M$ Word Tips and Tricks

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This will be an ongoing series of Tips and Tricks that I have found here and there. I have saved them all and will be updating at least once a week starting now. If you have any you would like included feel free to PM a copy to me.

Some will be very basic that a lot of you will already know, some will be more in depth.

Let the show begin:

Credit for these tips has been lost as I didn't save the source, just the tips. They are readily available to anyone. I know some were from PCMag, others I just don't remember.

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Add a button to a toolbar

You can't access all of Word's built-in buttons from the default toolbars. To use some built-in buttons, you'll have to add them to a toolbar.

For example, suppose you regularly use the Tools menu to check a document's word count, but you'd rather use a button. Follow these steps to add the Word Count button to the Formatting toolbar:

1. Right-click the Formatting toolbar, and select Customize.

2. On the Commands tab, select Tools from the Categories box.

3. Drag Word Count from the Commands box to the Formatting toolbar.

To apply this change to all documents, click Close. To apply this change only to the current document, select the name of the document in the Save In box, and click Close.

If the change is saved in Normal, then the changed toolbar becomes the default. If you save the change in the current document, the change will appear only when that document is opened.

To delete a button from a toolbar, press [Alt] while clicking and dragging the button off the toolbar.

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Add numbered arrows

When you write out instructions for a process, you typically number each step in the instruction set. If the instructions describe performing an operation on a specific computer, for example, you might include a graphic image of that computer in your document. You can help the reader by adding to the drawing a series of numbered arrows corresponding to the steps in the written instruction.

To draw the arrows, click the Drawing toolbar's AutoShapes button, select Block Arrows, and then select an arrow style. Click-and-draw in your document to create the arrow, then position it on or near the drawing. Once the arrow is in place, you have a couple of options for labeling it with a number. The easiest way is to right-click the arrow, choose Add Text, type the number, and then format it to your liking.

For a fancier touch, number your arrows with billiard balls instead of plain numbers. To add the "billiard ball" symbol, right-click the arrow and choose Add Text. Go to Insert | Symbol, click the Symbols tab, and select Wingdings 2 from the list of fonts. There you'll find two sets of billiard-ball-style symbols, numbered zero through 10: One set has white numbers on a black ball and the other has black numbers on a white ball. Insert one of those symbols, then select the symbol and increase its point size to make sure your readers don't miss it.

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Add text above a table

Say you've just created a table at the top of a page, and you want to add some text above it. But when you try to place your pointer at the top of the page, it goes no further than the first cell in your table.

Pressing [Ctrl][Home] doesn't help, and attempts to add a blank line at the top of the page only add a blank line to the top row.

Fortunately, Word offers two methods for placing your pointer above the table: One uses the mouse, while the other uses the keyboard.

To use the mouse, click inside the first cell of the table, and go to Table | Split Table. This adds a new paragraph mark above the table and automatically places the pointer at the mark.

To accomplish the same thing using the keyboard method, click inside the first cell of the table, and press [Ctrl][shift][Enter].

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Adjust column width with the AutoFit feature

If you routinely adjust column widths to fit table contents, you can save time by using Word's AutoFit feature to adjust them automatically. To activate the AutoFit feature, click inside the table, and go to Table | AutoFit | AutoFit To Contents.

Once you've activated AutoFit, all column widths will adjust to fit the contents of the cells. Word automatically adjusts all columns in the table as you type within the cells.

To adjust the width of a single column to fit its contents without activating the AutoFit feature, move your pointer along the column's right boundary until it becomes a double-arrow, and then double-click.

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AutoFormat dashes

You don't have to memorize complicated shortcut keys to insert dashes into your documents. Word's AutoCorrect feature lets you insert them by typing one or two hyphens. First, activate the feature in AutoCorrect by following these steps:

1. In Word 2002, go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options (or AutoCorrect in Word 2000).

2. In the AutoCorrect dialog box, select the AutoFormat As You Type tab.

3. Under Replace As You Type, select the Hyphens With Dash (or Symbol Characters With Symbols in Word 2000) check box, and click OK.

Once you've activated this option, you can insert a dash between ranges of numbers or dates by typing the first number or date, a space followed by a hyphen, and the second number or date. To insert a longer dash, type the text and type two hyphens followed by the rest of the text.

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Automated Action

To perform an action (such as inserting the current date) when a new file based on a template is created, open the template in Word, and record a macro that performs the action. Name it Autonew. When the Record Macro dialog appears, choose Store Macro In, and specify the template you've modified. For a macro that runs when you open a document based on your custom template, record a macro, and name it AutoOpen. Then store it in the template.

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Automatically Update a Table of Figures

When I type my papers, I need to include a table listing all the figures. When I change the order of the pages, the table is no longer correct. Is there any way to make the page numbers in the table of figures update automatically?

To do this, you must ensure that each figure is identified by a caption field, not just by a caption typed below it. Go through your text from start to finish, click on the line just after each figure, and choose Caption... from the Insert menu. Enter the desired caption. If you already had a plain-text caption below the figure, delete it.

Now navigate to the page where you want the figure table. Select Index and Tables from the Insert | Reference menu, then click the Table of Figures tab. Set the options for the table's format and click OK. Any time the page numbers change, just click on the table and press F9 to update the table with current information.

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Automatically Update a Table of Figures

To do this, you must ensure that each figure is identified by a caption field, not just by a caption typed below it. Go through your text from start to finish, click on the line just after each figure, and choose Caption... from the Insert menu. Enter the desired caption. If you already had a plain-text caption below the figure, delete it.

Now navigate to the page where you want the figure table. Select Index and Tables from the Insert | Reference menu, then click the Table of Figures tab. Set the options for the table's format and click OK. Any time the page numbers change, just click on the table and press F9 to update the table with current information.

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Better Copying in Word 2002

As long as you have the newest version of Word. One of the more welcome features in Word 2002 is the ability to select multiple passages of noncontiguous text. You do so by holding down the Ctrl key as you highlight the individual passages. If you have a 15-paragraph document, for example, and you want to copy 6 of the paragraphs to a new document, highlight the first paragraph as you normally would, then scroll down to the second and hold down the Ctrl key as you highlight it. Do the same for the remaining 4 paragraphs, then use the Edit menu, the right-click menu, or the drag-and-drop function to place the selected paragraphs wherever you want them.

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Change existing text's line spacing

You can use the Format | Paragraph menu in Word to change the line spacing of existing text in a Word document, but for simple changes, using the line-spacing shortcut keys is much quicker. You can quickly change the line spacing of existing text in a Word document using shortcut keys.

For example, to change from single to double spacing, select the text you wish to change and press [Ctrl]2. To revert to single spacing, press [Ctrl]1. Pressing [Ctrl]5 changes the selected text to 1.5 line spacing.

The Formatting toolbar in Word 2002 now has a Line Spacing button. To double-space selected text, click the Line Spacing button's drop-down arrow, and click 2 for double spacing.

In addition to double spacing, you can also use the Line Spacing button for setting single (default), 1.5, 2.5, or triple spacing. If none of these are sufficient, you can always go to the Paragraph dialog box by selecting More. This takes you directly to the Paragraph dialog box's Indents And Spacing tab, where you can choose from the At Least, Exactly, or Multiple line-spacing options.

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Change Margin Settings

There are two ways to adjust the margin settings of a document. You can either grab and drag the margin controls on the ruler, or you can select File, Page Setup and click the Margins tab. If you're working in a multipage document, your best bet is to use the File, Page Setup method. As long as you have Apply To Whole Document selected, you can count on your margin settings to be applied to your entire document. Adjusting the sliding rulers, on the other hand, applies the margin settings only to the current section by default. And if you adjust the margin settings in the middle of a multipage document, Word 2000 will automatically create a new section for the page with the new margin settings and apply them to that section only.

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Change page orientation mid-document

Let's say you have a chart or table that you want to include in a document, but it's too wide to print across a standard sheet of paper. Using Word's Page Setup menu, you can print a chart or table horizontally across a page while printing the rest of the document vertically.

Follow these steps:

1. Move the cursor to the line above the chart or table.

2. Go to File | Page Setup.

3. On the Margins tab, select Landscape under the Orientation section.

4. In the Preview section, select This Point Forward from the Apply To drop-down list, and click OK.

The rest of the document will now print in Landscape mode. To resume printing the pages vertically, follow these steps:

1. Move the cursor to the line below the chart or table.

2. Go to File | Page Setup.

3. On the Margins tab, select Portrait under the Orientation section.

4. In the Preview section, select This Point Forward from the Apply To drop-down list, and click OK.

Use this method to apply any changes you make in the Page Setup dialog box to any section of your document.

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Change Paragraph Styles

When you hit Enter, Word begins a new paragraph in your document. Here's how to make Word intelligently follow one paragraph style with another.

Let's say you want a Title paragraph to always be followed by a Heading 1 paragraph. Begin by selecting Word's Format menu, then choose Style. In the Style dialog box, make sure the drop-down list under List is set to All Styles, then select Title under Styles and click on the Modify button. In the Modify Style dialog box, change the Style for Following Paragraph control to Heading 1, then click on OK and Close.

Now if your cursor is to the immediate left of the Title paragraph mark when you hit Enter, any new paragraph you create just after it will be a Heading 1 paragraph. If the cursor isn't flush with the paragraph mark, both the original and the new paragraph will have the original formatting.

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Change selected printing orientation

Do you maintain financial reports or other documents that contain lots of tabular information? If so, you probably print the majority of the document in Portrait mode and use Landscape mode for information that spans more columns than will fit across a page in Portrait mode.

Rather than creating separate documents (one for printing in Portrait mode and the other for printing Landscape pages), insert section breaks before and after the pages you want to print in Landscape mode and change the orientation only for the pages within those sections. Here's how.

1. Put the cursor at the top of the section that you want to print in Landscape mode. Then, go to Insert | Break, click Next Page under Section Break Types, and click OK.

2. Move the cursor to the end of the section that you want to print in Landscape mode and repeat Step 1.

3. With the cursor in the new section, go to File | Page Setup, and click the Paper Size tab.

4. Under Orientation, click Landscape.

5. Click OK to change the orientation for this section.

When you want to switch back to Portrait mode, repeat these steps, but select Portrait in Step 4.

When you change page orientations in this manner, headers and footers follow the orientation. For instance, if you've set document headers in the first (Portrait) section to display the page number and date, the same information will, by default, appear in Landscape orientation on the pages formatted for Landscape printing, unless you create new headers and footers for each new section.

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Change the Default Font

The default font for the Normal.dot template is Times New Roman. To have all your New documents use a different font automatically (for example, Arial), click Font from the Format menu. The Font dialog displays. In the Font field, scroll the list of typefaces until the font you want displays in the Font window. Click this font. Select the appropriate Font style, size settings, and font color, then click the Default button at the bottom of the Font dialog box. Word pops up an alert box asking if you want to change the default font to the selection you've made and advising you that the change you are about to make will affect all new documents based on the Normal.dot template. Click Yes.

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Change the format in text files

If someone gives you a document or other information in plain text, you know Word can handle the file without any fuss. But, by default, Word formats the text in Plain Text style with 10-point Courier New font. Unless you're using that font for your document, you'll have to select the text and apply a new style or font.

To change the way Word formats text from a text file, follow these steps:

1. Go to Format | Style. In the Style dialog box, select Plain Text in the Styles list. (If Plain Text doesn't appear in the list, choose All Styles from the List drop-down list.)

2. Click Modify. In the Modify Style dialog box, click Format, choose Font, and then select the font name and/or size you want to use.

3. Click OK to close the Font dialog box.

4. Before you close the Modify Style dialog box, select the Add To Template check box.

By activating the Add To Template check box, Word stores the change to the Plain Text style in the template on which the current document was based. The next time you open or insert a .txt file, Word will display the text with the font you assigned to the Plain Text style.

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Charting Trends

You don't have to be a spreadsheet wizard to create eye-catching charts. If you can create a Word table, you can use Microsoft Graph 2000 Chart to create a visually appealing chart based on that table.

First, you need a table with at least two rows. In the first row, enter descriptive labels for your data. In the rest of the rows, enter the data you want to chart. If you like, you can enter row-level text labels in the leftmost column of your table. If you do, the charting tool will ignore the first cell in the top-level corner of the table.

Once you have a table, it takes only a few mouse clicks to create a chart:

1. Click anywhere in the table, then go to Table | Select | Table.

2. Go to Insert | Object, click the Create New tab, and select Microsoft Graph 2000 Chart. Click OK.

3. Two new objects will appear: the chart itself and a Datasheet window. At this point, you're free of the constraints of the Word table.

4. In the datasheet, you can add columns, change column and row labels, and update the values you want to chart. Your chart will automatically reflect the changes you make.

5. When you finish fine-tuning the data, click the Datasheet's close box. (You are now free to delete the original Word table.)

6. To edit the values on which the chart is based, right-click on the chart, choose Chart Object from the context menu, and choose Edit.

If you would like to create a chart without creating a table first, begin with Step 2 above and create a chart from scratch.

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Choose the correct view

The first five commands on the View menu often confuse even experienced Word users. They are: Normal, Online Layout, Page Layout, Outline, and Master Document. The default view is Normal, but you'll probably want to work in Page Layout most of the time-it's the WYSIWWP ("what you see is what will print") view.

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Chop Paper Cost

Want to cut your paper expenses by 50 percent, 75 percent, or even more? In Word, choose File, Print and click on the 2-up option. By printing two pages on each sheet and using both sides of the paper, you'll cut your paper use dramatically. The results are readable, and the printout's reduced weight is welcome if you're carrying a draft report in your shoulder bag on a business trip.

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Attach a different template to your document

When you need to reformat a document according to a new custom template, you don't have to start over. You can make Word reformat it for you by replacing the document's template with the custom template.

Follow these steps:

1. Open the document, and go to Tools | Templates And Add-Ins.

2. Select the Automatically Update Document Styles check box.

3. Click the Attach button, and browse to the appropriate template.

4. Select the template, click Open, and click OK.

Word automatically replaces each style in the document with a style of the same name in the new template; you may have to manually change other styles. Word also replaces AutoText, macros, and custom command settings available in the original template with those of the custom template.

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Clean Up Text

I sometimes copy and paste articles from the Internet to Microsoft Word 2002. Unfortunately, the text often has odd formatting and a carriage return at the end of each short line of text, making the entire article twice or three times as long when printed. Is there a way to remove all the carriage returns at once, instead of deleting them line by line?

This is a common problem, and it does not have a built-in solution. To start, ensure that a blank line always appears between actual paragraphs. Then press Ctrl-H and clean up the document using Find and Replace as follows:

Replace ^l with ^p.

Replace ^p_ with ^p (where the underscore represents a space).

Replace _^p with ^p (again the underscore represents a space).

Replace ^p^p with %$#@.

Replace ^p with a space.

Replace %$#@ with ^p^p.

In the Find and Replace dialog, ^l represents a new line and ^p represents an actual paragraph mark, corresponding to and in HTML. The first step replaces any new-line characters with proper paragraph marks. The blank lines separating the document's true paragraphs will appear as a pair of paragraph marks.

Steps 2 and 3 ensure that the paired paragraph marks aren't missed because of an intervening space. In step 4, we replace the paired paragraph marks with a text string that does not otherwise appear in the document. Step 5 corrects the formatting by replacing each remaining lone paragraph mark with a space, and step 6 restores the correct paragraph marks.

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Clear a table

If you need to delete the contents of all the cells in a table, just select the table and press [Delete] (not [backspace]).

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Color table cells

When you use Word's tables to develop forms that have more than two columns, guide your readers to the right places on the form by adding a touch of color to the cells that are "off limits." For instance, enliven your forms by filling in the unused cells with a shading color. Your users will skip the shaded cells, like the black squares in a crossword puzzle, and proceed to the data labels you want them to read.

There are a couple of ways to colorize a table cell. You could click in a cell and then click the Standard toolbar's Highlight button. The problem with this method is, you won't see any change in color in empty cells. And in cells that contain entries, the highlight color only extends as far as the text entered.

Instead, colorize an entire cell or group of cells with a single click using the Tables And Borders toolbar. First, select the cell(s) or range of cells to color. Then, select a color from the Shading Color tool's dropdown menu. When you do, Word will fill the entire cell with the shading color, regardless of the cell's contents.

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Compare documents

When two or more people are working simultaneously on copies of the same source document, keeping track of proposed changes can be tricky. Fortunately, Word's Compare Documents tool makes it easy to tell, at a glance, what changes have been made.

To familiarize yourself with Compare Documents, try this basic example. Create a document called Mydraft1 and enter some sample text. Save that document under the name Mydraft2. Now, let's assume your coworker opens Mydraft2, makes some editing changes without activating the Track Changes tool, and saves the file.

Here's how you can use the Compare Documents tool to quickly identify the changes your coworker made to your original text:

1. Open the edited version of the file (Mydraft2 in our example), and go to Tools | Track Changes | Compare Documents.

2. In the Select File To Compare With Current Document dialog box, select the original version of the file (Mydraft1).

3. Click Open. Word will activate the Track Changes tool and begin highlighting changes on-screen.

The Track Changes tool compares Mydraft2 to Mydraft1, using Mydraft1 as the rule. Things that were changed in the edited version are converted to tracked changes. You can now approve or reject your coworker's proposed changes, one at a time, by going to Tools | Track Changes | Accept Or Reject Changes.

Note: Before comparing documents, go to Tools | Track Changes | Highlight Changes and deselect the Track Changes While Editing check box. If the Track Changes tool is active when you compare documents, Word displays a warning that it may not be able to accurately compare the documents.