Ten Top Word Tips
Cruise through your work with these ten timesaving Microsoft Word tips.Jim Welp
Helpful servant that it is, Microsoft Word offers a jillion ways to improve your productivity and streamline routine tasks. And yet these tools are often as hard to find as buried treasure. So let's go digging. Here are ten ways to automate, reduce, or eliminate the drudgery of word processing with Word 97, 2000, and 2002.
10. Save Early, Save Often
Are you the saving kind? If not, you'll be glad to know Word will automatically save your documents in the background while you work--at an interval you specify. To set this interval, choose Tools, Options and click the Save tab. Make sure the 'Save AutoRecover info every' option is checked, and in the 'minutes' text box, type a number--or use the up/down arrows--to get to the frequency you want. I still compulsively click the Save icon or hit Ctrl-S after practically every sentence (due to a traumatic, weather-related experience I won't go into here), but it's still nice to know AutoRecover is on my team.
Bonus tip: If you have multiple Word documents open and you have a premonition that lightning is going to strike before the next AutoRecover, hold down the Shift key and click the File menu. The Save command changes to Save All, which will save all open Word documents in one fell swoop.
9. An Alt-ernate Way to Select
You don't often need to select a vertical block of text in Word--but when you do, you'll be frustrated if you don't know the trick. If you've ever opened a long document with unwanted periods or other characters at the beginning of each line, you know what I'm talking about. You could delete the undesired characters manually, line by line, but there is a much faster way: Hold down the Alt key while you click the far left side of the desired column's top line and drag down and to the right to extend the selection over the unwanted text. Once you've made your selection, you can send that text to perdition's flames by pressing the Delete key.
8. Fast Format
When you format a single word--say, with bold, italic, or underline--it's not necessary to select the entire word (and then press Ctrl-B, Ctrl-I, or whatever to do your formatting). Just move the cursor anywhere inside the word and format it. This can save you the trouble of reaching for the mouse to double-click or holding down Shift while using the arrow keys or clicking to select the entire word. This convenience is part of Word by default.
If this doesn't work, choose Tools, Options and click the Edit tab. Then check the 'When selecting, automatically select entire word' box.
7. Case in Point
Some people Tend to use UpperCase and lowercase cREATIVELY. Some misguided folks like to emphasize Words they consider Important. Others like to SHOUT. If it only happens once in a while, it's no big deal to change the text manually to the case you want. But if it happens in a long string of text, Word comes to the rescue with its Change Case command. To alter the format, you can position your cursor in the word or select the sentence, and choose Format, Change Case. Then you're given the option to change the case to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, sentence case, or tOGGLE cASE. Handy enough.
But when you have a document loaded with case errors, you don't want to futz with menus and dialog boxes. Instead, select your text and press Shift-F3 until you get the case you want. This key combination toggles among upper, lower, and title case, and it's a handy little devil.
6. Set a Lovely Table
Word's default table is a stack of boxes with text inside. Functional, yes. Festive, no. Fortunately, Word steps in to help with the Table AutoFormat command, which spruces up drab tables and makes them easier to read. To take a look at the styles that Table AutoFormat offers, open a document with an existing table or create a new table. Now, click inside your table and choose Table, Table AutoFormat. Word presents the Table AutoFormat dialog box, which provides a long list of table formatting options.
You can experiment with the various formats by clicking a format name (such as Table 3D effects 3) and viewing the results in the Preview pane. As you'll see, there's everything under the sun, from prim and proper to downright funky. Once you find a table format you like, just highlight its name and click Apply. And voilą--Word formats your table and closes the dialog box.
5. What's Up, Doc?
Word makes it easy to retrieve documents you've recently opened--just click File and choose a file name from the bottom of the drop-down menu. By default, the File menu offers you the four most recently opened documents. Call me greedy, but four just isn't enough for me. Without revealing too much about my personality, I'll tell you that I like to store files in exceedingly logical, albeit deeply nested, folders. I use a couple of these files every day, but when I open more documents later on, these guys get bumped from the list.
Fortunately, you don't have to live with just four recently used files. You can choose any number up to nine. Here's how: Choose Tools, Options, and click the General tab. In the box to the right of 'Recently used files list,' type the number of files you'd like your File menu to display (or use the little arrows to increase or decrease the number). Click OK to lock in your choice. If you've increased the number, you'll need to open more than four files to notice the change.
If you don't want recently used files to appear on the File menu (some people do have secrets), uncheck 'Recently used files list' and click OK.
By the way, you can use the Windows Start menu to retrieve recently used files from any Windows application. Select Start, Documents (My Recent Documents in XP), then choose a file from the resulting list.
4. AutoTextify!
Word includes a feature called AutoText that offers to complete common phrases when you begin to type them. When Word recognizes that you're typing the start of one of these phrases, a pop-up box appears; all you have to do is press Enter and Word will complete the phrase.
That's somewhat helpful, but you can make AutoText really earn its keep if you create your own entries. For instance, you might routinely need to type your address, a disclaimer, a legal clause, or a clumsy-to-type Web address. Instead of typing it over and over (or copying and pasting from elsewhere every time), store it in AutoText and recall it with just a few keystrokes. Best of all, Word stores the formatting along with the text.
To create an AutoText entry, type and format your text, select it (including the paragraph mark at the end, if there is one--if you don't see it, click Tools, Options, View, Paragraph marks), and choose Insert, AutoText, New. When Word presents the Create AutoText dialog box, type a logical name for your entry in the 'Please name your AutoText entry' field. Make sure your name is at least four characters long so that Word can recognize it later. Click OK to complete the entry.
To use your new AutoText entry, begin typing the name you assigned it. Once you've typed a handful of letters, the pop-up box appears. Press Enter or F3 and your stored text appears in your document (the name you started typing will disappear). If the AutoComplete pop-up appears when you don't want it, just keep typing and it will go away. If you forget your AutoText entry's name, you can jog your memory by choosing Insert, AutoText, AutoText and choosing your entry from the list. Then, click Insert and OK.
3. For When You're Sure: AutoCorrect
AutoCorrect is another way to enter common but brief text passages in Microsoft Word. Although it's designed to automatically correct spelling errors like 'adn' and 'teh,' AutoCorrect is also a great way to enter clunky, routinely used text.
When you use AutoCorrect instead of AutoText, there's no need to press Enter or F3, because Word makes the correction automatically. Plus, you can trigger the process with just two letters. For instance, to automatically insert your e-mail address in a Word document every time you type 'zz,' choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options (or Tools, AutoCorrect, depending upon your version of Word) to open the AutoCorrect dialog box. Type zz in the Replace text box, type your e-mail address in the With field, and click Add, OK. Now, whenever you type 'zz,' and press the spacebar (or any punctuation key), Word automatically replaces that text with your e-mail address.
The downside of this method is that Word won't warn you and get your permission (like it does with AutoText). If Word replaces text when you don't want it to, just click the Undo button (or Edit, Undo AutoCorrect), and Word will restore the text you typed.
2. Indenting 101
Are you still indenting by pressing the spacebar or the Tab key? For shame. Word's Ruler bar provides a handy, visual way to indent paragraphs. (If your ruler isn't displayed, choose View, Ruler.) On the left side of the ruler, you'll notice two triangles sitting atop a box. The triangles and box are actually three distinct icons that you can individually click and drag to indent a paragraph (or selected paragraphs). The top triangle indents the first line of each paragraph; the bottom triangle sets a hanging indent (every line of a paragraph is indented more than the first line); and the box indents the entire paragraph while preserving the size of the first line or hanging indent. There's also a right-indent marker on the right side of the ruler.
To give it a go, click inside any old paragraph--or type a new one for practice--and drag the top triangle to the half-inch mark on the ruler. Word automatically indents the first line of the paragraph a half-inch. Better yet, whenever you press Enter at the end of the paragraph you're in, Word automatically indents the next paragraph as well. That means you could open a new Word document, drag the first-line indent marker to the half-inch location on the ruler, and type 200 pages, without ever having to indent manually. And I hope you do.
1. Replace-o-rama
Find and Replace is without a doubt one of the handiest word processing features ever. Not only can you quickly and easily change every instance of a word or phrase to something else, but you can also replace formatting, special characters, and even blank spaces. (I love Find and Replace so much, I find myself longing for it in other areas of life besides computing, but that's another matter entirely.) To quickly fire up the Find and Replace dialog box without taking your fingers off the keyboard, press Ctrl-H or press F5-Alt-P.
Find and Replace is handy for much more than replacing an instance of a word or phrase. For instance, some writers haven't trained themselves away from the old typewriter custom of pressing the spacebar twice after each period. With Find and Replace, you can quickly change all instances of double spaces to single spaces. Just enter two spaces--press the spacebar twice--in the 'Find what' field, enter one space in the 'Replace with' field, and click Replace All.
Want to eliminate special characters--like unwanted paragraph breaks, tabs, or manual line breaks? In the Find and Replace dialog box, click More. When the box expands, click Special, and choose the character you want to replace. Now, you're going to replace that character with nothing: Double-click the 'Replace with' field and press Delete to ensure it's empty, then click Find Next to begin a manual search and replace the characters one by one, or click Replace All to delete all instances of that character.
More on PCWorld.com
For additional Word 2002 tips and tricks, visit PC World's Office XP section. These articles focus primarily on Microsoft Word 2002, part of Microsoft's Office XP suite.
For all versions of Microsoft Word, you'll find more formatting fun and shortcuts at PC World's Word section.