MS Word Tips

Word Tips

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Display BIG Numbers as Text in Word 01.18.05 Total posts: 3
By Neil J. Rubenking The tip "Display Numbers as Text in Word" works fine except when writing a million or more. Is there a way to display very big numbers as text in Word?Yehuda MeltzerADVERTISEMENT Congratulations on winning the lottery! As you note, the DollarText field switch works only with numbers under one million. For numbers a million or more but less than a billion, you could do the job with two fields. Suppose your number is $123,456,789.12. As before, press Ctrl+F9 to insert the curly braces that define a field. Enter this text inside the braces, omitting the quotes: "=123456789.12 / 1000000 \* CardText". This field spells out in text the value of your number divided by a million. Type "million" and press Ctrl+F9 again. This time insert the text "=MOD(123456789.12, 1000000) \* DollarText". The MOD function returns the remainder when your number is divided by a million. The whole thing will look like this:{=123456789.12 / 1000000 \* CardText} million {=MOD(123456789.12, 1000000) \* DollarText}Right-click on each field and choose Update Field from the menu, then press Alt+F9 to display the field result. You'll see this: "one hundred twenty-three million four hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred eighty-nine and 12/100." Now, if you want the solution for numbers a billion and over, you're going to have to share some of that lottery money.

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Fast Access to Often-Used Documents

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


You can keep frequently used documents readily available on Word's
menu bar so you don't have to use the File menu and search through
files and folders to find them. You do this by adding a Work menu to
Word's menu bar. Simply go to View Toolbars Customize, choose
the Commands tab, and select Built-in Menus from the list of
categories. Then choose Work from the list of commands and drag it
to where you want it on the top-line menu. From your new menu,
choose Add to work menu to attach a filename to the menu. To remove
a filename, press Ctrl-Alt-Minus and click on the item you want to
remove.



Open the Last-Opened Document

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


You can create an icon on your desktop that will launch Word and
automatically open the document you last opened. Either locate the
file Winword .exe in Windows Explorer (for Office 2003, this is
typically in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11) or find it
with the Search item on the Start menu (in the Search tool, you'll
probably need to turn on More advanced options, then add checkmarks
next to Search system folders and Search subfolders).
Once you find Winword .exe, right-click on the file icon and drag it
to your desktop, and then select Create Shortcuts Here. Right-click
on the new shortcut icon, choose Properties, and go to the Shortcut
tab. In the Target field, after the existing file path, add a space
and then /mFile1. You can also assign a shortcut key if you want to
launch the file with a keystroke combination. When you're done,
click on Apply. In the General tab, give the shortcut a descriptive
name and click on OK.





Using the Paste Special Command

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


When you copy text from the Web or another document into a Word
file, Word will reproduce the typeface, color, and font size
displayed in the original page. If you want the pasted text to match
the formatting in the destination document, use Edit Paste
Special, and choose Unformatted Text.





Rearrange Paragraphs With Two Keystrokes

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Do you need to swap the second and third paragraphs in the document
you're working on? Don't waste time dragging text around within your
document using the mouse. Just click on the paragraph you'd like to
move, hold down Shift-Alt, and move the paragraph up or down using
the arrow keys. Each press of the arrow key causes the selected
paragraph to jump over one adjacent paragraph.





Erase Private Information

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Word documents contain hidden information that can provide clues to
your identity and the identity of people to whom you e-mailed a file
using Outlook. Word 97 goes so far as to retain logs of the last ten
people who revised your document, often with easily extractable
e-mail addresses. Unrevised versions of your text may also be hidden
in your files. Microsoft has posted a Remove Hidden Data tool on its
Web site, but this is cumbersome to use and doesn't remove all
identity information. Before making a Word file public, you can
thoroughly clean it by opening it in WordPad (located in Start All
Programs Accessories) and saving the file in Rich Text Format.
(Word can save to RTF but doesn't discard all the hidden
information.) After you've saved the file, you can change its file
extension from .rtf to .doc.





Drawing a Line

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


You can create a line across the page of your Word or Outlook
document with just a few keystrokes. Type three consecutive hyphens
and press Enter to get a normal line. Type three underscores and
Enter, and you'll get a bold line. And if you type three equal signs
and press Enter, you'll get a double line.





Word's Built-In Calculator

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Did you know you can add a calculator to Word's toolbars or menus?
Go to View Toolbars Customize and choose the Commands tab. In
the list of categories, go to Tools, select Tools Calculate in the
list of commands, and drag it to a toolbar or drop-down menu. After
you drop the command on the toolbar or menu, immediately right-click
on the command, choose Change Button Image from the pop-up menu, and
choose the calculator icon.
You can use the same pop-up menu to specify whether to display text,
an icon, or both in the toolbar. Now, type a simple calculation (try
2 + 2) in a Word document, highlight it, and click on the new icon
or menu item. To replace the calculation with the result, just press
Ctrl-V. Before you press Ctrl-V, note that the result appears in the
status line at the bottom of the window.





Taming Squiggles and Smart Tags

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Some of the features that are supposed to help you can just be
downright annoying. Take those squiggly red and green underlines
Word puts under words and sentences. Intended to point out spelling
and grammatical errors, these are often wrong or inappropriate. To
turn off the squiggly lines, choose Options from the Tools menu,
select the Spelling & Grammar tab, then uncheck Check spelling as
you type and Check grammar as you type.
Similarly, the Smart Tags that appear under dates, telephone
numbers, pasted text, and so on can be distracting. You can choose
AutoCorrect Options from the Tools menu, then select the Smart Tags
tab to turn off individual features or all Smart Tag displays.





Fix Stubborn Formatting

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Ever try to fix formatting that refuses to change? You can start
with a clean slate by removing all formatting from the
selection—select the block of text and press Ctrl-Shift-N.




Alternatively, you can use Word's Reveal Formatting task pane to
modify the formatting. In Word 2003, just hit Shift-F1; in Word
2002, select Reveal Formatting from the Format menu.
When you click on an underlined link, an options dialog will display
settings that you can modify. By checking the Distinguish style
source option, you can view whether formatting was applied directly
or via a style.
You can also see which styles are applied to multiple paragraphs.
Choose either Normal or Outline under the View menu. Then select
Options from the Tools menu, go to the View tab, and enter a value
of 0.5 inches or more next to the field labeled Style area width. A
panel at the left edge of the window will display the styles
associated with each paragraph.

Click on the Status Bar

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Unless you've turned the status bar off in Tools Options (under
the View tab), it will appear at the foot of Word windows. This
displays information such as the current page and line. You can
double-click on the Page and Ln indicators to bring up the Go To
menu.
Other status menu items are toggles: Double-click on REC to access
macro recording, TRK to start tracking changes, EXT to extend the
selection, or OVR to switch the typing mode from insert to
overwrite. You can also right-click on some of these to bring up
options menus.





Customize AutoText

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


You've probably noticed that Word completes certain phrases, such as
"Best Wishes," before you've finished typing. You can customize this
list so that Word completes only the phrases you define. Select
AutoCorrect Options from the Tools menu, then go to the AutoText
tab. Delete any items you don't want to keep, then add names and
phrases that you type often, such as your name, company, or address.





Compare Two Documents Side by Side

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


In Word 2003, you can compare documents side by side. Open two
documents. Then, from the Window menu of one of them, select the
Compare Side By Side command. If you have only two documents open,
the command will automatically choose to compare them. If you have
three or more documents open, you'll have to select which document
to compare with the current file.
A floating toolbar with two buttons will open. If the button on the
left is selected, Word will scroll both documents at the same time.
Press the button on the right side of the toolbar to return to where
the cursor was located when you started comparing.





Edit Two Parts of a Document

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Are you worried about the consistency of your introduction and
conclusion? A spectacular yet underused feature is Word's ability to
display two different parts of a document at the same time. To do
this, you can either select the Split option from the Window menu to
display a dividing line in the current window. Alternatively, you
can drag down the tiny divider tool at the top of the right scroll
bar. You can navigate to different parts of the document in each
pane and use F6 to jump between them.





Smarter Navigation

May 4, 2004
By Edward Mendelson


Many Word users know that the up-and-down double arrows at the foot
of the vertical scroll bar will page up and down through an open
document. Fewer, however, know that the little dot icon between
those arrows, called the Select Browse Object button, lets you
change the function of the double-arrow buttons and of the Ctrl-PgUp
and Ctrl-PgDn key combinations. You can, for example, choose to
browse by heading, so the buttons will automatically jump you up or
down to the next heading. Other choices let you browse by footnote,
endnote, comment, graphic, or table.





Word Keyboard Shortcuts

May 4, 2004



Shift-F3: Toggle selected text between lowercase, initial capitals,
and uppercase.




F4: Repeat your last action, including searching, typing, and
formatting.
Shift-F4: Repeat the most recent Find command.
Shift-F5: Jump to the last change you made in the document.
Ctrl-F6: Toggle between open documents.
Alt-mouse click: Open the Research pane with information on the word
or name you clicked on.
F7: Run the spell-checker.
F12: Open the Save As dialog.

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Remove Many Links at Once

By M. David Stone

October 28, 2003

Total posts: 1





I regularly work with large Word documents that start out as HTML documents, and they contain hundreds of hyperlinks. I know how to remove one link at a time by moving the cursor to the link, hitting Ctrl-K to bring up the Edit Hyperlink dialog, and then choosing the Remove Link button. But when I have to remove hundreds of links, this takes a maddeningly long time. Is there a faster way to get rid of the hyperlinks?

Barbara Brown

You can remove all of the links with just two keystrokes: Ctrl-A to select the entire document and Ctrl-Shift-F9 to convert all the links into text. This technique works with other fields as well, turning a field into text using the field result. For example, if you’ve inserted a date field to show the current date, selecting the field and pressing Ctrl-Shift-F9 will turn it into text so the date won’t change from one day to the next.

If you have other fields in your document along with the hyperlinks and you don’t want to convert those fields to text, you can select a portion of the document, being careful not to include the fields you don’t want to convert, and then press Ctrl-Shift-F9, repeating as many times as necessary for the entire file. This isn’t as easy as giving the command for the entire document at once, but it is still faster than removing each link individually. By the way, a somewhat quicker way to remove a single link than the Ctrl-K method is to right-click on the link and choose Remove Hyperlink from the context menu.





Inverted Printing in Word

By Neil J. Rubenking

September 7, 2004

Total posts: 1





I would like to use Microsoft Word to print a three-fold "Reserved" table sign for our meetings. One third would be blank and form the base of the sign, a second third would have the word "Reserved" printed normally, and the remaining third would be printed upside-down, since people will be looking at the sign from the other side. How can I do this? I’ve tried printing "Reserved" in two separate passes, but I can never get the alignment right.

J. A. Patag

Select Page Setup from Microsoft Word 2003’s File menu and configure the document to use Landscape orientation. Set all the margins to zero and click on OK. Word will warn that these margins aren’t valid and offer to fix them. When you click on Fix, Word will set the margins as small as your printer can handle; note the values it selects. Select Print Layout from the View menu and adjust the zoom factor so the entire page is visible. Choose Table Insert Table from the menu. Set the table to use three columns and one row, check the AutoFit to Window box, and click on OK.

Now select Table Properties from the Table menu, click on the Table tab, and click on the Borders and Shading button. Click on None, so the table borders won’t print, then click on OK. Still in the Table Properties dialog, click on the Row tab, check the Specify height box, and select Exactly in the right-hand pull-down menu. Set the height to a little bit less than the size of the paper minus the top and bottom margins. If a second page appears, reduce the height slightly.

You’re almost done. Type the word "Reserved" in the first two cells, leaving the third blank. Right-click in the left-hand cell, choose Text Direction, and choose the option that has the bottom of the text pointing left. Right-click in the middle cell and set the text direction the opposite way. Select both cells, right-click, choose Cell Alignment from the menu, and choose the middle item, so the text is centered horizontally and vertically. Again, select both cells and choose the typeface and font size you wish to use. If 72-point isn’t big enough, you can type in a larger value. All that remains is to print and fold your signs.

Note that you could employ a similar technique to create a quarter-fold greeting card. Just create a table with two columns and two rows and put the front text in the top left quadrant and the inside text in the bottom right quadrant, each oriented so that the bottom of the text is toward the edge of the paper.

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