do some more "clean up."

At the beginning of your MS Word document look at header. You will see something after the Updated: or Date Updated: heading that looks like a little "robot." Delete it. Put the date (and time if you choose) in its place. You can have the computer do this for you, but you may want to use the same date that is on the EPlan document. Just make sure you use the same Date format for each document. This is important for consistency. We recommend the "long" date format. Example: December 20, 2004

Be sure to save your work.

Let's add a footer to "dress up" the document for final review before we print it.

We recommend that you not use Headers in your printed documents. They are redundant to the header or title of the document. We recommend Footers to personalize your printing.

Footers can be used to:

• Include the title of the document. Example: Fictitious County Basic Plan
• Include page numbers (page numbers of this document use a footer to insert page numbers)
• Dates

To use / include Footers in your printed documents:

1. In your MS Word document menu (toolbar) click on View
2. Click Header and Footer
3. A new menu will appear.

Example:

In the example above look at the area with the red circle. This is how you change from Header to Footer.

 

Click on the tool bar and change to Footer.

Type the name (if you choose) of the Document. See the example below.

 

If you want this title centered, use the "center" tool from the document tool bar (see the red circled area above).

Now add a page number by using the Header and Footer toolbar. See the example below.

If you want the page number centered (as in the example above) do the same thing that you did with the title. Use the "center" tool from the document toolbar.

Adding a date and time is just as easy using the Header and Footer tool bar. To add a date, click on the icon that looks like a calendar. To add a time, click on the icon that looks like a clock. Moving your cursor to each icon will inform you about the function of each tool or icon.

Once you have your footer the way you want it, be sure to save your work.

Print a sample page and determine if this is how you want your document to look. If it is, great, you just completed formatting and saving your document. If not, make your changes, save your work and check it again. Once you do this and you have saved your document, you will not need to setup the document again.

This sounds difficult, but once you do one or two of them, it will become simple.

SECTION 4.      LET EPlan DO IT FOR YOU.

The one precious commodity we all have so little of is time. EPlan will be happy to print your plan, index it, collate it and bind it for you. There is a cost, but your color printed copies can be completed in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it and probably for less cost. Please call us if we can help you and we will be delighted to quote a per copy price that we think is both affordable and cost effective.