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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:
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:
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):
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
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 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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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. 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.
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:
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.
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:
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. 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. 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:
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:
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.
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 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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
UNDERSTANDING TABS 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:
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:
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:
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:
If you want to increase or decrease the font size by small increments, use the following shortcuts:
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.
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:
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 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:
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.
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:
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:
To insert the time to the document, do the following:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Here's how to go to a bookmark:
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:
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. |