Workflow for building a topical FAQ?

[lorraine]

I'm trying to build a FAQ for the group on one subject.  I search for that subject, we'll say the subject is green bubblewrap, and I am given 1000 matches.  (Large group and I just might be exaggerating.)  

I then need to seperate the messages that actually contain useful information about green bubblewrap from the hundreds that only say things like, "I love what you've done with your green bubblewrap." or  "Where do you buy green bubblewrap?" or even worse, "I went out and bought some green bubblewrap today.  I'm so excited!"

 I digress.

I am aware that I can highlight the messages I want and right click and use Show as A Digest, and send that to a PDF writer. That is my immediate goal at this time.   However, in trying to do this, I get around 100 messages pertinent messages selected and then forget to hit the CTRL first and I have to start over.  

I thought of exporting, but it appears I have to export all messages within the group or I could limit to just favorites.  However, I cannot mark a favorite in the search results.  The option is grayed out.  

I thought of saving search results.  As far as I can tell, that only allows me to view the results within PGO and I still have the same limitations on the right click menu.

Any other ideas on accomplishing this task?  Aside from going through each and every post of the  66000+ available and marking those that I want as a favorite.  I do have the option of editing in Acrobat afterwards also, but I'm trying to limit the beginning filesize as much as possible.  

Thanks.

Lorraine
-- download still in progress.

[Wilson Logan]

Lorraine,

You can do 'Show as a digest', CTRL+A (select all), CRTL+C (copy) and then open a Word document & do CTRL + V (paste). You can then edit out the dross in Word.

A good way to do a FAQ is to find out what the top ten subjects are using the Statistics Builder (in View). Do sort by subject in the message pane, now, one at a time, highlight the top ten threads & copy them to your Word document using the method above & then edit.

I may do a tutorial on this if I get time.

Cheers,

Wilson.  

[lorraine]

Thanks, Wilson.  I'll go with that idea.

On a related note, is there a reason that a message cannot be marked as a favorite from the search results?  When joining an existing group, especially a large one, I would think that would come in real handy.  

Lorraine

[Wilson Logan]

>On a related note, is there a reason that a message cannot be marked as a favorite from the search results?  

When you do a search you are presented with a temporary search results table, not the actual group table. Any changes made to the results table like marking or deleting do not affect the main table.

I suppose we could add a 'Make changes in parent table' button to the search dialogue.

I'll ask the developer whats involved.

Cheers,

Wilson.