Ménage Á.Doc

Productivity boosters for working in multiple Word documents at once.

George Campbell

If you work with multiple documents at the same time in Word, there are several little-known tricks you can use in Word to speed up and simplify your work. Try these tips and see if they don't make your life a little easier.

• Open multiple documents all at once by holding down Ctrl while you select multiple documents in the File, Open dialog box. Click Open to open them all at one time.
• If you use Word 97, you can only toggle between open documents if you press Ctrl-F6 (which switches to the next open document) or Shift-Ctrl-F6 (which takes you to the previous open document).
• When you install Office 2000, you may notice that each open document shows up as its own taskbar item, which means you can click the document in the taskbar or use Alt-Tab to switch between documents as easily as switching between open applications. You also don't need to fret about losing the handy Ctrl-F6 shortcut if you upgrade to Word 2000: this trick also works with the new Word.
• To save or close all open documents in one step, hold down Shift while you click the File menu. The File menu will display "Save All" instead of "Save" and "Close All" instead of "Close."