Navigate Through Answer-Gathering Dialogs
To assemble a document, you must answer interview questions. To help you go through the interview easily, you can use the navigation bar, located at the bottom of the dialog pane.
As you answer questions, the icons in the interview outline change color. This can help you identify how much of the interview is left to complete:
None of the questions in the dialog are answered.
At least one of the questions in the dialog is answered.
All of the questions in the dialog are answered.
Repeats the dialog, allowing you to enter more than one set of answers.
Allows you to enter a new set of answers in a list.
The final dialog in an interview is usually the End of Interview dialog, which reports how many questions are unanswered. This dialog is customizable and also provides options for working with the assembled document.
To navigate through HotDocs dialogs
- At the HotDocs library window, select a template and begin assembling the document.
- The HotDocs assembly window appears. Complete any of the tasks using commands listed in the following table:
| To | Do This |
| Enter an answer for the question | Depending on the type of answer required, type a text or number answer, enter a date, select a check box, or choose an option from a list of options.
When entering a multi-line text answer, you can control whether the Enter key inserts a line break or a paragraph mark in the assembled Word document. To enter a line break, simply press Enter. To enter a paragraph break, press Ctrl+Enter. (In some situations, the template developer may have specified which break to use.) When entering a patterned time of day, enter the hour first, then press the right arrow key to move past the colon to enter the minutes. You can also click the up and down arrows next to the answer field to select the hours and minutes. |
| Move to another dialog in the interview outline | Click a dialog icon in the interview outline. |
| Go to the next or previous dialog | Click either the  Next Dialog button or the  Previous Dialog button. (You can also press Page Down/Page Up, or Alt+N/Alt+P.) |
| Go to the next dialog or the previous dialog that contains an unanswered variable | Click either the  Next Unanswered button or the  Previous Unanswered button. You can also press Ctrl+Page Up/Ctrl+Page Down. |
| Go to the first or the last dialog in the interview | Click either the  First Dialog button or the  Last Dialog button. |
| Finish the interview and view the assembled document | Click the  Finish Interview button. (Where you view the assembled document depends on the Finish Interview action you've specified. |
| View additional information about a specific answer or the contents of a dialog | Click the  View Resource button. |
| View where the answer is merged into the document (This option is available to Word users only.) | Click the  Go to Answer in Document button. HotDocs displays the Document tab and moves the cursor to the first place in the document where the answer is merged. However, if you place your cursor in the answer field of an answer that is not directly used in the document HotDocs will not display the document tab and you will see an error message. |
| Hide the interview outline | Clear Interview outline (View menu). |
| Preview an assembled text document before sending it to the word processor | Click the Document Preview tab. |
| View an assembled form document | Click the Form Document tab. |
| View a list of all questions in the template | Click the Question Summary tab. |
| View a list of all the questions and their answers in the interview | Click the Answer Summary tab. |
| View a spreadsheet of the variables and their current answers | Click the Variable Sheet tab. |
HotDocs updates the interview as you enter answers in a dialog. If you experience a significant delay when moving from one answer to the next, you can have HotDocs update the interview less frequently.
Sometimes the format of your answer may be changed. To verify these changes, you can specify an option that forces HotDocs to warn you of answer format changes before moving to the next dialog.
To display the different tabs along the bottom of the window (instead of the top), clear Tabs at Top in the View menu.