Word 2002

ADDING TEXT TO AUTOCORRECT - THE EASY WAY

Any selected text in your document automatically appears in the AutoCorrect/AutoText dialog box. That's a nifty way to put long, detailed information into the dialog box without having to retype it: Just select the text you want to add to AutoText, summon the AutoCorrect or AutoText dialog box, and click Add; the selected text is added.

DEALING WITH AUTORECOVER

By default, Word automatically saves your work every ten minutes to an AutoRecover file, which will be used only if your computer crashes or loses power unexpectedly. This feature can save you a lot of trouble in an emergency, but it can also cause some problems if you are taxing your system resources. For instance, if you are running a large memory-intensive macro, or have some other program running in the background that is using a lot of memory and slowing the computer down, AutoRecover can cause your system to crash when it starts to save the file in the background. If you have this type of problem, disable the AutoRecover feature on the Save tab of the Options dialog box. You can get to the Options dialog box by choosing Tools, Options from the menu.

AUTOSAVE'S LIMITATIONS

Word's AutoSave feature doesn't work the way most people think it does. This feature periodically makes a copy of your document and adds the .ASD extension to it. As time passes between the saves, you may have added a substantial amount to your document, but the changes are not in the .ASD document. These documents are temporary and are erased when your document is saved. More importantly, they are deleted when you close the file. AutoSave is designed to recover work in the case of a power outage or system crash. You should always save your document by using the Save command when you exit Word.

If you want to turn on the AutoSave feature or just change the time interval on the saves, choose Tools, Options and select the Save tab. Enter the time interval that you want in the Automatic Save Every box.

However, don't put more faith in AutoSave than it deserves. Often, it may save you significant amounts of time and work, but power outages, in particular, are difficult situations for Word to handle. After a power outage, Word frequently demonstrates the annoying habit of making an open file unrecoverable. Your best defense? Back up important work regularly and to other media sources (like a floppy or ZIP drive).

INSERTING AUTOTEXT

Word 2002 offers no fewer than five ways to insert an AutoText entry. Place the cursor where you want the entry to go and do one of the following:

Start typing the entry's name. Midway through, a bubble appears with the entire entry. Press Enter at that point to insert the whole thing.
Type the entry's name and then press F3.
Display the AutoText toolbar, click the All Entries button, select the submenu name, and choose an AutoText entry.
Choose Insert, AutoText, AutoText, select an entry in the AutoCorrect dialog box, and click the Insert button. Go this route when you aren't sure which AutoText entry to make. The Preview box in the AutoCorrect dialog box shows very clearly what the AutoText entries are.

MAKING BACKUP COPIES

Besides making backup copies of your documents on your own, you can tell Word to make backup copies for you. Under this arrangement, Word makes a second copy of the document and keeps it in the same folder as the original. However, the backup copy is made only when you, and not Word, save the document. If a power failure occurs, you can't recover the work you did in the last few minutes, although you can recover the version of the document that was saved the last time you saved the document.

To tell Word to create backup copies of your documents, choose Tools, Options, select the Save tab in the Options dialog box, and check the Always Create Backup Copy check box.

HOW-TO ON BOOKMARKING

While creating a longer document in Word, you may find yourself working on several parts of the document at once. Or perhaps you're reading something you wrote and need to remember a specific spot to come back to. Whatever your reason, you may want to, well, put a bookmark in your Word document. Sure, you can dog-ear your place in a print book by folding down a corner of the page -- but bending the corner of your monitor is tougher work.

SPIFFYING UP YOUR DOCUMENT WITH AUTOMATIC BORDERS

In the old Smith-Corona days of yore, you would fancy up your documents by woodpeckering a line of hyphens, underlines, or equal signs. Word 2002 uses the same kinds of shortcuts to create automatic borders. Note: Before you put these tips into action, click Format, AutoFormat, click the Options button, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Make sure the Borders box is checked under Apply as You Type.

If you want a single-line border, from right margin to left across your page, type three hyphens (---) and press Enter. Word instantly transmutes the three little hyphens into a solid line.

Want a double line? Then use three equal signs (= = =). Press the Enter key and Word draws a double line from one edge of the screen to the next.

Bolder line? Use three underlines ( _ _ _ ). As usual, the AutoCorrect icon appears, letting you change your mind or switch this option off. Also remember that you can press Ctrl+Z to undo this if, indeed, all you really want are three underlines (or hyphens or equal signs) in a row.

PUTTING BORDERS ON TEXT BOXES AND GRAPHICS

The fastest way to put a border around a graphic, text box, or AutoShape in Word 97 is to select it, click the Line Style button on the Picture or Drawing toolbar, and choose a line. To see the Picture or Drawing toolbar, right-click on any toolbar and choose Drawing or Picture from the shortcut menu.

To get fancy with borders, click the graphic, text box, or AutoShape to which you want to give borders and do the following:

Choose Format and then choose the bottom-most command on the Format menu. Which command that is -- Picture, Object, Text Box, or AutoShape -- depends on what kind of object you are working on.
Click the Colors and Lines tab in the Format dialog box.
Under Line, click the Color drop-down menu and choose a color (Black is the first choice in the box). Click the No Line option to remove borders from an object.
Click the Dashed down arrow and choose a dashed or dotted line, if you want.
Click the Style down arrow and tell Word what kind of line you want. You will find exotic choices at the bottom of the menu.
Click arrows in the Weight box or enter a number yourself to tell Word how wide or narrow to make the borderlines.
Click OK.

READY, SET, CALCULATE!

Word has always had a command for performing calculations on numbers visible on the screen in your documents. Unfortunately, Word buries this handy command where you're not likely to come across it -- in the Customize dialog box. To find and activate the command, choose Tools, Customize and switch to the Commands tab. Select All Commands in the Categories list, and then scroll way down in the Commands list until you see the ToolsCalculate command. Haul it out and put it on the Tools menu or on the toolbar.

After the Calculate command is accessible, performing a calculation is as simple as selecting the numbers in your document and clicking the button or menu item. It doesn't matter how numbers are arranged -- in a row, in a column, or even within or across paragraphs, separated by any amount of text. The result appears in the status bar and is placed on the clipboard, so doing a quick Ctrl+V (Paste) deposits it at the insertion point. By default, Word adds the selected numbers, but it will dutifully perform subtraction, multiplication, or division if the appropriate symbol precedes a number in the selected text.

THE LESS-THAN-INTUITIVE CAPTION DIALOG BOX

There is a totally Word 2002 way to add a caption to a figure, but consider yourself warned that it's, well, weird and ugly: Click to select the graphic and then choose Insert, Reference, Caption. This command displays the Caption dialog box, where you think that you can type the caption. But you can't. No, to type the caption, click the New Label button. then type the caption and click OK.

GETTING NEW CLIPART

If you want to spice up a report, letter, or any document for that matter, adding clipart may do the trick! And with Valentine's Day coming, you don't want to be in short supply of hearts.

To find additional clipart for Word 2000, you can go to the Microsoft Design Gallery [ http://dgl.microsoft.com/ ] Web site.

MAKING COLUMNS THE FAST WAY

Speedy, speedy! To create multiple columns in your Word document quickly (and painlessly):

Choose [E]dit, Select A[l]l or press Ctrl+A.
Click the Columns button on the Standard toolbar. The Column menu appears.
Highlight the number of columns you want by dragging the mouse to the right. Word immediately converts your document into a multicolumn document.

MOVING COLUMNS AND ROWS

Because there is no elegant way to move a column or row in Word 2000, you should move only one at a time. If you try to move several at once, you open a can of worms that you wish you hadn't.

To move a column or row:

Select the column or row you want to move.
Right-click in the selection and choose Cut from the shortcut menu; the column or row disappears to the Clipboard.
Move the column or row:

Column: Click in the topmost cell in the column to the right of where you want to move the column. In other words, to make what is now column 4 become column 2, cut column 4 and click in the topmost cell of column 2. Then right-click and choose Paste Columns from the shortcut menu.
Row: Move the cursor into the first column in the row below which you want to move your row. In other words, if you're placing the row between what are now rows 6 and 7, put the cursor in row 7. Then right-click and choose Paste Rows from the shortcut menu.

UNDOING COLUMNS IN WORD 2002

According to Word, there is no such thing as not having columns in your document. No, when you have "normal text," Word just thinks that you have only one column on a page. Funny, huh?

To remove columns from your document, follow these steps:

Move the toothpick cursor to where the columns start. (Choose View, Print Layout from the menu to help you find the exact spot.)
Choose the Format, Columns command. If the Columns command isn't visible, click the "show more" arrows at the foot of the menu to see the command.
In the Presets area, choose One as your column style.
In the Apply To drop-down list, choose Whole Document.
Click OK.

What you see on the screen depends on how Word displays your document. If you switch from Normal to Print Layout view, you see the columns right there on the screen.

DO NOT USE THIS COMMAND!

One of the most annoying commands in the history of word processing is the dreaded menu item remover. If you press Ctrl+Alt+- (hyphen), the mouse pointer changes to a thick, horizontal line. That line is the menu item removal cursor. Just choose any menu item and -- thwoop! -- it's gone, deleted, zapped, nuked, dead. And there's no way to get that menu item back, either! Deadly! Scary! Not even Rod Serling could dream up something that bizarre.

If you do accidentally press Ctrl+Alt+-, quickly press the Esc key to cancel that mode. Yikes! What kind of sick mind thought up that trick, huh?

DELETING ALL COMMENTS

New in Word 2002 is the ability to delete all comments from a document -- without having to go one-by-one, that is. In the Reviewing pane, just click the arrow next to the Reject Change/Delete Comment button and choose Delete All Comments in Document from the drop-down list.

CHANGING YOUR DEFAULT LOCATION

You can specify any given folder to be the one in which Word saves or opens documents. By default, Word uses the My Documents folder in Windows. To change this, choose Tools, Options and then click the File Locations tab. Select Documents, and then click Modify to select a new folder.

CROPPING THE WORD WAY

You can crop -- that is, cut off parts of -- a graphic, but not very elegantly. To do that, select the graphic and click the Crop button on the Picture toolbar. The pointer changes into an odd shape with two intersecting triangles on it. Move the pointer to a selection handle and start dragging. The dotted line tells you what part of the graphic you are cutting off. Sorry, you can crop off only the sides of a graphic; you can't cut a circle out of the middle, for example, proving once again that the computer will never replace that ancient and noble device, the scissors.

BOOKMARKING YOUR DOCUMENT

Instead of pressing PgUp or PgDn or clicking the scrollbar to thrash around in a long document, you can use bookmarks. All you do is put a bookmark in an important spot in your document that you'll return to many times. When you want to return to that spot, choose Insert, Bookmark, double-click the bookmark in the Bookmark dialog box, and click Close.

To place a bookmark in a document:

Click where you want the bookmark to go.
Choose Insert, Bookmark (or press Ctrl+Shift+F5).
Type a descriptive name in the Bookmark Name box.
You cannot include spaces in bookmark names.
Click the Add button.

BROWSING AROUND A DOCUMENT

A really fast way to move around in a document quickly is to click the Select Browse Object button in the lower-right corner of the screen. when you click this button, Word presents twelve "Browse by" icons.

Select the icon that represents the element you want to go to, and Word takes you there immediately. For example, click the Browse by Heading icon to get to the next heading in your document (provided that you assigned heading styles to headings). After you have selected a "Browse by" icon, the navigator buttons -- the double arrows directly above and below the Select Browse Object button -- turn blue. Click a blue navigator button to get to the next example or the previous example of the element you chose. For example, if you selected the Browse by Heading icon, all you have to do is click blue navigator buttons to get from heading to heading, backward or forward in a document.

CONVERTING A WORD DOCUMENT TO WEB FORMAT

You can convert any existing Word document to HTML format so that it can be published on the Web by following these steps:

Open the document in Word.
Choose the File, Save As command.
Select HTML Document (.html) in the Save as type field.
If desired, choose a new location and name for the file.
Click the Save button.

The file is converted to HTML format and saved.

CREATING IN-DOCUMENT CROSS-REFERENCES

Creating a cross-reference within a document to another section of your document is a simple matter of typing some fixed text and then inserting a reference to the item. Here's how:

Place your cursor where you want the cross-reference to appear, and then type an introductory text.
For example, you might write, "For more information, see." Make sure your cursor ends up at the exact spot where you want the cross-reference inserted.
Choose Insert, Cross-reference.
The Cross-reference dialog box appears.
Select the general reference category in the Reference type drop-down list.
The Insert Reference To and For Which list changes, depending on the reference type that you select.
Select an option for the Insert References To drop-down list to specify the information from the reference category that should be inserted in the cross-reference.
Note that each reference category contains a Page Number option with which you can refer to the page where the reference item occurs.
Specify the exact reference that you want from the For Which list.
For example if you choose Bookmark as the reference type, the For Which Bookmark list then contains a list of all bookmarks in the document.
Choose Insert.
The Cross-reference dialog box remains open so that you can add more info to your reference.
When you're finished, close the Cross-reference dialog box.

INDEXING A WORD DOCUMENT

A good index is a thing of beauty. User manuals, reference works of any length, and reports that readers will refer to all require indexes. Except for the table of contents, the only way to find information in a long document is to look in the index.

An index entry can be formatted in many ways. You can cross-reference index entries, list a page range in an index entry, and break out an index entry into subentries and sub-subentries.

Writing a good index entry is as hard as writing good, descriptive headings. As you enter index entries in your document, ask yourself how you would look up information in the index if you were reading it, and enter your index entries accordingly.

SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE MASTER DOCUMENT

One concept close to outlining is Word's master document feature. It's rather interesting, and quite useful if you plan on using Word to cobble together several chapter-sized documents into a longer novel. Alas, it's a bit technical.

Basically, a master document works like an outline. The master document contains, rather than subtopics, links to other documents on disk. That way, you can stitch together a larger document out of several smaller documents. The master document can print everything, in order, with page numbers, headers, footers, and even a master table of contents and index. The buttons on the right side of the Outlining toolbar carry out these tasks.

SEEING MORE THAN ONE DOCUMENT

You can arrange all your documents on-screen by choosing [W]indow, [A]rrange All. (You may need to click the down-arrows at the bottom of the menu to see this command displayed.) The Arrange All command arranges each document window in a tiled pattern on the screen, allowing you to view more than one document at a time.

Of course, choosing [W]indow, [A]rrange All works best with just two documents. Three or more documents arranged on the screen and, well, the results can get pretty ugly.

Although you can see more than one document at a time, you can work on only one at a time: The document with the highlighted title bar.
- After the windows are arranged, you can manipulate their size and change their positions with the mouse.
- Clicking a window's Maximize button restores the document to its normal, full-screen view.

CREATING A TEMPLATE

It's easy to create a Word template. You just create the document as you would normally and then use a special procedure to save the document as a template. You can include any of the following in a template: any text that all documents should include (company name, document title, address, date code, and so on); any graphic image that all documents should include (company logo, for example); formatting for the existing text and other elements such as the page margins, layout, border, and so on; styles; macros; and other customized options.

To create a template, follow these steps:

Open a new, blank document.
Type the text you want and format the template document as you want.
Click File, Save As.
Display the "Save as type" drop-down list and click Document Template as the type.
Select the folder where you want to place this template.
Type a name for the template and click the Save button.

MODIFYING A DOCUMENT TEMPLATE

Changing or editing a document template in Word 2002 is identical to changing or editing any document. The difference is that you open a template rather than a document. It's a minor difference, but a big deal because templates, after all, are not really documents.

Open the template by choosing File, Open.
In the Open dialog box, choose Document Templates from the Files of type drop-down list.
You must manually venture out to the Templates folder -- or whichever folder you've saved the template to.
Find the Templates folder.
Unless you've put the template somewhere else, you need to go to the Templates folder by choosing drive C from the Look in drop-down list, opening the WINDOWS folder, Application Data folder, Microsoft folder, Templates folder.
Open the template you want to edit.
Double-click its filename.
Make your changes.
Keep in mind that it's a template you're editing and not a real document. Therefore, any style changes or text editing affect the template and are saved to disk as a template again.
Save the modified template by choosing File, Save. Or, choose File, Save As to assign the modified template a new name and maintain the original template.
Close the template document by choosing File, Close.

Any changes you make to a document template do not affect any documents already created with that template. The changes do, however, affect any new documents you create.

WHEELING AROUND YOUR DOCUMENT

If your PC sports one of those "wheel" mice, such as the Microsoft Intellimouse, then you can scroll through your document using the center wheel button. Just roll the wheel up or down to scroll your document up or down. If you press the wheel button down, you can drag the mouse up or down to smooth-scroll your document up or down. The farther you drag up or down, the faster the scrolling action.

ADDING BACKGROUNDS TO WORD DOCUMENTS

To put a color or pattern background on all the pages of your Word document, choose Format, Background and click a background color. Or to get a pattern, click Fill Effects at the bottom of the menu. You see the Fill Effects dialog box, whose four tabs offer more pattern choices than are available at a wallpaper manufacturers' convention. However you experiment with these patterns, keep your eye on the Sample box in the lower-right corner of the tab. It shows precisely how skillful a decorator you are. After you choose a color or pattern, Word automatically switches to Online Layout view. You can't see backgrounds in any other view. To remove a background, choose Format, Background and click the No Fill option.

LANDSCAPE DOCUMENTS

A landscape document is one in which the page is wider than it is long, like a painting of a landscape. Most documents, like the pages of a book, are printed in portrait style, with the short sides of the page on the top and bottom. However, creating a landscape document is sometimes a good idea because a landscape document stands out from the usual crowd of portrait documents.

To turn the page on its ear and create a landscape document in Word 2002, follow these steps:

Choose File, Page Setup.
Click the Margins tab.
In the Orientation area, click the Landscape button.
In the Apply To box, choose Whole Document to print landscape pages throughout the document, This Section to print only the section the cursor is in, or This Point Forward to make the rest of the pages in the document landscape pages.
Click OK.

LAYING OUT WORD 2002 DOCUMENTS IN SOPHISTICATED WAYS

Word 2002 is more than a word processor. If you have enough know-how, you can use the program like a desktop publisher to lay out documents in intriguing ways.

Columns, drop-capital letters, unusual fonts, and text effects are easy to apply in Word. And it doesn't take much expertise to put a border around a page or drop a clip art image into a document. Here are three areas for such exploration:

Get started by . . .
- changing the font and size of text
- spacing lines
- adding bold, italic, underline, and other effects
Work on your document by . . .
- centering, justifying, and aligning text
- putting newspaper-style columns in a document
- inserting clip art and graphics in documents
Add finishing touches by . . .
- decorating a page with a border
- dropping in a drop cap
- wrapping text around a graphic, drawing canvas, or other object

SETTING UP MULTICOLUMN DOCUMENTS

To create a newsletter or brochure, you may want to display text in two or more columns to give it a professional look. Word can divide your documents into multiple columns -- but remember that if you use more than four columns on a single page, none of the columns can display much text.

To create multiple columns quickly, follow these steps:

Choose Edit, Select All or press Ctrl+A.
Click the Columns button on the Standard toolbar.
The Column menu appears, giving you the choice of dividing a page into two, three, or four columns.
Highlight the number of columns you want by dragging the mouse to the right.
Word immediately converts your document into a multicolumn document.

SAVING MULTIPLE DOCUMENTS

To save a multitude of Word documents all at once, you can switch to each window and incant the File, Save command. Or you can be sneaky and do the following:

Press and hold the Shift key -- either one.
Choose File, Save All.

Normally, you choose the Save item. But if you press the Shift key before choosing the File menu, it magically becomes the Save All menu item.

There is no prompting (unless the documents hasn't been saved yet), and no wait-and-see. Everything is just saved to disk as fast as your PC can handle it.

SPEEDY WAYS TO OPEN DOCUMENTS IN WORD 2002

Rooting around the Open dialog box to find a document is a bother, so Word 2002 offers several handy ways for opening documents:

File menu: If you want to open a document you worked on recently, it may be on the File menu. Check it out by selecting File from the menu bar. If the document you want is there, click its name or press its number.
History button in the Open dialog box: Click the History button in the Open dialog box to see a list of the last three-dozen documents and folders you opened. Double-click a document to reopen it; double-click a folder to see its contents.
Window Document menu: Click the Start button and choose Documents to see a list of the last 15 files you opened (in Word and other programs). Choose a Word document on the list to open it in Word.

LAYING OUT WORD 2002 DOCUMENTS IN SOPHISTICATED WAYS

Word 2002 is more than a word processor. If you have enough know-how, you can use the program like a desktop publisher to lay out documents in intriguing ways.

Get started by . . .
- changing the font and size of text
- spacing lines
- adding bold, italic, underline, and other effects
Work on your document by . . .
- centering, justifying, and aligning text
- putting newspaper-style columns in a document
- inserting clip art and graphics in documents
Add finishing touches by . . .
- decorating a page with a border
- dropping in a drop cap
- wrapping text around a graphic, drawing canvas, or other object

DROPPING IN A DROP CAP

A drop cap is a large capital letter that "drops" into a text. Drop caps appear at the start of chapters in antiquated books, but you can find other uses for them.

To create a drop cap, follow these steps:

Click anywhere in the paragraph whose first letter you want to "drop."
Choose Format, Drop Cap.
In the Drop Cap dialog box, choose which kind of drop cap you want by clicking a box.
Choose a font from the Font drop-down list.
In the Lines to Drop scroll box, choose how many text lines the letter should "drop on."
Keep the O setting in the Distance From the Text box unless you're dropping an I, 1, or other skinny letters or numbers.
Click OK.

If you're not in Page Layout View, a dialog box asks whether you want to go there. Click Yes and you'll see your drop cap in all its glory.

DELETING FILES IN WORD

Pre-2002 versions of Word sported a handy (yet potentially deadly) Delete command. In addition to working with files, creating new folders, and finding stuff, Word let you mercilessly venture out to your hard disk and kill off files in a rage of wanton destruction. Since that time, this feature has been downplayed, though it's still possible to delete files in Word.

The secret to deleting files is to use the Open or Save As dialog box. These dialog boxes actually behave like mini-Windows Explorer windows. For example, you can rename a file in the Open dialog box by selecting that file and pressing the F2 key -- just as you would in Windows Explorer. Likewise, you can delete any file by selecting it and pressing the Delete key.

COUNTING INDIVIDUAL WORDS WITH FIND AND REPLACE

A nifty thing about the Replace command is that it tells you how many words it found and replaced when it's done. You can take advantage of that in a sneaky way to see how many times you use a certain word in your document.

As an example, suppose you know that you use the word "actually" way too much. One or two "actuallies" are okay, but more than that and you're being obsessive.

To discover how many "actually" words (or any words) are in your document, summon the Find and Replace command and enter the word in both the Find What and Replace With boxes. The same word. Two times. Click Replace All and Word dutifully counts the instances of that word in your document.

Nothing is replaced with this trick because you're searching for a word and replacing it with the same word.

EM DASHES

You can spot the work of an amateur because amateurs always use a hyphen when they ought to use an em dash and en dash. An em dash looks like a hyphen but is wider (it's as wide as the letter m).

To place em dashes in your documents and impress your local typesetter or editor, not to mention your readers, press Alt + Ctrl + - (the minus sign key on the Numeric keypad) to enter an em dash. Or, if you're inclined to use menus, follow these steps:

Choose [I]nsert, [S]ymbol.
Click the S[p]ecial Characters tab in the Symbol dialog box.
Choose Em Dash or En Dash.
Click [I]nsert and then click the Close button.

DISABLING CUSTOM DICTIONARIES

As you use Word's spellcheck feature, you're able to add new words to the Custom Dictionary. Sometime, for some reason, you may want to disable the custom dictionaries you've created for certain kinds of documents that don't have many custom words. Doing so provides a small measure of safety against inadvertent misspellings.

To do so, select Tools, Options. Click the Spelling and Grammar tab and click the Dictionaries button. In the Custom Dictionaries dialog box, remove the check mark next to each custom dictionary.

INSIDE THE DRAWING CANVAS

When you insert an autoshape, a text box, or an object from the Drawing toolbar, the drawing canvas and the Drawing Canvas toolbar appear on-screen. The drawing canvas is meant to help you place objects on the page. And the drawing canvas in and of itself is an object -- it can be moved around, resized, filled with color, or given a border. Objects inside the drawing canvas are treated the same. When you move the drawing canvas, you move the objects inside it. Word offers commands for scaling objects in the drawing canvas and changing the size of the canvas. To change the size of the drawing canvas, select it by clicking its perimeter and then do one of the following:

Click the Expand button from the Drawing Canvas toolbar. Each time you click the button, the canvas increases in size.
Click the Fit button. When more than one object is in the drawing canvas, you can click the Fit button to make the canvas large enough to take in all the objects.
Move the cursor over a handle and drag. In each corner and in the middle of each side of the drawing canvas is a resize handle. Drag a handle to shrink or enlarge the drawing canvas.

PRINTING ENVELOPES IN A JIFFY

Whenever you need an envelope, for any reason, you can have Word whip one up for you. Just follow these steps:

Choose Tools, Letters and Mailings, Envelopes and Labels.
In the Envelopes and Labels dialog box, type the address you want on the envelope.
If you want to format the address, type it in the document first. Format it, select it, and then choose Tool, Letters and Mailings, Envelopes and Labels. Beware, though! Too much text may not fit on the envelope.
Click the Print button.
Your printer may beep or otherwise prompt you to insert the envelope, or it may just print it right then and there.

UN-DELETING A FILE

If you regret deleting a Word file (or any file, for that matter), you can resuscitate it. Minimize Word and, on the Windows desktop, double-click Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin opens with a list of the files you deleted. Click the one you want to get back and choose File, Restore.

ADDING FILE PROTECTION

You can choose from three levels of protection for your Word documents.

Create a password so that no one else can open the document without it.
Create a password so that others can open the document but must save any changes to a new document.
Recommend that the file be opened as read-only.

USING THE FIND COMMAND

Word can quickly locate any tidbit of text anywhere in your document, from a bombastic oratory down to the tiniest iota of plot. The command used to find text is called, surprisingly enough, the Find command. This command dwells in the Edit menu. Follow these steps to use the Find command and locate text.

Think of some text you want to find.
Choose Edit, Find.
Type the text you want to find.
Click the Find Next button to start the search.

TAMING THE FONTS LIST

The Fonts list can get long, as long as the number of fonts you have installed in Windows. Fortunately, Word remembers the last several fonts you've recently chosen from the Fonts list. Those fonts appear at the top of the list. If you want to reuse any font for a document, just scroll to the top of the list and pluck out the font.

SOLVING THE MYSTERY FORMAT

Ah, the mystery format! You're scanning through your latest masterpiece when you notice -- right there, mocking you -- a paragraph that doesn't seem to fit. Something's amiss with the formatting, but what?

A nifty trick to pull on any mystery part of your document is to press the Shift+F1 key combination. The mouse pointer changes to look like an arrow-question mark. Now, click any character in any work in any paragraph. Word describes exactly what the heck is going on with the formatting in the Reveal formatting task pane.

(Press Shift+F1 again to deactivate this feature.)

WORD'S FORMAT PAINTER

Suppose you have a chunk of text formatted perfectly -- font, font size, type style, and so on. Do you have to go through the whole laborious process again to make another chunk of text look exactly the same? Of course not! Use the Format Painter.

The Format Painter tells Word, "See the way you formatted that block of text I just highlighted? I want you to use that same formatting on this other chunk of text."

By using the Format Painter, you don't have to format the individual characteristics of text yourself, saving you time so you can do something that's more important to you (like making plans for lunch or printing up your resume).

To use the Format Painter, follow these steps:

Highlight the text containing the formatting that you want to use on another chunk of text.
Click the Format Painter button (it looks like a paintbrush and appears to the right of the Paste icon) on the Formatting toolbar.
The mouse cursor turns into an I-beam cursor with a paintbrush to the left. The paintbrush lets you know that Word automatically formats the next chunk of text that you select.
Select the text that you want to format.
As soon as you release the left mouse button, Word formats the text with all the formatting characteristics of the text you selected in Step 1.

If the text that you select in Step 1 contains a variety of formatting characteristics, Word copies only the formatting characteristics that the entire chunk of selected text has in common. For example, if you select text that's in Times New Roman font with one sentence underlined, a second sentence in bold, and a third sentence with a yellow background, Word formats your new text with the only shared formatting characteristic --the Times New Roman font.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF WORD 2002'S FORMATTING TRICKS

Formatting can be a lot of work if you don't know the tricks. Word 2002 offers styles for formatting text and paragraphs quickly, as well as tools for laying out tables. You can even customize Word's menus and toolbars. Here are three areas for such exploration:

Get started by . . .
- entering graphics and text quickly
- correcting typos on the fly
- exploring the AutoFormat options
Work on your document by . . .
- creating a new style
- finding and replacing text and formats
- dividing a document into sections
Add finishing touches by . . .
- sprucing up your table
- modifying a style
- customizing Word

CROPPING OFF PART OF A GRAPHIC

You can crop -- that is, cut off parts of -- a graphic in Word 2002, but not very elegantly. To do that, select a graphic and click the Crop button on the Picture toolbar. The pointer changes into an odd shape with two interesting triangles on it. Move the pointer to a selection handle and start dragging. The dotted line tells you what part of a graphic you are cutting off. Sorry, you can crop off only the sides of a graphic. You can't cut a circle out of the middle, for example, proving once again that the computer will never replace that ancient and noble device, the scissors.

WORD 2002, HEAL THYSELF

Word 2002 is part of the Microsoft Office XP suite of applications, which is a part of Microsoft's attempt to prevent you from using software developed by any other company. Understanding your loyalty, Microsoft has built into Office (and Word) the ability to fix itself when needed. So, at random moments, you may see the Optimize program running. Don't let it freak you out.

A feature of the Optimizer is the Help, Detect and Repair command in Word. This command is used to fix any bugs or boo-boos that may creep into Word. So if Word starts to behave like, well, every other Microsoft program written, it may be a good idea to run that command.

SCALING AN IMAGE

Okay, you've got a great image that you're trying to work into your Word document. The only problem is the image just isn't the right size. Here's what you do to resize, or scale, the image.

To scale an image in your Word document, you must first select it. When you click on an image, Word selects the image and displays sizing handles. To scale a graphic with the mouse, you drag one of the handles until the image reaches the desired size. Dragging a handle on either center side resizes the width of the image; the top or bottom center side resizes the height of the image. Dragging any of the corner handles resizes both the width and height of the image.

To scale the image with the keyboard, select the image and choose Format, Picture to open the Format Picture dialog box where you can enter specific numeric values for the height and width of the image.

INSTALLING ON DEMAND

It's going to happen. You're going to click on an option, and Word is going to display a message informing you that the option is not installed. Even if you choose a complete installation, you eventually face this message. The idea behind Install on Demand is to prevent Word from bloating your system with features you may never use. This seems to make sense, but Microsoft still has to decide which features to install by default. If you're an avid Word user, keep the Install CD next to your computer. Otherwise, you're likely to spend a lot of time hunting it down to perform operations.

GET A HANDLE ON KEY COMBINATIONS

Sometimes you need to use various key combinations to tell Word how to carry out certain commands. For example press Ctrl+P to print or, if you can palm a basketball in one hand, try Ctrl+Shift+F12.

Both keyboard shortcuts open the Print dialog box. The important thing is what these key combinations tell you to do; namely, press and hold the Ctrl key while you press P and then release both keys or press and hold the Ctrl and Shift keys and then press the F12 key. Release all keys.

These key combinations appear all the time. Always press and hold the first key (or keys) and then press the last key: Press and release.

This key combination method works just like pressing Shift+F to get a capital F. It's the same thing, but with the odd Ctrl (Control) and Alt (Alternate) keys.
Yeah, you do have to really reach to get some of those key combinations.
You don't need to press hard. A light touch is all that's required.
Remember to release the keys: With Ctrl+P for example, press and hold the Ctrl key, press P, and then release both keys. If you don't know which one to release first, release the second key and then the Shift key (or Ctrl or Alt) last.
Click the Cancel or Close button if you accidentally open the Print dialog box; you can also press the Esc key on the keyboard.

KEYBOARD COMMANDS: MOVING THE INSERTION POINT

To move the insertion point to another page with the mouse in Word 2000, drag the scroll bar until you reach the desired location. A page reference appears for the current location in the scroll bar. After displaying the page that you want, click the specific location where you want to position the insertion point. The insertion point always stays within the margins.

When you click outside the right margin or after the final paragraph mark of your document, the insertion point moves to the text closest to where you clicked. When you click outside the left margin, however, you select a line.

You also use the keyboard to move the insertion point. The following list describes the keyboard options for moving the insertion point within a document in a To Move A /Then Press B format:

One character to the left: Left-arrow key
One character to the right: Right-arrow key
One line up: Up-arrow key
One line down: Down-arrow key
One word to the left: Ctrl+left-arrow key
One word to the right: Ctrl+right-arrow key
To the end of a line: End
To the beginning of a line: Home
To the beginning of the current paragraph: Ctrl+up-arrow key
To the beginning of the preceding paragraph: Ctrl+up-arrow key twice
To the beginning of the next paragraph: Ctrl+down-arrow key
Up one screen: Page Up]
Down one screen: Page Down
To the bottom of the screen: Ctrl+Page Down
To the top of the screen: Ctrl+Page Up
To the top of the previous page: Alt+Ctrl+Page Up
To the top of the next page: Alt+Ctrl+Page Down
To the end of the document: Ctrl+End
To the beginning of the document: Ctrl+Home
To the preceding insertion point location: Shift+F5 or Alt+Ctrl+Z

BREAKING A LINE

Here's a tip for anyone working with pesky narrow columns in Word. You can break a line at any point, before it reaches the right margin, without starting a new paragraph. Breaking lines is a great way to keep ugly white spaces from appearing on the right-hand margin.

To do so, press Shift + Return or choose Insert, Break and select the Text Wrapping Break option button in the Break dialog box.

To erase any line breaks, click the Show/Hide Paragraphs button (it looks like a backwards capital P) and then backspace or delete the line break characters as appropriate.

CRATING CUSTOM BULLETED LISTS

Word comes with a number of fonts that contain nothing but unusual fonts. (These fonts usually end with "MT.") You can use these fonts to create cool bulleted lists that give your document a distinctive edge. Here's how:

Create a document that uses Word's automatic bulleted list feature.
With your mouse, select the entire bulleted list.
Right-click the list and choose Bullets and Numbering from the shortcut menu.
In the Bullets and Numbering dialog box, click the Customize button.
Choose a custom bullet. You can click the Bullet button to pull in additional funky bullets from other Word fonts like Wingdings, Almanac MT, and others.
Click OK. The bulleted list is reformatted with the new bullet style.

Cool and customized!

GETTING THE NAME TIGHT...THE SECOND TIME

Sometimes when you type the first draft of an important document, you don't have all the information you need right in front of you. If you come to a spot where an unknown name should go, type something that would not be used for anything else, such as %%%%. During your review, you can update the document by replacing all instances of %%%% with the proper name.

CHANGING YOUR DEFAULT LOCATION

CREATING A MAIL MERGE IN WORD (PART 1 OF 5)

This is Mail Merge week. Today through Friday you'll receive a step-by-step tip on this popular Word feature. You can use Mail Merge for a variety of projects -- perhaps to create a personalized company newsletter or a warm holiday letter to family and friends. And it's easy with Word's Mail Merge feature.

For the first step in any Mail Merge project, you need to prepare a main document, or form letter. Here's how:

Choose Tools, Mail Merge.
Click the Create button in the Mail Merge Helper dialog box.
Select the Form Letters menu item from the drop-down list.
Choose how to create your main document. Click Active Window if your form letter is already prepared or click New Main Document if you need to make one.
Click the Edit button that appears out of thin air.
Choose Form Letter or the name of the document you have prepared in Word.
Edit the document.

Up next: Preparing your data source!

CREATING A MAIL MERGE IN WORD (PART 2 OF 5)

After you've created a main document for your Mail Merge project, the next step is preparing the data source or making a file to store Mail Merge information.

First, click the Mail Merge Helper button on the toolbar.
Click the Get Data button.
Select Create Data Source from the drop-down list.
Click the Remove Field Name button until all the Field names in the header row list that you don't need are gone.
Type a field name, such as firstname, into the Field name box.
Click the Add Field Name button.
Repeat Steps 5 and 6 for each field you need to include.
Click OK.
Name your data source document.
Click Save.
Click the Edit Data Source button.

Up next: Adding data to your data source!

CREATING A MAIL MERGE IN WORD (PART 3 OF 5)

After you've created a main document and a data source for your Mail Merge project, it's time to add data to your data source. From the Data Form dialog box, do the following:

Fill in the blanks. Remember, the names for the boxes in the Data Form dialog box are the field names you created earlier.
Click the Add New button.
Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for every person to whom you want to mail your form letter.
Click OK.

Up next: Placing blank fields in your main document!

CREATING A MAIL MERGE IN WORD (PART 4 OF 5)

After you've created your main documents and data source (and put data in your data source) you're ready to place the fields -- or "the blanks" -- into your main document or form letter.

In your form letter, position the toothpick cursor where you want to place the field.
Click the Insert Merge Field button in the Mail Merge toolbar. A list of your fields drops down.
Select the field you want to place in the document. A code is inserted into your document. The firstname field may look like <<firstname>>.
Continue adding fields until the document is complete.

Up next: Merging your fields and data into personalized letters (finally!).

CREATING A MAIL MERGE IN WORD (PART 5 OF 5)

Feel the urge to merge? Believe it or not, merging is the simplest part of the whole Mail Merge process. At this point, make sure that you've already created your main document and data source and that you've placed fields in your main document. To merge, follow these steps:

Save your main document.
Click the Mail Merge Helper button on the Mail Merge toolbar.
Click the Merge button, near the bottom of the dialog box.
Click the Merge button in the Merge dialog box.

Magically, Word creates several documents, merging your main document with the information that you put into your data source. All the new documents appear one after the other, ready for printing and mailing!

THE OFFICE ASSISTANT

By now, you've probably met the little paper clip icon that pops up on the lower right of the screen when Word 97 starts. Perhaps you've discovered that the Office Assistant can be moved around the screen, and that by clicking it, you can get help on any topic.

Office Assistant is your best bet for getting help with Word 97. Gone are the days when Windows Help was a vague and general overview, renowned for leaving out whatever it is you really needed to know.

Office Assistant is intelligent and specific, and it can get to the heart of a matter quickly. If you're not happy with the Clipit icon, right-click it, then select Choose Assistant, and pick from nine others, including The Bard himself. Right-clicking also gives you access to the Tip of the Day. Clicking the Close box (the one with the X in it) closes Office Assistant, and clicking the question mark on the Standard toolbar brings it back.

Under the Help menu, Contents and Index, Microsoft on the Web, and the "What's This?" tool are always available, even with the Office Assistant turned off.

OUTLINE VIEW

An outline not only keeps you organized, but it also makes it easier to move around in a lengthy document. By going to Outline view and collapsing a lengthy document to first-level headings alone, you can effectively shrink the document to a size much easier to work with -- it might fit on one page instead of a hundred. Then you can simply click on the heading of the section you want to work on and expand it, make your changes, and then collapse that section again. This can save you a lot of scrolling.

PASSWORDS, PART I

To protect your document from unauthorized viewing, you can assign a password to the document. Here's how:

Open the document.
Choose Tools, Options and click the Security tab in the Options dialog box.
Type a password in the Password to Open text box. Instead of letters, asterisks appear in the box in case a spy is looking over your shoulder.
Passwords can be 15 characters long. If you include upper- and lowercase letters, remember them well, because you have to reproduce your password exactly as typed in this box whenever you open the document.
Click OK.
In the Confirm Password dialog box, retype the password.

Save the document to make the password go into effect.

PASSWORDS, PART II

Yesterday, you discovered how to protect a document with a password. Today, you find out how to unprotect your document by removing the password you just added. Talk about fickle!

To remove a password, all you have to do is this:

Open the document and type in the password.
Choose Tools, Options.
Click the Security tab.
Delete the asterisks from the Password to Open or Password to Modify text box.
Click OK, and then save the document.

You can also use this method to change password. Just type a new password in Step 4.

PAUSE BEFORE CLICKING

Word has many Yes/No/OK-type questions. If you click OK without thinking about it (or press Enter accidentally), you can delete text, delete files, or perform a bad replace operation without meaning to. Always read your screen before you click OK.

Some dialog boxes have a Close button rather than an OK button. These buttons are typically used when you make some choice or reset some option and you don't want to continue with the command. For example, you can change printers in the Print dialog box and then click the Close button to continue without printing.

DRAG-AND-DROP PRINTING

Document files in Word can be printed by dragging the files and then dropping them on the printer icon in the Printers folder. These files can be dragged from a folder window, the Windows Explorer, or the Desktop to the printer's icon of its queue window. (The queue window appears when you double-click the printer icon, and shows the status of any printing jobs.)

If you drag more than one file to the printer icon, a message box appears and asks if you're sure that you want to print multiple files. Click Yes, if you do.

If you create a shortcut on the desktop for your printer, you can quickly print files by dragging and dropping those files on the printer shortcut icon. To place the printer icon on your Desktop, drag the printer icon from the Printers folder to the Desktop. When you release your mouse button to drop the icon, a message box appears and asks if you want to make a shortcut. Click Yes.

PREVIEWING WHAT YOU PRINT

Before you print a document, do yourself a big favor by previewing it. That way, you can catch errors before you send it through the printer and waste paper. For that matter, preview your documents from time to time to make sure that they are laid out correctly.

To preview a document, follow these steps:

Put the document you're about to print on-screen.
Choose File, Print Preview or click the Print Preview button on the toolbar.
Use the buttons and scroll bar on the Preview screen to get a better look at your document.
- Click part of the document to zoom in and examine closely. Click again to zoom out and get back to the preview screen.
- Click the One page or Multiple Pages button to view one or several pages at once.
- Click the Zoom Control menu and enter a percentage and press the Enter key or choose a different percentage from the menu to see more of the page.
- Click the Shrink to Fit button, and Word shrinks your document a bit if it can.
- The Full Screen button removes the menu bars and ruler so that you can really get the "big picture" of a page.
Click Close if you need to go back to the document and make changes; otherwise, click the Print button.

PRINTING SEVERAL PAGES PER SHEET

Word has a great feature for converting regular documents into compact booklets or drafts. In the Zoom section of the File, Print dialog box, change the setting at "Pages per sheet" from 1 to any of the available values up to 16. When you print, Word shrinks each page appropriately. With a typical document, a setting of 2 gives you reasonably legible text and uses only half the paper. Higher settings are usually best for previewing the document's overall layout.

THAT "PT" THING

The amount of space Word sticks between paragraphs is measured in points -- a typesetter's measurement. There are 72 points in an inch. (It's the same size that fonts are measured in.) So if you use a 12-point font, a space of 12 points between paragraphs adds an extra line. Six points (6 pt) is half a line of text.

The boxes where you input point values in the Paragraph dialog box have "spinners" on them. If you click the up or down arrows on the spinners, you increase or decrease the spacing between lines in 6-point increments. If you need more specific values, you can type them in directly.

REPETITION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

In Word 2002, the Edit menu contains a command called Repeat that you can choose to repeat your last action, and it can be a mighty timesaver. For example, if you just changed a heading style and you want to change another heading in the same way, move the cursor to the heading and choose Edit, Repeat (or press F4 or Ctrl+Y). Rather than go to the trouble of clicking the Style menu and choosing a heading style from the drop-down list, all you have to do is choose a simple command or press a key or two.

If you've been naughty in class and need to type "I will not stick pencils up my nose and make walrus noises" a hundred times, you can just type the sentence once and then press F4 or Ctrl+Y 99 more times.

SAVING ALL

To save a multitude of documents all at once, you can switch to each window and incant the File, Save command. Or you can be sneaky and do the following:

Press and hold the Shift key -- either one.
Choose File, Save All.

Normally, you choose the Save item, but if you press the Shift key before clicking the File menu, it magically becomes the Save All menu item.

SECRET SCROLL BAR

Lurking at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar you find three buttons. These are the browse buttons, which allow you to scroll through your document in leaps and bounds of various sizes.

The top button (looks like two stacked triangles pointing up) is the Browse Up button.
The bottom button (looks like two stacked triangles pointing down) is the Browse Down button.
The center button (looks like a dot) is the What the Heck Am I Browsing For? button.

When you click the center button, a pop-up palette of things to browse for appears. Pointing the mouse at any one of the items displays text that explains the item in the bottom part of the palette.

RE-SEARCHING

Word 2002 remembers the last bit of text you searched for. It appears selected (highlighted) the next time you summon the Find and Replace dialog box. That's handy if you want to find the same bit of text again -- or you can edit that text, modifying it slightly to find something else.

If you cast your eyes to the right side of the Find what text box, you see a drop-down arrow gizmo. Clicking that gizmo displays a scrolling list of text you've previously searched for. To re-search for a bit of text you've already searched for, click the drop-down arrow and click on the text you want to find again. Click the Find Next button and you're off on your way.

SEARCHING UP, DOWN, AND AROUND

The Find and Replace dialog box in Word 2000 lets you choose whether you want to search up, down, or the entire document. If you choose down, the search begins at the cursor and move down to the end of the document. When the tool reaches the end, you are prompted to continue searching from the beginning. Searching up works the same way, but in the opposite direction. If you choose All, the tool searches the entire document, regardless of the cursor's location. You can also use Find and Replace in just a small section of text by selecting the text before launching the dialog box.

SEARCHING WITH WILDCARDS

When you can't find a file or are searching for a word in a document in Word 97, wildcards can come in handy. A wildcard is a single character or group of characters that represent characters in a filename or word. The following lists common wildcards and explains how to use them.

The wildcard? represents a single character. Entering Peter?.doc in a Find File dialog box finds files named Peter1.doc and Peter2.doc, but not Peter10.doc.
The wildcard* represents a group of characters or a single character. Entering Peter*.doc finds Peter1.doc as well as Peter10.doc.
The wildcard [xx]represents specific characters to search for, where xx are the characters. Entering P[ae]ter.doc finds files named Pater.doc and Peter.doc, but not Piter.doc or Puter.doc.
The wildcard [!x]represents a character you don't want to find, where x is the character. Entering P[!e]ter.doc finds Pater.doc,Piter.doc, and Poter.doc, but not Peter.doc.
The wildcard [x-z] represents a group of consecutive characters, where x and z are the characters. Entering P[b-d]ter.doc finds Pbter.doc, Pcter.doc, and Pdter.doc, but not Pater.doc or Peter.doc.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T

Besides writing comments to critique a document in Word, you can critique a document with hidden text. Hidden text is not printed along with other text unless you tell Word to print it. All you have to do to see hidden text is click the Show/Hide (looks like a paragraph mark) button.

The fastest way to enter hidden text is to press Ctrl+Shift+H and start typing. You can also choose Format, Font and, in the Effects area in the middle of the Font dialog box, click the Hidden check box. You can't see your hidden text unless you click the Show/Hide button. Dotted lines appear below hidden text on-screen.

To see hidden text, click the Show/Hide button or choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, and click the Hidden Text check box in the Formatting Marks area of the dialog box. When it's time to hide the text again, click the Show/Hide button or open the Options dialog box and remove the check mark from the Hidden Text check box on the View tab.

HERE TO SERVER YOU

Okay, you've got a great image that you're trying to work into your Word document. The only problem is the image just isn't the right size. Here's what you do to resize, or scale, the image.

PEPPERED WITH COLORFUL SPEECH

If you're lucky enough to own or have access to a color printer, you can print text in different colors in Word 2002. And even if you don't own a color printer, you can change the color of text on-screen. You may do that to call attention to parts of a document or Web page, for example.

To change the color of text, follow these steps:

Select the text.
Click the down arrow next to the Font Color button and click a color, black, white, or one of the four gray shades.

After you choose a color, the Font Color button changes color and becomes the color you chose. To apply the same color again, click the Font Color button without having to open the drop-down list. You can also apply colors by way of the Font Color menu in the Font dialog box. To get there, choose Format, Font.

To remove the color from text, select it, open the Font Color drop-downlist, and choose Automatic.

CHANGING SPELL-CHECK OPTIONS

Suppose you have a bunch of computer code or French language text that you would like the spell-checker to ignore or check against its French dictionary instead of its English dictionary. To tell the spell-checker how to handle text like that, select the text, choose Tools, Language, Set Language. In the Language dialog box, choose a new language for your words to be spell-checked against, or click the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box.

STREAMLINING WORD

Many people find that they write better if they concentrate on document content first, and then go back and format the text so that it looks nice. Here are some options to consider if you prefer to work that way. To find these options, just choose Tools, Options.

Draft font: Check this option on the View tab to display all text in a single plain-looking font in Normal and Outline views. That saves time, because Word does not have to figure out how to display all those different typefaces, sizes, and colors. In draft mode, Word displays all text at the same size, ignores most paragraph formatting, and indicates character attributes like bold, italic, and highlighting by underlining the affected text.
Animated text: Text animation may have a place in Web page design and custom applications, but it's definitely annoying when you're writing. Uncheck this box on the View tab to turn off the special effects without removing the animation.
Highlight: If someone has marked up the document with colored highlights, you may find it difficult to focus on the nonhighlighted text when you have to edit it. Uncheck this box on the View tab to display everything in just plain black and white.

BASING STYLES ON NORMAL TEXT

Most documents have several different types of paragraphs that are minor variations on normal text. For example, bulleted list paragraphs may have the same typeface, point size, and line spacing as normal text, but the margins are different and they have bullets. Paragraphs like this should be formatted with styles that are based on the Normal style. That way, if you decide to make a sweeping change, such as moving from 10- to 11-point type or switching from Times New Roman to Palatino, you can change the Normal style rather then changing each style individually.

QUICK SUBSCRIPTS AND SUPERSCRIPTS

If you type a lot of fractions or the idea of super- and subscript text appeals to you, why not add those buttons to the Formatting toolbar? Just click the downward-pointing triangle at the toolbar's far-right end. Choose Add or Remove Buttons, Formatting and a huge menu appears. Near the bottom are commands for Superscript and Subscript. Choose each one and then press the Enter key.

ERADICATING OUT-OF-STYLE STYLES

Word 2002 makes it even easier to delete styles. Just display the Styles and Formatting task pane, select the style, and choose Delete from its menu. You're asked whether you're sure that you want to delete the style. Choose Yes to delete if for real. You cannot delete the Normal, Heading, or any other standard Word styles, though.

QUICK SYNONYMS

A thesaurus is a book of synonyms. A synonym is one word that carries the same or similar meaning to another. Like "giant" and "big" or "wee" and "small." English is full of these and Word's Shift+F7 Thesaurus command shows you a lot of them.

A handy way to get some quirky and commonly used synonyms for any word in your document is to right-click on the word and choose Synonym from the pop-up menu. Included among the list is even an antonym (a word that means the opposite of the original word.)

SETTING A CENTER TAB

The center tab is a unique character in Word 2002. It's normally used with only a single word or just a few words. What it does is allow you to center that word (or those words) on a line of text without centering the entire paragraph.

Here's a demo:

Start a new paragraph, one containing text you want to center. You probably won't type a whole paragraph for a center tab. In fact, that would be very unusual. Instead, the best example for this situation is typing a header or footer -- a single line of text.
Press the Tab key. Believe it or not, you need only one tab.
Type the text to center. A chapter title, your name, or whatever text you type is centered on that line when you set a center tab stop.
Press Enter. This step ends the line. Now you're ready to set the center tab.
Click the mouse to put the toothpick cursor on the line you just typed.
Click the Tab button until the center tab appears. The center tab is shown in the margin. It looks like an upside-down T.
Click the mouse on the middle of the ruler to set the center tab. Your text should line up so that the paragraph is still aligned to the left, but that tiny bit of text is centered.

Center tabs are best used on a single line of text, usually by themselves. There's no restriction on this; you can use as many center tabs on a line as you like. Most often, you use center tabs in headers and footers.

SETTING A DECIMAL TAB

Without decimal tabs, columns of numbers would never match up. This Word 2002 feature is a serious boon to anyone who writes a financial summary report, for example.

You work with a decimal tab just like any other tab. The difference is that the text to the left of the decimal comes before the tab stop and text after the decimal goes to the right.

For example, type Sweater, Tab, Mom, Tab, and then $30.00. Press the first tab, a left tab, and line up Mom on the left with other text in the column. Press Tab again to move the text over to the decimal tab stop at 3" (see the ruler). Type $30 and it moves to the left. But when you type the decimal, that determines the tab "stop," and the rest of the number moves to the right.

If you need to rearrange things (perhaps the columns are too close together), select all the lines with numbers as a block. Use your mouse to slide the decimal tab left or right on the ruler. You can then realign the numbers in the selected block all at once.

SETTING A DECIMAL TAB - REVISITED!

The old: Without decimal tabs, columns of numbers would never match up. This Word 2002 feature is a serious boon to anyone who writes a financial summary report, for example.

You work with a decimal tab just like any other tab. The difference is that the text to the left of the decimal comes before the tab stop and text after the decimal goes to the right.

The new: Some important up-front work was left out of the above tip -- you will need to set the tabs prior to doing the steps previously outlined. Here's how:

Click on the ruler. By default, the tab will be a left tab (which looks like a lowercase "L"). Click on the ruler three times at whatever interval suits you. Then change the tab type of the last tab to decimal. To change the tab type, double click the little "L" on the ruler, opening the Tabs dialog box. Then select the type of tab you want -- Decimal is one of the choices.

Without this updated information, you probably ended up with the default tab stops, which are left tabs at .5 inches (and default tabs don't even show up on the toolbar -- very confusing).

CAN YOU PICK UP THE TAB?

A tab is like a big space. When you press the Tab key, Word 2002 zooms the toothpick cursor over to the next tab stop. You can use tabs to line up columns of information or to indent paragraphs or lines of text. They're handy.

And now, a dutiful explanation of other tab mysteries:

Pressing the Tab key inserts a tab "character" in your document. That character moves the toothpick cursor, and any text you type, over to the next tab stop.
Pressing the Tab key does not insert spaces. When you use Backspace or Delete to remove a tab, you delete one character -- the tab character.
Word can display the Tab character for you if you like. It looks like a tiny arrow pointing to the right. To display this character, choose Tools, Options. Click the View tab. Choose Tab characters from the Formatting marks area. Click OK.
Tab stops are set at half-inch intervals on each line of text -- unless you specify otherwise.
It helps if you have the ruler visible when you work with tabs. Choose View, Ruler from the menu if the ruler isn't visible. You may have to click the down arrows on the menu to see the Ruler command.
Tab is short for tabulator. It comes from the Latin root for table, which is handy because that's what tabs help you do: line things up into tables. Even so, Word does have a Table command.

SETTING A TAB STOP IN WORD 2002

The best thing about setting tabs and using the Tab key is that they line up your text exactly with the tab stop. Pressing the Spacebar a zillion times just doesn't do that. To set a tab stop in Word 2002, follow these steps.

Click the Tab button until you find the type of tab you want.
For example, click the Tab button - the small square box at the left of the ruler - until the standard Left tab appears (it looks like a short, fat L).
Click on the ruler where you want the tab stop placed.
You can drag the tab stop left or right. As you drag, notice a line that extends down into your document's text. That line tells you exactly where text lines up for that tab stop.
Release the mouse button to set the tab.
To set another tab stop, repeat Step 2.
You set a new tab stop every time you click on the ruler. The type of tab displayed on the Tab button determines which kind of tab you set.
When you're done, just click in your document to set the toothpick cursor and type away.

Remember that setting the tab affects only the paragraph the toothpick cursor is in. If you want to set the tabs for multiple paragraphs or an entire document, you must select a block and then set the tabs.

UNDERSTANDING TABS

And now, a dutiful explanation of other tab mysteries:

Pressing the Tab key inserts a tab "character" in your document. That character moves the toothpick cursor, and any text you type, over to the next tab stop.
Pressing the Tab key does not insert spaces. When you use Backspace or Delete to remove a tab, you delete one character -- the tab character.
Word can display the Tab character for you if you like. It looks like a tiny arrow pointing to the right. To display this character, choose Tools, Options. Click the View tab. Choose Tab characters from the Formatting marks area. Click OK.
Tab stops are set at half-inch intervals on each line of text -- unless you specify otherwise.
It helps if you have the ruler visible when you work with tabs. Choose View, Ruler from the menu if the ruler isn't visible. You may have to click the down arrows on the menu to see the Ruler command.
Tab is short for tabulator. It comes from the Latin root for table, which is handy because that's what tabs help you do: line things up into tables. Even so, Word does have a Table command.

WHY DOESN'T WORD PRINT GRIDLINES IN A TABLE

You're frustrated. You're tired. You just want that amazing table you created in Word to print, but every time you attempt printing, Word prints out your table without gridlines. Here's how to solve the problem:

A table's gridlines appear only on-screen. If you want to add lines to your table printouts, you need to apply a border to the table. The Table, Table AutoFormat command sets up predefined borders and shading. You can select the design that you want from the dialog box that appears.

However, if you want to make a custom border, you need to choose Format, Borders and Shading to bring up the Table Borders and Shading dialog box. In this dialog box, you can apply formatting to the table gridlines or to the text paragraph within a cell.

USING THE INSERT TABLE COMMAND

Using the Insert Table dialog box, you can create tables with as many as 63 columns and an unlimited number of rows. With this method, you can also add formatting options to your new table. Clicking on the AutoFormat button lets you choose from a collection of ready-made table templates, each using a different formatting scheme.

To use the Table menu to create a table, do the following:

Choose Table, Insert, Table to display the Insert Table Dialog box.
Enter the number of rows and columns in the dialog box.
Choose OK.

MERGE/SPLIT CELLS IN A WORD 2002 TABLE

If a row in your Word table needs to have fewer cells than other rows, you can easily merge cells. To merge the cells in a table, select the cells you want to merge and choose Table, Merge Cells or click the Merge Cells button on the Tables and Borders toolbar.

In the same vein, you can split a cell into two or more cells by selecting the cell and choosing Table, Split Cells or clicking the Split Cells button on the Tables and Borders toolbar. In the Split Cells dialog box, declare how many columns and rows you want to split the cell into and click OK.

Furthermore, you can split a table by placing the cursor in what you want to be the first row of the new table and choosing Table, Split Table.

SORTING, OR REORDERING, A TABLE

Sorting means to rearrange all the rows of a table on the basis of data in one column. The table still has the same information, but the rows are in a special order that you select.

The fastest way to rearrange the rows in a table is to use the Table, Sort command or click one of the Sort buttons on the Table and Borders toolbar.

Note: When you rearrange a table by sorting it, Word rearranges the formatting as well as the data. Do your sorting before you format the table to save yourself a headache.

COPYING A TABLE OF CONTENTS IN WORD 2002

Suppose you want to copy a Table of Contents to another Word document. It can be done. Before copying it, however, you need to unlock it. Unlocking means to disconnect TOC entries from the headings to which they refer. To unlock a TOC, click in the margin to the left of the first entry to select the TOC. Next, press Ctrl+Shift+F9. Now you can successfully copy or move the TOC to another document. Because Word gives the text of TOCs the Hyperlink character style, you have to change the color of the text in the TOC (it's blue) and remove the underlines.

UPDATE A TABLE OF CONTENTS IN WORD 2000

If you add or remove a heading to your Word 2002 document, you can easily get an up-to-date table of contents (TOC). To do so, go to the Outlining toolbar and click the Update TOC button. You can also right-click anywhere in the TOC and choose Update Field on the shortcut menu. A dialog box asks how you want to update the TOC. Choose one of these options and click OK:

Update Page Numbers Only: Choose this option to put up-to-date page numbers in the TOC. New headings that you added do not appear in the TOC, nor do headings that you deleted get dropped from it. This option is strictly for handling page numbers.
Update Entire Table: Choose this option to get a revamped, entirely up-to-date TOC. New headings are added to the TOC, and headings that you deleted are removed.

BUILD A TABLE FOR TABLES IN WORD 2002

If your Word 2002 is jam-packed with tables, figures, graphs, equations, illustrations, listings, or programs, you can create a table that lists all of those elements for easy reference. The prerequisite, however, is that you must have used the command Insert, Reference, Caption when you created the captions for those figures, tables, graphs, and so on.

To generate the table:

Put the cursor where you want the table to go.
Choose Insert, Reference, Index and Tables.
Select the Table of Figures tab in the Index and Tables dialog box.
Choose your options.
As you do so, watch the Print Preview and Web Preview boxes to see how your choices affect the table's appearance. The Web Preview box shows what your table will look like if you display it as a Web page.
Click OK when you're done.

To update your table of figures, graphs, or whatnots, right-click it and choose Update Field on the shortcut menu. Then, in the Update Table of Figures dialog box, choose Update Page Numbers Only to update the page numbers in the table as it stands now, or Update Entire Table to regenerate the table so that it includes new figures, graphs, or whatever.

You can Ctrl+Click an entry in your table to go to that entry in your document. Ctrl+Click means to hold down the Ctrl key as you click an item.

MOVING AROUND WORD TABLES

After you create a table in Word, you can start entering text and numbers. All you have to do is click in a cell and start typing. To help you work more quickly, here are some shortcuts for moving the cursor in a table:

Tab: Moves the cursor to the next column in the row.
Shift + Tab: Moves the cursor to the previous column in the row.
Alt + Home: Moves the cursor to the start of the row.
Alt + End: Moves the cursor to the end of the row.
Up arrow: Moves the cursor to the row below.
Down arrow: Moves the cursor to the row above.
Alt + Page Up: Moves the cursor to the top of the column.
Alt + Page Down: Moves the cursor to the bottom of the column.

If you need to add a row at the bottom of the table to enter more text, place the cursor in the last column of the last row and press the Tab key.

SETTING YOUR STANDARD LEFT TABS

Left tabs are the standard, typical, boring types of tabs most everyone uses. But why are they left? Left over? Left out? Leftist?

Left tabs are called such because text typed after you press the tab aligns its left side to the tab stop in Word 2002. Each bit of text will line up its left edge with the tab stop, but pressing the Spacebar won't do this. You must use a tab stop!

To make a new left tab stop for your current paragraph, follow these steps:

Type the paragraph you want to stick the tabs in. Consider typing the text first. That's because one tab stop does the trick. Just type your text, pressing the Tab key once -- no matter how far you eventually want the text to go over. Too many people press the Tab key three or four times. That's okay, but it's inefficient. Word is smarter than that. Use the Tab key only once, and then use the ruler to set the tab stop.
Make sure that the toothpick cursor is in the paragraph you want to change.
Choose the left tab stop from the Tab button. Keep clicking the Tab button until the Left tab appears, as shown in the margin.
Click the mouse in the ruler where you want a new tab stop. For example, the first tab stop may be set at 1.25 inches, the second at 2.5 inches, and the third at 4 inches.

UNDERSTANDING TABS

And now, a dutiful explanation of other tab mysteries:

Pressing the Tab key inserts a tab "character" in your document. That character moves the toothpick cursor, and any text you type, over to the next tab stop.
Pressing the Tab key does not insert spaces. When you use Backspace or Delete to remove a tab, you delete one character -- the tab character.
Word can display the Tab character for you if you like. It looks like a tiny arrow pointing to the right. To display this character, choose Tools, Options. Click the View tab. Choose Tab characters from the Formatting marks area. Click OK.
Tab stops are set at half-inch intervals on each line of text -- unless you specify otherwise.
It helps if you have the ruler visible when you work with tabs. Choose View, Ruler from the menu if the ruler isn't visible. You may have to click the down arrows on the menu to see the Ruler command.
Tab is short for tabulator. It comes from the Latin root for table, which is handy because that's what tabs help you do: line things up into tables. Even so, Word does have a Table command.

CREATING NEW TEMPLATES

To create a new template in Word, start by setting up a document with the layout, formatting, and content you want in the template. Add new macros, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts. When you're finished, choose File, Save As. When you select Document Template at Save as Type, Word automatically takes you to your main templates folder. Navigate to one of its subfolders if you wish, name the new template, and save the file. After a document is saved as a template, you can add AutoCorrect entries as well. To modify an existing template, open it by selecting Document Templates at Files of Type in the File, Open dialog box. Make any changes you wish and save the file again.

CREATING TEMPLATE SHORTCUTS

You can create a shortcut to a template on your Windows desktop. Right-click the Windows Start button and choose Explore to open Windows Explorer, and then browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates. Right-click a template in the right pane and choose Create Shortcut from the shortcut menu. Cut the shortcut and paste it to the desktop. Then, whenever you open that shortcut, Word 2000 opens a new document using the template.

COLORING TEXT

If you're lucky enough to have access to a color printer, you can print text in different colors in Word 2002. And even if you don't own a color printer, you can change the color of text on-screen. You may do that to call attention to parts of a document or Web page, for example.

To change the color of text, follow these steps:

Select the text.
Click the down arrow beside the Font Color button and click a color.
After you choose a color, the Font Color button changes color and becomes the color you chose. To apply the same color again, click the Font Color button without having to open the drop-down list. You can also apply colors by way of the Font Color menu in the Font dialog box. To get there, choose Format, Font.

To remove the color from text, select it, open the Font Color drop-downlist, and choose Automatic.

DRAGGING-AND-DROPPING TEXT - QUICKLY

A speedy way to move or copy text in Word 2000 is to use the drag-and-drop method:

Select the text you want to copy or move.
Slide the mouse over the selected text until the cursor changes into an arrow.
Copy or move the text:
- To move: Drag the text to a new location. As you drag, a small square appears below the mouse pointer to show that you are moving text.
- To copy: Hold down the Ctrl key while you drag the text elsewhere. A square with a cross in it appears below the pointer.
At the place where you want to move or copy the text, let up on the mouse button.

One neat thing about dragging and dropping is that you can copy or move text without disturbing what's on the Clipboard -- text isn't copied to the Clipboard when you drag and drop.

MAKING TEXT BIGGER OR SMALLER

You can use a couple of quickie shortcuts to instantly shrink or grow text in a selected block. Here are the two most popular shortcuts:

Ctrl+Shift+> makes the font larger in the next "look good" size.
Ctrl+Shift+< makes the font smaller in the next "look good" size.

If you want to increase or decrease the font size by small increments, use the following shortcuts:

Ctrl+] makes the text one point size larger.
Ctrl+[ makes the text one point size smaller.

SELECTED TEXT

Before performing many tasks in Word, you must select the text you want to work with. Selected text appears highlighted on your screen.

To select a word, double-click on the word.
To select a paragraph, click inside the paragraph three times.
To select any amount of text, position the mouse over the first word you want to select and drag the mouse over the text you want to select.

HOW DO I LOVE SELECTING TEXT IN WORD - LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!

To move text or copy it from one place to another in Word 2002, you have to select it first. You can also erase a great gob of text merely by selecting it and pressing the Delete key. So it pays to know how to select text.

Here are some shortcuts for doing it:

A word: Double-click the word.
A line: Click in the left margin next to the line.
Some lines: Drag the mouse over the lines or drag the mouse pointer down the left margin.
A paragraph: Double-click in the left margin next to the paragraph.
A mess of text: Click at the start of the text, hold down the Shift key, and click at the end of the text.
A gob of text: Put the cursor where you want to start selecting, press F8 or double-click EXT (it stands for Extend) on the status bar, and press an arrow key, drag the mouse, or click at the end of the selection.
Yet more text: If you select text and realize you want to select yet more text, double-click EXT on the status bar and start dragging the mouse or pressing arrow keys.
Text with the same formats: Right-click text that is formatted a certain way and choose Select Text with Similar Formatting.
A document: Hold down the Ctrl key and click in the left margin, or triple-click in the left margin, or choose Edit®Select All, or press Ctrl+A.

If you have a bunch of highlighted text on-screen and you want it to go away but it won't (because you pressed F8 or double-clicked EXT to select it), double-click EXT again.

SELECTING TEXT IN SPEEDY WAYS IN WORD 2002

Here are some shortcuts for doing it:

A word: Double-click the word.
A line: Click in the left margin next to the line.
Some lines: Drag the mouse over the lines or drag the mouse pointer down the left margin.
A paragraph: Double-click in the left margin next to the paragraph.
A mess of text: Click at the start of the text, hold down the Shift key, and click at the end of the text.
A gob of text: Put the cursor where you want to start selecting, press F8 or double-click EXT (it stands for Extend) on the status bar, and press an arrow key, drag the mouse, or click at the end of the selection.
Yet more text: If you select text and realize you want to select yet more text, double-click EXT on the status bar and start dragging the mouse or pressing arrow keys.
Text with the same formats: Right-click text that is formatted a certain way and choose Select Text with Similar Formatting.
A document: Hold down the Ctrl key and click in the left margin, or triple-click in the left margin, or choose [E]dit, Select A[l]l, or press Ctrl+A.

If you have a bunch of highlighted text on-screen and you want it to go away but it won't (because you pressed F8 or double-clicked EXT to select it), double-click EXT again.

WHITE ON BLACK TEXT

White text in a black box is an eye-catching technique: First you create a black background, then white-colored text.

Mark your text as a block.
Choose Format, Borders and Shading.
Select the Shading panel (make sure it is forward).
Click the black square in the Fill area.
Click OK to exit the Borders and Shading dialog box.
Click the Capital A or Font Color tool on the toolbar.
Choose White.

You now have white letters on a black background.

WRAP TEXT AROUND AN OBJECT IN WORD 2002

Word gives you lots of interesting opportunities to wrap text around text boxes, graphics, drawing canvases, and other objects in a document. By playing with the different ways to wrap text, you can create very sophisticated layouts. When you wrap text, you pick a wrapping style and the side of the object around which to wrap the text.

The fastest way to wrap text is to select the object around which text is to be wrapped, click the Text Wrapping button, and choose an option from the drop-down list. You'll find the Text Wrapping button (which has a dog on it) on the Picture or Drawing Canvas toolbars.

THE THESAURUS'S ROLE IN FINDING THE RIGHT WORD

If you can't seem to find the right word -- if the word is on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite remember it -- you can always give the Thesaurus in Word 2000 a shot. To find synonyms (words that have the same or a similar meaning) for a word in your document, start by right-clicking the word and choosing Synonyms from the shortcut menu. With luck, the synonym you are looking for appears on the submenu and all you have to do is click to enter the synonym in your document. Usually, however, finding a good synonym is a journey, not a Sunday stroll. Follow these steps to search for a synonym:

Place the cursor in the word.
Choose Tools, Language, Thesaurus, or press Shift+F7.
Begin your quest for the right word.
When you find it, click it in the list of words in the Replace with Synonym box and then click the Replace button.

INSERTING THE TIME AND DATE

Word can lighten your load a bit by automatically inserting the correct time and date into a file. Here's how:

Open a document and place the cursor where you would like the current date to appear.
Begin typing the date. Watch for the AutoComplete tips, which Word displays after you type a few characters.
Press Tab to accept the AutoComplete tip, and then press Enter.

To insert the time to the document, do the following:

Select Insert, Date and Time from the menu bar.
Select the time format from the Available Formats list.
Place a check mark next to the Update Automatically check box and click OK.
Word inserts the current time into your document.

To update the time, right-click the time and select Update Field from the shortcut menu. The time is automatically updated.

COPYING A TOC

Suppose you want to copy a Table of Contents to another document. It can be done. Before copying it, however, you need to unlock it. Unlocking means to disconnect TOC entries from the headings to which they refer. To unlock a TOC, click in the margin to the left of the first entry to select the TOC. Next, press Ctrl+Shift+F9. Now you can successfully copy or move the TOC to another document. Because Word gives the text of TOCs the Hyperlink character style, you have to change the color of the text in the TOC (it's blue) and remove the underlines.

MOVABLE TOOLBARS

Moveable toolbars are a cool feature in Word 2002. Toolbars usually appear at the top of the screen. Or, you may find two or more toolbars smashed together (which can look confusing). So feel free to tear off your toolbars and move them anywhere around the screen, including the side, bottom, or right in the middle of the screen instead.

THE UBIQUITIOUS REVIEWING TOOLBAR

Word sports a great author sharing and review tool, called the Reviewing toolbar. Choose View, Toolbars, Reviewing to display it. The buttons on that toolbar help you view and find sticky-note comments, as well as any revisions made to the document.

UNDOING ACTIONS

When you make a mistake in Word 2000, you can undo that action or command. For example, if you accidentally delete a word, you can easily bring it back. Then, if you decide to go through with the action or command after all, you can even redo it.

Word provides three methods to undo or redo your most recent action:

Click the Undo button or the Redo button on the Standard toolbar.
Choose Undo or Redo from the Edit menu.
Press the shortcut keys Ctrl+Z (undo) or Ctrl+Y (redo).

To undo or redo multiple actions, first click the arrow beside either the Undo or Redo button to display a list of actions. Then click or drag to select the actions that you want to undo or redo. Undo and redo actions are performed in the sequential order of the original actions.

You cannot undo certain actions, however, such as saving a document.

WATERMARKING

A watermark is a pale image or couple of words that appear behind text on each page of a document. True watermarks are made in the paper mold and can be seen only when the sheet of paper is held up to light. You can't make a true watermark in Word, but you can make something close to one.

To create a watermark for every page in a document, start by choosing Format, Background, Printed Watermark. You see the Watermark dialog box. From here you can create picture or text watermark.

After you pick the type of watermark you want, click OK in the Printed Watermark dialog box to see your watermark. To tinker with it or remove it, choose Format, Background, Printed Watermark and change the settings in the Printed Watermark dialog box. To remove the watermark, click the No Watermark option button.

CLOSING ALL WINDOWS

It's always a good idea to close the documents you aren't using, because they take up memory and thereby slow down your system, and because extra open documents make it harder to switch quickly to the document you want to work with.

To close all open documents at once, hold down the Shift key while you click the File menu. The Close All command appears on the menu in place of the ordinary Close command. The Close All command is also available in the Customize dialog box, from which you can add it to a toolbar or menu.

WORDART

With WordArt, you can turn ordinary words into graphic objects. Among other things, you can sculpt text into a variety of shapes, flip or stretch letters, rotate or angle words, or add shading, colors, borders, or shadows to text.

Here's how to begin experimenting with WordArt:

Position the insertion point where you want the WordArt object to appear in your document.
Choose Insert, Picture, WordArt, or click the Insert WordArt button on the Drawing toolbar. The WordArt Gallery dialog box then appears.
Select the WordArt effect that you like and then click OK, or double-click the effect that you want to use. The Edit WordArt Text dialog box then appears.
Type the text that you want to appear in WordArt.
Click OK.

TRANSLATING WORDS INTO OTHER LANGUAGES

Word 2002 has the ability to translate words into other languages. Word does this best one word at a time, which is always good because computers still haven't quite mastered the ability to accurately translate complete sentences. Yet, for adding a wee little -- nay, petit -- French to your document, the Translate command works swell. Or gonfler, perhaps.

To translate a word from English into another language, follow these steps:

Right-click the word to translate.
The word must be spelled correctly and free of grammatical errors. If not, fix the word and try right-clicking again.
Choose Translate from the pop-up menu.
The Translate view pane appears. Translations appear in the Results part of the view pane; if not, click the Go button. Note that you may be required to install this feature, which means you need the original Word or Office CD handy.
Click the Replace button to stick the word into your document.

Comment facile!

WORKING FASTER

Instead of pressing PgUp or PgDn or clicking the scroll bar to thrash around in a long document, you can use bookmarks.

To place a bookmark in a document, follow these steps:

Click where you want the bookmark to go.
Choose Insert, Bookmark (or press Ctrl+Shift+F5).
Type a descriptive name in the Bookmark Name box. (You cannot include spaces in bookmark names.)
Click the Add button.

Here's how to go to a bookmark:

Choose Insert, Bookmark.
Double-click the bookmark or select it and click the Go To button.
Click Cancel or press Enter.

WORKING IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME

Did you know that you can work simultaneously in two different places in the same document? Bet you didn't (and if you did, kudos for you!). One reason you may want to do this: You're writing a long report and you need to make sure that your introduction and conclusion jibe with each other. Instead of scrolling to and fro in your document, you can open the document in both places and write the introduction and conclusion at the same time.

You can accomplish this fantastic feat in two ways:

Open a second window: Choose Window, New Window, which opens a duplicate window of the document. Now you have two separate windows open of the same document, and you can switch back and forth via the task bar or the Window menu. And you can choose File, Save in either window to save all the changes you make in both windows.

Split the screen: Choose Window, Split, and position the gray line where you want to split the screen. Then click the mouse. Now you have two windows on the same screen. Simply choose File, Save as usual to save your changes.