Power filter by level

I am not on 2018 yet, but, hope that will not be too long.

The issue centers around filtering before exporting to Word. I have large maps that captures various types of information at specific levels of the map. This is to help understand specific user group information. However, I need to create a executive level summary word document at the "main topic" level (in this example) and screen out the details. (eg hide everything below the main topics)     

I have written my custom macros to create csv/excel exports for whatever details are needed at the lower levels. However, I was hoping that there was a easier way filter out the "dimensions" (which all start at the same topic level) without repeated power filters to hide each dimension.

I like the concept and applied a topic style (in a similar manor) to all the dimension level topics to make the filter hook invisible. To do this, I created scripts to add the topic style and then remove them as needed. I am sure that I could do the same with an icon.

However, there are quite a large number of dimension level topics and I can see some performance hit in applying the style in one go. So, I needed to accomplish this in sequential sections of the map to do it effectively. It works but I am not sure how much this may impact filtering with even more data added. 

Unfortunately, I do not think that I would be able to add something visible that the power filter can leverage. If there is characteristic of a topic that is not visible that I filter on please let me know.

Thanks for the idea and any addition thoughts you may have!

If you have the Select command showing in the ribbon and you want all the main topics only you can click on any main topic, then click on the Select command and choose Select Siblings. This should highlight all the main topics and then you can add or remove icons on the fly.

Alternatively if you want to permanently attach something to filter on that you can hide easily you could always add a comment to each topic you want to select (assuming you are not using comments as part of the review process). Simply add comments to the appropriate topics (from the Review tab on the ribbon) - the content of the comment doesn't matter as you are filtering on whether there is a comment or not.

Once all the comments are in place you can hide them (using Show/Hide under the View tab) but you will still be able to filter for topics with comments using the Power Filter.

Personally I think the WordX add-in is a better option, but there you go.

I agree. I think the add-in is going to be the practical solution. There are hundreds of branches that need to be hidden (which is why the doing it manually either by icon or comment is not going to work ... thus the macro).

Thanks all for the suggestions!  

I completely understand concerns regarding the design of the map. That is why refined the design and prototyped it with basically twice the size and structure that I have now. Power filters are consistent at about 20-26 seconds (on a 32bit system). That has been very stable and workable for me over the past year plus. However, my concern about performance was about have to live with the addition of a very large number of topic style instances on top of what I have now to filter as needed. That is another reason why I did the script so that I could apply and them remove without having to keep the overhead.

I did note a second or two longer filter time when I apply the style. But, now that the structure and size matured it is a mater of how much effort there is to make the word extract. Scripting has been great for detailed and extensive sub level content (which execute in 2-10 sec).

All in all I found ways to make things work without boxing me into a corner. Of course, this community has been a great source of reference.

In that case I would definitely recommend looking at WordX, though I would trial it on a copy of your map first to make sure it doesn't impose too great an overhead.

There is one limitation of WordX. It doesn't let you choose topics by level before applying the export styles. You have to either select topics manually, based on filters, or let WordX apply styles to all topics.

If you do the latter WordX will apply styles automatically by matching Word header and paragraph styles from the Word template you have chosen. This is similar to MM's Word export, but uses actual Word styles.

The great advantage of WordX is that after the styles have been applied you can select all topics to which a particular header style has been chosen - for example if you are using default styles then  choosing topics with a Level 1 heading will select all main topics, and so on. You can use this approach to select a layer of topics and then clear the WordX icons from them, thus excluding then from the export process.