Appraise-It includes a dynamic text addendum called the Extended Comments. Many times, you may need to include more information in a certain report field than there is room for on the form; most of the multi-line text fields in the main form of your various reports have dedicated extended comment areas in the Extended Comments addendum.
Each dedicated extended comment area has an automatically generated title to keep your addendum organized, and is linked to its field on your report.
Accessing the Extended Comments
There are three ways to open the Extended Comments addendum.
The Extended Comments addendum will open in a half-window at the top of Appraise-It, resizing your report into a half-window at the bottom of Appraise-It, allowing you to refer to the text remaining in the main form.
If you need more room, click the maximize button at the upper-right-hand corner of the Extended Comments window, or double-click the Extended Comments window's title bar.
When you access the Extended Comments addendum, you will automatically be taken to the dedicated extended comment area for the currently active field in your report.
Navigating the Extended Comments
Once the Extended Comments window has opened, you will see only one of the dedicated extended comment areas for your report. To quickly move back and forth through the various comments, use the arrow icons on Appraise-It's main toolbar.
You can also go directly to the dedicated extended comment area for a certain field by navigating to that field in the report, then opening the Extended Comments addendum.
Editing the Extended Comments
Once the Extended Comments are open, you can work in them as you would in any other Word Processing page, entering and applying special formatting to text, tables, and images.
Each extended comment area is essentially one Word Processing page -- and can therefore hold as much or as little information as you require -- while the Extended Comments addendum taken as a whole is made up by combining each individual extended comment Word Processing page into one addendum.
Printing the Extended Comments
The Extended Comments addendum appears in your Print dialog as a single line item, regardless of how many pages of extended comments you actually have.
Since it is a dynamic text addendum, it will only print extended comments which you have filled out; blank extended comments (even though their titles are still visible when you navigate through the Extended Comments addendum) are not included.
Additional Information
Please note that you cannot sign a report or perform certain other functions while the Extended Comments addendum is open.
If you do not wish to have the Extended Comments addendum open automatically when you exhaust the available space in a field, you can disable it. Go to Edit ⇨ Preferences, click Extended Comments under Reports, and uncheck Automatically open extended comments when necessary.
If you would like the entire text of a field to be moved into the Extended Comments addendum when you exhaust the available space in a field, go to Edit ⇨ Preferences, click Extended Comments under Reports, and check the whole text to extended comment.
If you are uploading your report to AIReady, the Extended Comments addendum will not appear as an option in the Select Addenda dialog -- it is considered part of the main form and cannot be removed. It will appear in the Pages drop-down within the Envelope Uploader as numbered Text Addendum pages; other Word Processing or Text Addendum pages in your report file will be added to the end of the Extended Comments as additional Text Addendum pages.
If there is anything entered in one of the extended comment areas, even a space, that extended comment will be included when you print your report. If there are "extra" extended comment titles showing up when you print your report, make sure those extended comment areas are actually empty.
