MVP Shauna Kelly: A Remembrance
November 16, 2012 – From the Microsoft Most Valued Professional Newsletter/Weekly Roundup
One year ago today, beloved Word MVP Shauna Kelly lost her battle with cancer at 8:36am at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Victoria Australia. Shauna was known for her quick sense of humor, big spirit, sharp intellect, and endless capacity to help people in the community. Shauna’s passion, enthusiasm and clarity of thinking in the way she approached being an MVP was very special. She was such a huge force in the community and in our Microsoft Family and her loss continues to be felt today.
Before her death, Shauna was working on an ambitious project she named, “Word Toolkit”, which is a suite of tools for people managing large documents in a corporate or government environment. Shauna’s vision for Word Toolkit included tools for managing styles, content controls, building blocks, headers, footers, revisions, and large sets of documents (including sets composed of a mixture of Word documents and PDF files). As a first step toward realization of that vision, she generalized the capabilities of the tools she had previously developed for governments and corporations. Then she merged the tools into a single software package and added to them other tools developed for more general users of Word.
Unfortunately Shauna was unable to complete this project. To honor her memory and to help keep her in their hearts, friends and family and other interested parties joined together to help realize Shauna’s vision.
Peter Grimshaw, Karl E. Peterson, and Rob Bovey helped gain access to Shauna’s VB6 code. Tony Jollans, Jonathan West, Lene Fredborg, and Bill Coan analyzed the code and concluded that it should be ported to VBA, so that it could be carried forward by the large population of users who have knowledge of both Word and VBA. The Word Toolkit framework and Shauna’s Header Footer Boss were ported to VBA by Bill Coan. Additional tools will be ported and brought to completion in the future. Anyone who would like to help with this effort may contact Bill Coan at billcoan@wordsite.com or Peter Grimshaw at info@btmi.com.au.
Header Footer Boss is the first of Shauna’s tools brought to completion. Others will be added to Word Toolkit as they become available. Header Footer Boss lets you:
•View in a single dialog box all headers and footers in all sections of all open documents.
•Mark for special attention headers and footers that control their own content, sections that specify a starting page number (or where a new page number format begins), documents with different even-numbered pages, or any of a dozen other items that could be a source of problems.
•View the status of any individual header or footer and link, unlink, edit, or delete its contents as desired.
•View or modify the properties of any individual section and link, unlink, or delete the contents of the headers and footers in that section.
•View or modify the properties of any individual document and link, unlink, or delete the contents of the headers and footers throughout that document.
This first major milestone in the realization of Shauna’s vision will be published on the Word MVP Website, run by MVP John McGhie, very soon, with the other tools to follow as they’re completed.
Shauna Kelly had a quickness of mind, clarity of thinking, a vividness of expression, and an openness of heart that won friends for her wherever she went. She went all over the world. Should you wish to honor her memory, a donation in her name to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation would be her wish.
For more information, visit http://www.ocrf.com.au/
We honor our friend and remember her life well lived today. We miss you!