What is Working Document Helper?
Working Document Helper is a Microsoft Word add-in designed for tribunal document preparation. It reads the formatting in your document — bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough — and applies colour-coded highlighting and font colours that follow the standard tribunal key. It can also process agreements by accepting or removing marked-up text.
Key features
- Add Colour — apply colour-coded highlighting and font colours based on text formatting.
- Remove Colour — strip all colour coding to return the document to its original state.
- Customisable colours — choose your own highlight and font colours for each formatting type.
- Table processing — process text inside tables as well as the document body.
- Accept Agreements (Pro) — automatically process underlined text by removing strikethrough deletions and normalising agreed text.
- Progress tracking — a progress bar and estimated time remaining for large documents.
- Cancellation — stop a long-running operation at any time.
Tabs
Working Document Helper has three tabs in the task pane:
| Tab | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Colour | Add or remove colour coding, configure colours, process tables |
| Pro | Accept agreements and view Pro feature information |
| Profile | Sign in, accept the EULA, view diagnostics, submit feedback |
How it works
- Open a Word document containing formatted text (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough).
- Switch to the Colour tab.
- Optionally adjust the highlight and font colours in the colour key table.
- Click Add Colour.
- Working Document Helper scans every paragraph (and optionally every table cell) and applies the appropriate colours.
For a detailed walkthrough, see Colour Coding.
The tribunal colour key
Working Document Helper maps text formatting to colours following a standard tribunal convention:
| Formatting | Tribunal meaning | Default colour |
|---|---|---|
| Bold | YP (young person) amendments | Yellow highlight |
| Italic | LA (local authority) amendments | Blue highlight |
| Underline | Agreements | Green font colour |
| YP deletions | Yellow highlight + red font | |
| LA deletions | Blue highlight + red font | |
| General deletions | Red highlight + black font |
All colours are customisable. See Colour Coding for details.
Next steps
- Colour Coding — understand the colour key and customisation options
- Adding Colour — apply colour coding to your document
- Removing Colour — strip colour coding from your document
- Accepting Agreements — process agreements (Pro feature)
- Pro Features — unlock additional capabilities