Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Create MASSIVE amounts of text for placeholder content in less than 3 seconds
In Lee Reed’s article on how to display your latest blog posts in SharePoint, he suggested a way to create text to use as placeholder information to see what the fully configured blog interface will look like. Ericka responded with a comment on how you can do that from within Word!
Check out the screencast. I think you’re in for a surprise. Thanks Ericka.
Good suggestion, Ericka. I just checked and, unfortunately, it appears that the trick doesn’t work in Live Writer 2009, for those that are wondering.
To generator Lorem Ipsum text, I tend just to use http://www.lipsum.com/
Unfortunately, it also doesn’t work as default calculated text when creating a column in SharePoint, nor as the formula in a calculated field.
See this KB for more info:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB212251
The “Lorem()” quick function is only supported in Word 2007 and Outlook 2007, but you can also insert localized text in the same fashion by using the “Rand()” function (same parameters – eg: Rand(5,3) to display 5 paragraphs with 3 lines each). The “Rand()” function can be used in Word 2003/2002/2000/97.
Nice trick – up until now, I’ve only ever used the online “Lorem Ipsum” generator on http://www.lipsum.com – now I’ll just do it in Word!!
- Dessie