Using Chronolator Documents
Publishing a chronology
In This Topic

When you have completed a chronology document you can publish it without the Chronolator program code so that your recipients will not have to do anything about macros and licence terms whenever they open it.

You can also:

Published chronologies are new documents: the original Chronolator document is not changed.

Exact Copy

Pressing Publish > Exact Copy copies everything to a new document, and then displays Word's Save As dialog so you can choose where to save it.

Publish Exact Copy button

Narrative formats

Although tables are a good way to put a chronology together, they can be unwieldy to read, particularly when a single event has a lot of text in one column that spans several pages.

Chronolator can convert a chronology table to several narrative formats, some of which include the elapsed time since the start of the chronology.

Press Publish > Custom            

Publish Custom button

The resulting Published Document Customisation form lets you customise the headings displayed in the narrative.

Publish Customisation form

Main heading - Sequence, Date and Time

If the chronology contains a Sequence column, it will be the first part of the main heading for each event in the chronology.

The options in the Date / Time format box control how the rest of main heading is displayed:

The dark grey box is updated as you change options to illustrate their effect:

Publish Customisation form - preview box

Other headings

After the main heading, the narrative includes information from the non-blank entries for each event. The Print column headings box controls whether their individual headings are included.

Examples

Take these events as an example:

Publish Customisation example 1

This is how they will appear in the narrative when various option combinations are used:

As in document?

Elapsed Partial?

Elapsed Full?

Print column headings?

Result

Yes

No

No

Yes

Publish Customisation result

Yes

No

No

No

Publish Customisation result

Yes

No

Yes

No

Publish Customisation result

Yes

Yes

No

No

Publish Customisation result

No

Yes

No

No

Publish Customisation result

No

No

Yes

No

Publish Customisation result

Analysis Document

Pressing Publish > Analysis creates a new document analysing event reference numbers and counts by Source of Information, and then displays Word's Save As dialog so you can choose where to save it.

Publish Analysis button
If you want to split the chronology into separate time periods for analysis, you can do so by clicking in the table where you want a split and then using Tools > Table Tools > Split at current row.
Split table at current row button

An analysis document contains four types of table:

Here are some examples of each, taken from a chronology which has been split into time periods.

Individual agencies are highlighted as per any highlighting applied with Tools > Highlight Source.

Detailed Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

Summary Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

Totals by Source

Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

Totals by Month

Analysis by Source Prefix and Month

JSON - Chronolator Browser Tools

Pressing Publish > JSON creates a new document in the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation ) format that can be read by the Chronolator Browser Tools.

Publish JSON button

The Chronolator Browser Tools at tools.chronolator.com use your web browser (e.g. Chrome) to process chronologies.

It is important to note that only the software resides on the Web. Your Chronologies stay on your computer, completely under your control. Their confidentiality is not compromised.

Web access is only required the first time a tool is used, as the software is cached in the browser.

When this Help was published in early 2023, the available tools were:

These tools are under continual development, with new features being added much more often than is possible with Microsoft Word.

New tools will be also be added, such as an alternative to the Case Details Wizard in the Online Workbench.

It is intended that the Browser Tools will eventually provide a complete alternative to Chronolator for Word.