Creating Margin Notes

Margin notes are used to place text or images in the left margin of a manual, next to the main body of the text. Margin notes do not appear in online outputs unless you explicitly link them to the text, where they will appear as popups.

  1. In the Word source document, place your cursor at the point you’d like to insert the margin note.

  2. In the Doc-To-Help ribbon, click the Margin Note button and select Create.

    A two-column table is placed in the document with the text of the paragraph in the right hand table cell. If table gridlines are turned on in Word, you'll see a dotted outline of the table. The gridlines do not print.

  3. Type the margin note (or insert an image) in the left column of the table. The paragraph text will be in the right column.

If you would like to add another margin note for the same paragraph, click in the left column, select the Margin Note button and choose Add Definition.

  1. After following the previous steps to create a margin note, highlight the text in the right column that you want to use as a hotspot.
  2. In the Doc-To-Help ribbon, click the Margin Note button and select Set Link.

  3. A dialog confirms that you want to link the selected text with the contents of the highlighted cell (i.e., the margin note). If it is correct, click OK. If not, use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate to the proper cell.

    The hotspot is created and will be indicated in the Word document with a comment that notes the link information. If you would like to see this relationship more graphically, click in the right column, then in the Doc-To-Help ribbon click the Margin Note button and choose Highlight Definition Links.

Note This is supported in online outputs only.