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# Print story cards

On this page you can print story cards to be used in sensemaking sessions.

## What to do here

Choose a story collection. Choose the questions whose answers you want to appear on the story cards. Then click the Print Story Cards button. The cards will appear in a separate window, and you can print the page from your browser.

## Connections to other pages

In order to print story cards, you must first create a story collection with an associated story form, and you must collect, enter, or import some stories into the collection. Printing story cards makes no changes to your data. No other page of the application is affected by the use of this page.

## Frequently-asked questions

### I want to edit my generated story cards in a word processor. How can I do that?

You have several options. See which works best for you.

- Select the entire generated web page, copy it, and paste it into a word processor that can read pasted-in HTML.
- Print the page to a PDF file, then open the PDF file in something that can save the file in other formats (like Acrobat Pro).
- Save the page to an HTML file, then:
  - Open it in a word processor that can read HTML files.
  - Convert it using a file converter on the internet.
  - Convert it using Pandoc.

For example, here's a simple copy-and-paste workflow for setting up story cards using Microsoft Word.

1. Open an empty Word document. In Page Settings, change it into landscape mode.
2. Print the story cards to an HTML page, using two columns and a slider-range-characters setting of 30.
3. Select the entire page, then copy it.
4. Paste it into your word document.
5. Select the entire pasted table.
6. Set the table borders to inside borders only.
7. In the table settings, set the spacing between cells to 0.1 inches.
8. In the cell settings, set the default left and right cell margins to 0.5 inches, and set the vertical alignment to top.
9. In the row settings, turn off "Allow row to break across pages."
10. If you want to, change the fonts, margins, and so on.
11. Print your cards (using thick paper if possible), then cut them apart using scissors or a paper cutter.

Here's the same workflow using LibreOffice.

1. Open an empty LibreOffice Writer document. Change the Page Style to landscape.
2. Print the story cards to HTML, using two columns and a slider-rangel-characters setting of 30.
3. Select the entire page, then copy it.
4. Paste it into your LibreOffice document.
5. Select the entire pasted table.
6. Open the table properties.
7. In Text Flow:
   - Turn off "Allow row to break across pages and columns."
   - For Vertical alignment, choose top.
8. In Borders:
   - Turn on all of the borders (inside and outside).
   - Set the left and right padding to 0.5 inches.
9. If you want to, change the fonts, margins, and so on.
10. Print your cards (using thick paper if possible), then cut them apart using scissors or a paper cutter.

### Do I always have to print all of the stories in the story collection?

No. You can create a filter to print only some of the stories in a collection. Find the place on this page that says If you want to filter the stories printed, enter your filter here. In that box, enter the exact short name of a question (one that is in your story form), followed by two equals signs (==), followed by either a list of exact answers (separated by two equals signs), or the low and high values of a numerical range (separated by two equals signs).

Some examples:

- Feel about == happy will print only stories for which the question "Feel about" was answered "happy."
- Location == Northern == Eastern will print stories for which the "Location" question was answered with either "Northern" or "Eastern."
- Story ended == 0 == 20 will print stories for which the scale question "Story ended" was answered with a number in the range from zero to twenty, inclusive.
- Story length == [0 == 200) will print stories with text lengths of 0 to 199 characters.
- Story text == Company == company will print stories in which the word "Company" appears (with either capitalization).

Filtering stories for story cards works exactly like filtering stories for a catalysis report. You can read more about filters on the help page on configuring catalysis reports.

### How do I use the display lumping feature?

Display lumping is described on the help page for configuring your catalysis report. When you are printing story cards, you cannot use display lumping for any of the generated questions (Eliciting question, Number of stories told, Story length, Collection date). However, it works for all story and participant questions.

### Should I truncate stories?

Usually, the stories you collect will be relatively short, a paragraph or two. But once in a while, especially if you are collecting your stories online, people will do strange things that create really long stories (like paste in whole files). This can wreak havoc with your ability to print nice clean story cards. So you can set an upper limit on story length, with a note like "ask to see the full story" or something, so people know there is more to read. Try a few different lengths to see what works.

Note that NarraFirma gives you many options for this truncation, including printing only the first 100 characters of stories. We can't actually think of any reason you'd want to do that! But who knows, you might need it for some special reason.

### What's this about characters?

Sliders (ranges) are represented in story cards as rows of characters (letters). By default a slider looks like this:

-----|--------------------------------------------

If you like, you can change your sliders to use other characters and create displays like these:

_____<>________________________________

.....⥣.............................................

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|||~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

===========================[]===========================

A few tips on changing slider characters:

- Some characters are wider than others. If your before-the-button character is wider than your after-the-button character, your slider values may appear different than they really are.
- White space is collapsed in HTML. This means you can use an empty space for your after-the-button character, but you can't use it before the button.
- You can use emojis and other special characters, but whether your browser and printer will print them correctly is anybody's guess. See what works for you.

### How do I use the "Custom CSS" feature?

Click Print Story Cards, then use your browser to inspect any element of your story cards you want to change. (The usual way to do this is to right-click on a word or area and choose "Inspect" or "Inspect Element" from the popup menu that appears. If you don't see a popup menu or an "Inspect" menu item, look up how to inspect a web page element in the browser you are using. Sometimes you need to turn on "developer" mode to inspect page elements.)

When you have successfully inspected the page element you want to change, you should see its CSS class. Most of the classes start with "narrafirma-story-card".

Next go to the "custom CSS" field on the the "Print story cards" page and write a class selector (label) and declaration (set of formatting lines) for that class. You can use your browser's style editor to experiment with CSS until you get the styling you want.

For example, if you wanted all choice-question selections (drop-down list, checkboxes, radio buttons) to appear in blue, you would write a CSS statement like this:

`.narrafirma-story-card-select-selected, .narrafirma-story-card-checkboxes-selected, .narrafirma-story-card-radiobuttons-selected { color: blue; }`

Then print your story cards again to see your change. (You can't just reload the story cards page; you have to click the "Print Story Cards" button again.)