- To enter the current
date: enter Alt Shift D
- To enter current time: Alt
Shift T
- To reference the current page number,
enter Alt Shift P
top
of page
Styles can be created to
automatically control formatting. For example, you
could have a style that defines how titles are formatted. You merely
select the text and assign the appropriate style. If you use any of
the pre-defined templates, you will discover that each one already
contains many different styles. The problem that arises is that unless
you try out each style, it is difficult to determine how each style
will appear.
To address this issue,
you can use a built in feature to print a definition list of all the
styles within a template. To do so…
- Click on File
- Click on Print
- In the Print What
box, select Style
You might also want to
experiment with the other options that Print What provides.
The default is to print the document. You will discover that there
are several other pieces of information that can be printed besides
the actual document.
Changing
Existing Style
One of the advantages
of using Styles is the ability to easily change the appearance of
your document. Depending on the template that is being used to create
your document, there are a variety of preset styles to pick from.
A popular use of styles is for headings.
Let's assume you have
used the style Heading 1 several times within your document
and you want to change all existing Headings 1 to a different
format. Perhaps change the font, font size, justification,
bold, etc.
- First, go
to an existing Header 1 text and make
your new format changes. Notice that as soon
as you access text assigned to Header 1 text, the Style drop down
box changes to the name of the selected style.
- After you have made
all desired changes, highlight or
select the changed heading text.
- Click on the
Style box and press Enter.
A Modify Style dialog box will open with several
options.
- If you want to update
all existing text assigned to the Header style, select Update
the Style to Reflect Recent Changes. The Heading
style for this document is changed to the new format, along with
existing text and any future text assigned to the Heading Style.
top
of page
Word provides an easy method
of setting different tab positions. To do this
the ruler bar must be displayed. If it isn’t,
click on View and Ruler.
You will notice a small
box on the left side of the ruler. The figure within the box represents
the current type of tab that is in effect. There are four
tab options:
- Left
- Right
- Center
- Decimal align
To select a different option,
click on the box.
New
Tab
To insert a new tab,
click on the ruler bar
at the position where you want the tab to appear.
Remove
Tab
To remove a tab, drag
the tab mark downward off
of the ruler bar.
Adjust
Tab
To adjust the tab,
drag the tab mark to the left or
right.
If you want to display
or change the exact location of the tab, hold
down the ALT key while you drag the tab left or right.
Another option for changing
the tab settings, is to double click with the
right mouse button on a tab mark. A dialog box will display
that allows you to change the type of tab, location and several other
options.
top
of page
Word provides a tool bar
that lets you quickly select several drawing tools. To display the
draw tool bar, click on View, Toolbars
and Drawing.
One of the handy options
is to select an object using the AutoShapes feature.
- Click on the
AutoShapes button. You are provided with several categories of shapes
such as Lines, Arrows, Flowcharts, Callouts, etc
- Select the category.
You are provided with the options for that category.
- Click on the
object
you want to insert in your document.
You can also select one
of the other buttons that allow you to create Lines, Arrows, Rectangles,
Ovals, etc. When one of these buttons are clicked, you drag the mouse
within your document to create the object.
If you want to create several
objects of the same type, instead of clicking each time on the object
you want…
- Double
click on the icon.
It will appear indented.
- Now you can create several
rectangles, or whatever objects you double clicked, by just dragging
the mouse.
- To cancel
this mode, press the ESC
key.
This trick of double clicking
an icon to stay in a selected mode also works on several other buttons
within all of the Office modules.
top
of page
Here's a quick tip on selecting
entire sentences. It seems that often I have the situation where I
want to move or delete an entire sentence. Most of us drag the mouse
over the text to select the text. Usually resulting in selecting too
much or too little.
A better method
is to place the mouse cursor on any part of
the sentence, hold down the Ctrl key and Click. Whamo!
The entire sentence is automatically selected. You can now drag
the sentence to a new location, press the delete key or whatever editing
action is required.
The one problem that can
occur is the situation where you may have an abbreviation that ends
with a period in the middle of the sentence. In this case only the
text up to the period will get selected. To select the balance of
the sentence, move the cursor over any part
of the unselected text, hold down the shift key and click.
You will now have the entire sentence selected.
top
of page
You can easily change the
case of a word or words in a document.
- Highlight
the text to change
- Hold down the Shift
key and press F3
- By re-pressing
the F3 key, you can cycle through all the options:
- all uppercase
- all lowercase
- uppercase
for the first-letter in each word
top
of page
Nothing is more frustrating
than being interrupted while you’re in the middle of a major
word processing project.
Word can take you back
to the text you were working on before you closed your document. When
you reopen the document, press Shift
+ F5 before you do anything
else. This shortcut executes the Go Back command, which moves the
insertion point marker to your most recent editing location.
top
of page
Word offers a couple of
ways to select a column in a table. One way requires you to scroll
to the top of the table. You can then position the mouse pointer over
the top of the column to display the column pointer and click to select
the column. While this method is straight forward and easy to remember,
it’s pretty inconvenient if you happen to be working near the
bottom of a large table.
Luckily, there’s a
simple alternative. No matter where you are in a table, you can select
a column by pressing Alt and clicking
on the column you want
to select. In fact, you can use this trick to select an entire table—just
press Alt and double-click anywhere in the table
to select it.
top
of page
If you download text files
and bring them into Word, you’re surely familiar with the problem
of extra carriage returns. Instead of wrapping, each line ends with
a paragraph mark. As you may have discovered, manually removing the
extra marks gets old in a hurry. Fortunately, AutoFormat can often
eliminate extraneous paragraph marks for you.
To see if AutoFormat will
remove unwanted paragraph marks from a particular document…
- Select AutoFormat
from the Format menu
- Click Options
to determine which types of formatting changes AutoFormat is set
to make. You can select or deselect the desired check boxes
- Click OK
to return to the AutoFormat dialog box. Since your aim is to remove
paragraph marks as quickly as possible, just leave AutoFormat Now
selected. You may also want to choose a document type to govern
the kinds of formatting AutoFormat applies.
- When you’re ready
to format the document, click OK
AutoFormat will apply whatever
types of formatting you specified and—if you’re lucky—it
will delete unnecessary paragraph marks. If
AutoFormat eliminates only some of the unwanted marks, you might try
running it a second time. Some files require two passes to get the
job done.
top
of page
Managing multiple documents
can be frustrating when you can't remember what each document is about.
Two features that can make you job easier are the AutoSummarize
feature and Properties Summary.
AutoSummarize
The AutoSummarize feature
automatically summarizes the key points in a document. Word analyzes
your document, determines the most important sentences, and gives
you a custom summary based on this analysis.
To open the AutoSummarize
dialog box
- Choose Tools/AutoSummarize
- Select one of the
four summary options to
- Highlight
the key points
- Insert
a summary at the top of the document
- Create
a new document and paste the summary there
- Hide
everything but the summary
without leaving the document.
You can also customize
the length of the summary and update the document statistics so
you can access the summary through File/Properties.
Properties
Summary
One good habit you can
develop is entering information in the Summary Properties for each
document. Doing so enables you to quickly locate even the most
elusive document by telling Word to search for files that match
a particular keyword.
Among the most useful
bits of summary information are keywords, since they can
give you a good idea of a document's contents as well as facilitating
the search process. However, the prospect of having to think of
appropriate keywords for each document may be less than appealing,
especially if you're in a hurry. Fortunately, you can let Word come
up with the keywords and automatically enter them in the Properties
dialog box for you.
All you have to do is
run AutoSummarize on a document to create and insert keywords and
comments in the summary properties. Note:
Word will replace any entries that may already appear in those text
boxes.
How
to Create
- Choose Tools/AutoSummarize
- Select Highlight
Key Points
- Check the Update
Document Statistics box
- Select OK
Word will highlight
your document's key points and display the AutoSummarize toolbar.
Click Close to dismiss the
toolbar and the highlighting will disappear with the results being
placed in the Properties Summary.
How
to View
- Click on File
- Click on Properties
- Click on the Summary
tab
You are now viewing
the keywords and comments that were just automatically created.
You can add, change or delete the contents. Keep
in mind that if you rerun the above AutoSummarize step again,
it will replace your changes.
How
to Use
Let's assume that three
months later you want to find all documents that have the keyword
Job123. To do so
- Click on File
- Click on Open
- Click on the Advanced
button (Odds are fairly good that you have never
used this button)
- In the properties
field, change filenames to keywords
- In the value
field enter Job123
- Click on Find
Now
You will be returned
to the standard open window and only filenames that have a keyword
of Job123 will be displayed.
Another option is to
right-hand click on a filename in the
Open window and click on properties. This will open
the Properties summarize and allow you to view the keywords or
comments. You can also change the keywords or comments
at this point without having to open the document.
top
of page
Have you ever typed a word
and wish you could come up with a better one? After you have typed
a word…
- Press Shift
+ F7 to open the Thesaurus
dialog box. The word you just typed will appear in the Looked Up
text box. The Replace with Synonym list box will contain possible
alternatives.
- If you see a word (or
phrase) you like, select it
and click Replace.
- Word will close the
Thesaurus dialog box and replace your word with the selected synonym.
The entire process takes
only a few seconds—often a much quicker proposition than staring
at a word in your document and trying to conjure up an alternative.
top
of page
Have you ever wanted to
adjust the size of some text? For instance, suppose you create a heading
and decide it needs to be just a tiny bit larger. You can make the
change by using the time-consuming method of highlighting the text
and selecting the desired point size from the Font Size dropdown list
on the Formatting toolbar.
However, a quicker
way is to simply...
- Highlight
the text
- Hold down the Ctrl key
- Press
the ] key
Each time you press the
] key, Word will enlarge the text by one point.
To make the text smaller...
- Highlight
the text
- Hold down the Ctrl
key
- Press
the [ key
top
of page
Office has the ability
to insert hyperlinks within any of the Office documents. Now that
sure is an exciting statement. In case you are not familiar with
hyperlinks, a hyperlink is used to jump to another section of the
current document or another document all together. Hyperlinks are
commonly used on the Internet and is the basic method of navigating
the Internet.
Hyperlinks appear with
underlined text. Example: sample hyperlink. By simply clicking
on the hyperlink, you jump to the location that the hyperlink points
to. Easy, huh? So right about now you are probably thinking how
do you create these links?
Let’s first start
with a link that occurs within the same Word document. Assume someplace
near the top of your document you have a phrase like Jump
from Here. Someplace at the bottom of your document you have
a phrase like Jump to There. What we want to accomplish
is the ability to click on the Jump from Here and
have the screen automatically jump to the bottom with the cursor on
the Jump to There phrase.
We first need to set a
bookmark for the "Jump to There" phrase. To do so…
- Highlight the "Jump to There" phrase
- Select Insert
and Bookmark
- Enter
the bookmark name,
in this case To
- Click on Add
What you have done is set
a bookmark named To within the document pointing
to the phrase Jump to There.
Now you are ready to create
a hyperlink to the bookmark. To do so…
- Highlight the "Jump from Here" phrase
- Select
Insert and Hyperlink.
(Short cut is to enter Control-K)
- In the lower box, named
location, click on the browse
button
- From the displayed list
of bookmarks, select
the To bookmark
- Click on OK.
The "Jump from Here"
phrase will now be underlined and by clicking on it you will jump
to the bookmark which is the phrase "Jump to There".
A handy feature, if you
are using Outlook, is that you can put a hyperlink within a Word or
Excel document that will automatically open a selected section of
Outlook.
In Outlook, you have a
section called "Contacts". To create a hyperlink to this…
The phrase will be underlined
and the link created automatically. By clicking you will open Outlook
with the Contacts showing.
You may have subfolders
under Contacts, such as Customers. If you want to hyperlink to the
subfolder "Customers", enter the hyperlink as Outlook:Contacts/Customers.
Bookmarks and Hyperlinks
are very handy tools, especially for large documents or linking documents.
As you can see from the above examples, you don’t have to be
on the Internet to use them.
top
of page
Hopefully you are learning
how handy it is to finally use that right-hand mouse button. Most
of the new applications will pop-up a menu when the right-hand mouse
is clicked. The menu that pops up varies according to the position
of the mouse pointer. Get in the habit
of right-hand clicking and you will find that your efficiency level
will increase.
Within Office, these pop-menus
are called shortcut menus and they can easily be
customized. Open a Word document, place your
mouse pointer anywhere on the text, and right hand click. You
should have the options for...
- Cut
- Copy
- Paste
- Font
- Paragraph
- Bullets & Numbering
- Draw Table
- Define
A handy option that is
not there is the ability to access the Thesaurus. As an example of
how to customize the shortcut menu we will go through the necessary
steps to add the Thesaurus option to the shortcut menu.
- Click on Tools
on the top line
- Click on Customize
- Click on the Toolbars
tab
- In the toolbars box,
scroll down till you see Shortcut
Menus
- Click on the box to
the right of Shortcut Menus This will pop-up
another option box called Shortcut Menus
- Click on the field labeled
Text. This will
present a list of options that are used in Word's shortcut menus.
- In the list, click on
Text. This will
present the same shortcut menu that you saw when you right-hand
clicked on the text in your document.
- In the Customize window,
click on the tab Commands.
Do not close the other windows that are displayed at this point.
You are going to need them in a few steps.
- In the categories box,
scroll down and click on Tools
- In the commands box,
scroll down till you see the selection for the Thesaurus displayed.
- Drag
the Thesaurus selection to the shortcut menu and
point the mouse to where you want this selection listed.
- Click on Close in the Customize window to close all windows.
You are now ready to test
and use the new option.
- Position
your pointer on some word in your document where you want to substitute
a different word.
- Right-hand
click and select
the Thesaurus option.
- You will get the Thesaurus
window showing alternative word choices for the word that the
mouse was pointing to.
If you find yourself constantly
having to select from the top pull down menus, to save time add the
frequently used options to the shortcut menu.
top
of page
Want to add a little pizzazz
to your list text--but without a lot of fuss? You can take advantage
of autobullet feature and quickly generate bullets from the
symbol fonts.
First, you need to make
sure the autobullet feature is activated. To
do this . . .
- Choose AutoCorrect
from the Tools menu
- Click the AutoFormat
as You Type tab.
- Select the Automatic
Bulleted Lists check
box in the Apply as You Type panel (if it's not selected)
- Click OK
To create a
bulleted list . . .
- Choose Symbol
from the Insert menu
- Select the desired
font from the Font dropdown list
- Click
on the character you want to use as your bullet
- Click Insert
- Click Close
- Enter two
spaces
- Type
the first list item
- Press Enter
to begin another line. Word will insert your symbol
at the beginning of the new line
- Enter the second
item and press Enter
to create the third line
- Repeat
the process of typing items and pressing Enter until your list is
complete
- Finally, press Enter
twice to "turn off" your bullets.
top
of page
View two areas
of a document at the same time. If you're working on a large
document and are tired of scrolling backwards and forwards to a different
area of the document, you can split your view of the document and
work on two areas of the same document at the same time.
To create the
split
- Choose Split
from the Window menu
- Position
the split on your screen
- Click
the mouse button
- This now enables you
to view two portions of the same document.
To remove the
split
- Choose Remove
Split from the Window menu
- The split will go away,
and you'll have only one view of your document.
You can also achieve the
same split effect by dragging down on
the small split bar just above the vertical scroll bar.
To remove a split with the mouse, just drag the split border all the
way to the top or bottom of the window.
top
of page
What's
This?
Word is a WYSIWYG (What
You See Is What You Get) word processor. Because of this, commands
that control the formatting and fonts of the document are hidden from
view. This works well until you run into the situation when it just
doesn't format or print the way you would expect.
When this happens, you
need to view the hidden format and font commands to help determine
what is causing the problem. At first this may not seem possible,
but there is a method.
- Click on Help
(On the top menu bar)
- Click on What's
This (The mouse pointer becomes a question mark)
- Click on the character
or paragraph of concern A pop-up message box will
appear, listing the format and font commands)
- Press ESC
to cancel the pop-up display
There is also a keyboard
short command that can be used in place of the first two steps - Hold
down the shift key and press F1.
top
of page
Hide the
Ruler
When using Word, I find
it very convenient to display the horizontal and vertical rulers at
the top and to the left of the document. The downside of displaying
the rulers is that screen space is utilized and therefore you can't
see as much of the document page as you may like.
You can turn the ruler
display feature off, but then when you need it you have to go through
the exercise of turning it back on, or at least it appears that way.
An easier method, is to
place the mouse pointer in the area where the ruler would normally
appear and magically it will appear. As soon as
you move the mouse from the ruler, it will automatically hide again.
If you have never used
the ruler feature, you can find it under View
and Ruler.
top
of page
Managing
Table Widths
In Word,
when you create a table, by default it is stretched to fit the page
margins and columns are evenly spaced. Have you ever had the problem
where you add a column and Word extends
the table beyond the right margin? When this happens, it appears difficult
to readjust the width of the table to fit within the margins. Even
swearing at the screen or the next person that walks in your office
doesn't help. There is an easier way.
- Click
anywhere within the table.
- From the menu bar (at
the top) Click on Table
and Select Table from
the menu bar
- Click on Table
again and select Cell Height
and Width
- Click on the Column
tab
- Click on the Autofit
button
Your table should now fit
the entire page width and each column should be equally sized and
your blood pressure is still normal.
top
of page
Using
the Document Map
When working with a large
document, do you find yourself doing a lot of scrolling to review
or find different sections of the document? Save yourself time by
using a handy feature that allows you to view an outline of a large
document.
To view a document map
there are two methods...
1) Click on Document
Map in the Standard toolbar OR
2) Click on View
and then Document Map
The Document Map pane will
open displaying any items in your document that have outline level
styles assigned. Typically outline levels are assigned to heading
and title styles.
When you click on a selection
in the Document Map pane, Word automatically jumps to that section
of your document. Much faster and easier than scrolling.
top
of page
Word’s
Text Boundaries
Ordinarily in Word, switching
to page layout view displays the items in a document, text, graphics,
drawings, and so on in their real positions on the page. This WYSIWYG
display enables you to see how your document layout is shaping up.
By turning on the option to display text boundaries, you can
make the page layout view even more useful.
To activate this feature,
first make sure you’re already in page layout view, then...
- Click on the Tools
menu
- Click on Options
- Click the View
tab
- Select Text
Boundaries check box
- Click OK
With this feature turned
on, you’ll see a dotted outline marking the boundaries
of all your document elements. Word will display the boundaries that
enclose the header and footer (if your document includes them) and
the main text area with separate boundaries for each column in a multicolumn
layout, footnotes, frames, and so on. Viewing text boundaries can
help you visualize exactly how your document components fit together
on the page.
If you modify your layout
- adjust margins, add sections, reduce columns, and so on— text
boundaries will show you how those changes affect the arrangement
of all your document elements.
top
of page
Quick
way to arrange table rows
If you need to move one
or more rows in a table...
- Position the insertion
point marker in the row you want to move (or highlight multiple
rows if you're moving more than one).
- Press Alt
Shift and the up arrow to move
the row(s) up a row, or press Alt Shift
and the down arrow to move the row(s)
down a row.
- You can repeat the shortcut
to continue relocating the row(s) one row at a time.
You can also use this technique
to separate a row from its table.
For example, suppose you place the insertion point marker in the third
row of a table.
- Pressing Alt
Shift and the up arrow once
will make it the second row.
- Pressing Alt
Shift and the up arrow again
will make it the first row.
- And if you press Alt
Shift and the up arrow a third
time, Word will insert a paragraph mark above the table and place
the row above the mark (unless the table is at the top of the document).
- You can reverse the
process to reunite the row with its original table--or simply delete
the paragraph mark that separates them.
top
of page |
Business Info 