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CHANGING AN AUTOCORRECTION IN WORD If Word 2003 makes an autocorrection that you don't care for, you can easily change it. Just move the pointer over the spot where the correction was made, and you'll see the AutoCorrect Options button. (It looks like a thunderbolt with a big dash mark at the top.) By clicking it, you can get a shortcut menu with options for reversing the correction, telling Word never to make the correction again, and opening the AutoCorrect dialog box.
DEACTIVATE AUTOLISTS IN WORD Word creates automatic lists for you whether you like it or not. For example, type the number 1, type a period, press the spacebar, type the first entry in the list, and press Enter to get to the next line and type the second entry. As soon as you press Enter, Word inserts the number 2 and formats the list for you. In the same manner, Word creates bulleted lists when you type an asterisk (*), press the spacebar, type the first entry in the list, and press Enter. Some people find this feature annoying. To get rid of it, either click the AutoCorrect Options button -- it appears automatically -- and choose Stop Automatically Creating Lists. You can also choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options, select the AutoFormat As You Type tab in the AutoCorrect dialog box, and deselect the Automatic Numbered Lists and Automatic Bulleted Lists check boxes.
HIGHLIGHT TEXT WITH AUTOSUMMARIZE Word 2003's AutoSummarize tool can take any document and immediately highlight all the relevant points - on screen. To AutoSummarize a document, choose Tools, AutoSummarize. Heed the steps on the screen. In a few minutes (longer if your computer is unplugged), the AutoSummarize dialog box appears. Click OK. (You can peruse the options in the AutoSummarize dialog box on your own, if you like; clicking OK generally does what you want it to do.) Splat! Your document then appears on the screen with relevant parts highlighted in yellow. Also visible is an AutoSummarize floating palette. To return to normal editing mode, click the Close button on the AutoSummarize palette.
USING AUTOTEXT IN WORD Using the AutoText feature in Microsoft Word, you can enter long and difficult-to-type words quickly. Put the text and/or graphics that you often use on the Insert, AutoText list (Word has already placed a few common entries there). That way, you can enter the long-winded text or a complicated graphic simply by clicking a few menu commands or by typing a couple of letters. To create an AutoText entry, type the text or import the graphic, select it, and choose Insert, AutoText, New (or press Alt+F3). The Create AutoText dialog box appears. Type a name for the text or graphic in the text box and click OK. To insert an AutoText entry, just 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. An alternative method is to choose Insert, AutoText. Next, select a submenu name, and choose an AutoText Entry.
FIXING BORDER WRAPPING IN WORD Sometimes, for some unknown reason, the page border doesn't wrap around the entire page. The solution lies in the Options button in the Border and Shading dialog box. Click that button to display yet another dialog box. Locate the Measure from drop-down list and choose Text from that list. Click OK to close the Options dialog box. Click OK to close the Border and Shading dialog box. Your border shall now appear!
ADD A CALCULATOR TO WORD Microsoft Word 2000 has a little-known calculator that you can add to a toolbar. It's quick and handy to use for any simple on-screen calculations in a Word document. Use the following steps to add the Tools Calculate tool:
Now you're ready to test it. Type an equation, select it, and click your new Tools Calculate button. The answer appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window and gets copied automatically onto the clipboard. Just click Ctrl+V to insert the answer where you want it. (Remember, use an asterisk * for multiplying, a slash / for division, a hyphen - for a minus sign, and a plus sign + for you know what.)
GREETING CARDS MADE EASIER If you're into making elaborate greeting cards in Word, consider this formatting tip. Use section breaks to divide the greeting card and not just the hard page breaks you get by pressing Ctrl+Enter. You'll get more flexibility when formatting. (A section is basically an area in your document whose page formatting is independent of the rest of your document.) Also, watch out for fancy, thick paper. It tends to jam most laser printers. (If your laser printer has a single-sheet feed and a pass-through slot out the back, printing on thick paper may work.) Greeting-card stock is difficult as all heck to get through an inkjet printer, too! To figure out the types of paper that your printer can handle, read the printer's instruction manual or check the manufacturer's Web site for information.
CHANGING THE CASE IN WORD Upper- and lowercase text effects aren't considered part of a font, character attribute, or format. But still, the Word geniuses at Microsoft found room in their bustling bag o' tricks for a two-fingered command that lets you mix around the case of your text.
You can also use the Format, Change Case menu command, which calls up the Change Case dialog box and lets you choose specific combinations of upper- and lowercase letters for your text.
TRACKING CHANGES IN WORD 2003 To track changes to a Word 2003 document while editing the document, turn on the Track Changes feature before you begin editing. Then Word keeps track of revisions as you make them. You can then print the document with or without the changes, and you can later accept or reject the changes. Follow these steps to track changes:
PAUSE BEFORE CLICKING IN WORD Word has many Yes/No/OK-type questions, and clicking too quickly can lead to mistakes. 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.
PLACE WORD COMMENTS INTO GROUPS In addition to the names of commands, Word menus contain separators that divide these commands into related groups. To organize commands into groups, do the following:
The separator then appears above the selected command, and a check mark appears at the left of the Begin a Group command.
CARE TO COMMENT (IN WORD)? In the old days, comments were scribbled illegibly in the margins of books and documents, but in Microsoft Word 97 and 2000, comments are easy to read. To write a comment, follow these steps:
READING COMMENTS IN WORD To read stick-on notes (comments) in Microsoft Word, just point (don't click) the mouse at it. The mouse cursor changes to the insertion pointer plus a little sort of stick-on note thing. Just hold the mouse still and the sticky note pops up on the screen. The name of the person who wrote the note appears above it, and then comes the note's contents
CONVERTING POWERPOINT TO WORD Converting PowerPoint presentations to Microsoft Word documents is easy, and here are a few reasons to do so.
To make the conversion happen, follow these steps:
COPY AND PASTE - WITH A TWIST! One of Word 2003's nifty features is the ability to store more than one cut or copied block of text in the Clipboard at a time. So you can cut, cut, cut or copy, copy, copy, and then pick and choose which of those blocks you want to paste back into your document. They call it "collect and paste." To view the Clipboard, just choose View, Task Pane, click the downward-pointing triangle in the task pane, and choose Clipboard from the menu. You'll see a list of all the things you've cut or copied. To paste any collected text in the Clipboard, place the cursor's insertion point where you want to paste the text in your document, and click that chunk of text in the task pane. To paste something else, just move the insertion point again and click on another chunk of text.
COUNTING SPECIFIC WORDS IN WORD A nifty thing about the Replace command in Word is that it tells you how many words it has 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 "actuallys" are okay, but more than that and you're actually 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.
DASH AWAY IN WORD There's a difference between hyphens and dashes. Most people insert a hyphen where they should use an em dash or an en dash.
To place em or en dashes in your documents and impress your readers, press Alt+Ctrl+- (the minus sign key on the Numeric keypad) to create an em dash, or Ctrl+- (on the numeric keypad) to create an en dash. You can also choose Insert, Symbol, and, on the Special Characters tab in the Symbol dialog box, choose Em Dash or En Dash.
PULLING THE OL' DOCUMENT SWITCHEROO Word 2003 lets you work on up to a zillion documents at once. Well, actually, you can work on several documents at once. Whenever you open a new document or choose File, New to start a new document from scratch, Word opens another document window. All the document windows appear as buttons on the taskbar. To switch from one document to another, click its button on the taskbar.
INSIDE THE DRAWING CANVAS When you insert an autoshape, a text box, or an object from the Drawing toolbar in Word, the drawing canvas and the Drawing Canvas toolbar appears 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:
STROLLING THROUGH WORD FIELDS A field is a special placeholder code that tells Word to insert something (usually text of some sort) into the document. Word translates field code into some result, usually text, which then becomes inserted into the document. A date field, for example, tells Word to insert the current date into the document. No matter when you edit or print the document, the date field causes the document to contain the current date. Other fields work in the same way. The text that Word inserts in place of the field code is called the result. For a date field, the result is the current date. For a page-number field, the result is the current page number. Other field types produce more complicated results, such as a Table of Contents or an index. For some fields, the result isn't text at all, but a picture or a chart. When you print a document, you can't distinguish between text you typed directly into the document and text that is a field result.
INSERTING A FILE IN WORD 2003 One of the beautiful things about word processing in Microsoft Word is that you can recycle documents. Say that you wrote an essay on the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher that would fit very nicely in a broader report on North American birds. You can insert the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher document into your report document, like so:
GETTING THE POINT OF WORD FONTS The amount of space that Word sticks between paragraphs is measured in points -- which is a typesetter's measurement. If you've ever messed with the size of a font, you've already worked in points (although the Font size menu doesn't use the pt abbreviation). There are 72 points to an inch. If you use a 12-point font, which is common, then 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 enter point values in the Paragraph dialog box use spinner gizmos. If you click the up or down arrows on the spinner, you increase or decrease the spacing between lines in 6-point increments. If you need more specific values, you can type them in directly.
REVEALING A MYSTERY FORMAT You're scanning through your latest Word masterpiece when you notice 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 word in any paragraph. Microsoft 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.)
ERADICATING ALL THAT PESKY FORMATTING It's quite possible to junk up your Microsoft Word text with so many formatting commands that undoing them all would be a frustrating exercise. Rather than delete the text and start over, you can use a simple and universal undo-formatting command - Word's equivalent of the text-formatting eraser. The command is Reset Character, and its shortcut key is Ctrl+Spacebar. So if you encounter an expanse of ugly and overly formatted text, select it as a block and press Ctrl+Spacebar. This key combination strips the formatting from the text like a powerful and environmentally unsafe industrial-sized can of paint remover. Thwoop! It's gone.
HYPERLINKING IN WORD If you use Word 2000 as your e-mail editor, you can create links between one Word document and any other Office XP document. To do so, click the Insert Hyperlink button on the toolbar and fill in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. If you want to create a link to a particular bookmark in a Word document, choose the name of the bookmark in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.
EDITING HYPERLINKS IN WORD After you create a hyperlink in Word, be sure to test it. If the hyperlink doesn't work, right-click it and choose Hyperlink, Edit Hyperlink. You see the Edit Hyperlink dialog box, which offers the same options as the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. Your hyperlink may not work because you entered a Web page address incorrectly or you linked to a document that no longer exists or was moved. Either edit your hyperlink or re-enter it. To remove a hyperlink, right-click it and choose Remove Hyperlink.
HYPHENATING (OR NOT) IN WORD The first thing you should know about hyphenating words in a Word document is that you may not need to do it. Text that hasn't been hyphenated is easier to read. You may only want to hyphenate text when it is trapped in columns or in other narrow places, or when you want a very formal-looking document. Do not insert a hyphen by simply pressing the hyphen key, because the hyphen will stay there even if the word appears in the middle of a line and doesn't need to be broken in half. Instead, when a big gap appears in the fight margin and a word is crying out to be hyphenated, put the cursor where the hyphen needs to go and press Ctrl+hyphen. This way, you tell Word to make the hyphen appear only if the word breaks at the end of a line. To remove a manual hyphen, press the Show/Hide Paragraph Marks button so that you can see it; then backspace over it.
FIX THAT WEIRD LETTER SPACING Sometimes when you enlarge text for a heading in Word, one or two letters in the words end up being too close together or too far apart. To fix these problems, you can kern the letter pairs. Kerning means to adjust the amount of space between two letters. Here's how:
BREAKING A LINE IN WORD When working with 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.
SPACING OUT OVER LINE SPACING IN WORD? In Microsoft Word, there are three handy keyboard shortcuts for three types of line spacing. Single-spacing, 1-1/2-line spacing, and double-spacing. (Beyond these, you have to use the Paragraph dialog box.)
Line spacing is usually done to accommodate notes or rude comments to be penciled in later. For example, double-spacing is often required by fussy editors who, without enough room in their precious 1-inch margins, want to write under, over, and between what you write. Not to mention that increasing your line spacing easily makes a 1-page paper fill out the full 3-page requirement the teacher gave. Remember:
ENDING A NUMBERED LIST IN WORD To end a numbered list and tell Word that you want to go back to writing normal paragraphs, press the Enter key twice. Pressing Enter twice stops the numbering, but it also puts in an extra paragraph. To stop the numbering, press Enter after the last numbered item; then, on the next numbered line, press the Backspace key. That stops the numbering and leaves you on the same line.
RESUMING A NUMBERED LIST IN WORD Suppose that you're writing a seven-step list in Word 2003 and stopped at Step 4 to add a graphic or some paragraphs. Now you want to resume the list at Step 5. To restart the numbering, click the Numbering button. The AutoCorrect Options button (looks like a lightning bolt with a thick dash mark) appears on-screen. Click it and choose Continue Numbering. You can also open the Bullets and Numbering dialog box and select the Continue Previous List option button.
DEALING WITH WORD MACRO SIDE-EFFECTS Sometimes a macro you've created in Word has unexpected side effects. Suppose that rather than record the keystrokes Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I for the BoldItalic macro, you decide to record these steps instead.
The macro seems to work, but you soon discover that in addition to recording the Bold Italic font style, the macro recorded other character attributes -- such as font, size, and effects. That is, if the text to which you applied the Format, Font command when you recorded the macro was 10-point Arial font, then any text you apply the macro to will switch to 10-point Arial. You can avoid these side effects in two ways:
TIPS FOR RECORDING WORD MACROS About the only thing that's not recorded by the macro recorder are mouse movements within the document. The macro recorder will record buttons or menu choices you click, but if you move around the document with the mouse or select text with the mouse, those actions aren't recorded. Remember to use the keyboard for navigating or selecting text while recording a macro. Here are other tips to keep in mind as you record macros:
STORING WORD MACROS You can store a Word macro in a single document template or in a global template. By default, Word stores macros in the Normal template (Normal.dot). This way, you can use them with any document. When you store a macro in a document template, however, that macros is available only to documents based on that template. If you later change your mind about the location of the stored macro, you can use the Organizer to copy macros from one template to another. Save macros as global macros only when many documents need to share them. Macros designed for a specific type of document or a specialized purpose should be saved with the template for that document type.
ADDING MARGIN ICONS IN WORD Inserting icons into the margins of a Word 2003 document is pretty easy. You just insert a picture to use for an icon and line it up where you want it. Here's how:
USING MARGIN ICONS IN WORD Margin icons in a Word document call attention to text that is especially interesting. Use icons sparingly; otherwise, they lose their impact and create a busy-looking document. Here are more "iconic" points to keep in mind:
WELL, MARK MY WORD! When working in a Word 2003 table, you'll notice that each cell has a little box in it called the end-of-cell marker. You can think of these markers as the paragraph marks for cells. In fact, you can't see the end-of-cell markers unless you've decided to display paragraph marks also. If you don't see paragraph marks or end-of-cell markers in your documents, choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, and select the Paragraph Marks check box. Alternatively, click the Show/Hide button (resembles a big Paragraph symbol) on the Standard toolbar.
ZAP THE MENU ITEM REMOVER IN WORD The menu item remover is one of the most annoying commands in Microsoft Word. If you press Ctrl+Alt+- (hyphen), the mouse pointer changes to a thick, horizontal line that can look pretty intimidating. That line is the menu item removal cursor. If you use this thug of a cursor to choose any menu item, thwoop! - it's gone, deleted, dead. And there's no way to get that menu item back. If you do accidentally press Ctrl+Alt+-, quickly press the Esc key to cancel that mode.
GOT THE URGE TO MERGE (IN WORD)? To generate form letters, labels, or envelopes, you combine the source file with a form letter, label, or envelope document. Word calls this process merging. During the merge, names and addresses from the source file are plugged into the appropriate places in the form letter, label, or envelope document. When the merge is complete, you can either save the form letters, labels, or envelopes in a new file or start printing right away.
MOVING AROUND IN A WORD DOCUMENT For those of you Word users who hate the mouse (or just prefer using the keyboard), here are the different ways you can jump around your Word document by using the keyboard.
PUTTING WORD OBJECTS IN ORDER Word 2000 has special Order commands for determining how multiple objects (on one page) overlap with one another and with text. Just right-click on the object, choose Order, and select one of the Send or Bring commands:
PRINTING A WORD OUTLINE Printing your Microsoft Word outline works just like printing any other document in Word. But because it's an outline, there is one difference: Only those topics visible in your outline are printed. For example, if you want to print only the first two levels of your outline, choose Show Level 2 from the Show Level drop-down list. This action hides all subtopics and when you print your outline, only the first and second topics are printed. If you want your entire outline to print, choose Show All Levels before printing.
ADDING TOPICS TO YOUR WORD OUTLINE An outline is composed of topics and subtopics. The main topics are your main ideas, with the subtopics describing the details. You should start your Microsoft Word outline by adding the main topics. To do so, just type them out. Pressing Enter after typing a topic produces a new hollow hyphen (shaped like a horizontal rectangle) at which you can type your next topic. Here are some pointers for a great outline:
Remember - you can outline just about anything that requires more than one thought: the plot to a novel, a speech you're giving, a recipe, an itinerary, a product development cycle, and more! STOP PRINTING THAT WORD DOCUMENT Sometimes you begin to print a Word document and then change your mind. How do you stop a print job?Because Word simply passes off its printing jobs to Windows, there is no obvious way to cancel printing. It can be done if you're crafty, however. Follow these steps:
THE WORD ON OUTLINE SUBTOPICS Microsoft Word outlines have several levels. Beneath topics are subtopics, and those subtopics may have sub-subtopics. You don't really create subtopics in Word as much as you demote main topics. To create a subtopic, simply type your subtopic at the main topic level. Put the toothpick cursor on the topic and click the Demote button on the Outlining toolbar. Instantly, the text in the topic moves over by one tab stop, and the style changes to the next heading style, such as from Heading 1 to Heading 2. Both these actions visually indicate that you're working on a new topic level. You can continue creating subtopics by pressing the Enter key at the end of each subtopic - just as you created new main-level topics. Word keeps giving you subtopics, one for each press of the Enter key. Notice that the main topic (the one that the subtopic lives in) grows a + symbol. That's the sign that a topic has subtopics.
GETTING TO KNOW WORD'S OUTLINE MODE An outline in Word is just like any other document. The only difference is in how Word displays the text on the screen. Outline mode makes solid use of the heading style - which is terrific because so much of Word assumes that you're using the heading style. To create a new outline, follow these steps:
A TASTE OF "PASTE SPECIAL" IN WORD You can tell Word how to paste your text before you paste it, by using the Edit, Paste Special command. If you don't see this command on the Edit menu, click the down arrow at the bottom of the Edit menu. The full menu appears, including the Paste Special option. Choose the Paste Special command. The Paste Special dialog box appears, which lists several options for pasting in the text: Document Object, Formatted Text, Unformatted Text, Picture, and so on. Each of these items tells Word how to paste in the information. To discover what each options does, select it from the list and read the description in the Result area of the dialog box. For example, if you want to paste in some text from a Web page but don't want all that HTML-blah-blah formatting, choose the Unformatted Text option. Click OK, and the text is pasted into Word as plain text and not as some Web object.
USING THE REPEAT COMMAND IN WORD When the Redo command (Ctrl+Y) in Word 2002, has nothing left to redo, it can be used as the Repeat command. This command can be a real time-saver. If you press a Word command, cursor key, or character and then press the Repeat key, that command, cursor key, or character is repeated. For example, type the following lines in Word:
Now press Ctrl+Y. Word repeats the last few things you typed. (If you had to press the Backspace key to back up and erase something, Ctrl+Y repeats only from that point on.) You can also use the Edit -->Repeat command, or, if you can remember it, press the F4 key to do the same thing as pressing Ctrl+Y.
REPLACING REPETITION IN WORD 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 repetitive. To determine how many times you use "actually" (or any other word) in your document, summon the Find and Replace command and enter that 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.
THE JOYS OF RESEARCH IN WORD 2003 Beyond spell checking, beyond the Thesaurus, and even beyond Word's ability to translate text into a foreign language is the Research task pane. What it does is to instantly (or longer with a dial-up Internet connection) connect you to the Internet to peruse several online references regarding whatever it was you recently Alt+clicked with the mouse. For example, say you type the word Mesopotamia in your document. Press and hold the Alt key and then click the mouse on the word Mesopotamia. Instantly, you see a whole slew of interesting references about Mesopotamia via the Internet. Now that's Research!
ADD A SIDEBAR TO A WORD DOCUMENT If your Word 2003 document has a two- or three-column layout, a sidebar can help you break up the monotony created by column after column of pure text. A sidebar is a short portion of text -- usually a paragraph or two -- that is incidental to the main flow of text in your document. It appears with special graphical treatment, such as color, font, borders, and so on. Sidebars come in a variety of styles. Here's one you can try:
You're done! Wasn't that easy?
DIGITAL SIGNATURES A digital signature is a widely accepted method of guaranteeing that something has not been modified since the original creator "signed" that something. It's used mostly for creating macros in Microsoft Word; by digitally signing the macro, you can guarantee to others that it is your original work and has not been modified or hacked without your permission.
UNDERSTANDING WORD STYLES In Microsoft Word, a style is a collection of commands and formats that have been bundled under one name. With styles, you don't have to visit a bunch of dialog boxes to change the formatting of text or paragraphs. Instead, you simply choose a style from the Styles and Formatting task pane or the Style drop-down list. You can be certain that all parts of the document that were assigned the same style look the same. In short, you can fool everybody into thinking your documents were created by a pro. Which styles are available depends on which template you used to create your document. Each template comes with its own set of styles, and you can create your own styles, too. A simple document created with the Normal template (a document that you created by clicking the New Blank Document button or pressing Ctrl+N) has but a few basic styles, but a document that was created with an advanced template comes with many styles. To see which styles are available in the document you are working on, choose Format, Styles and Formatting or click the Styles and Formatting button to open the Styles and Formatting task pane. Want to know which style has been assigned to text or a paragraph? Click the text or paragraph and glance at the Style menu or the Styles and Formatting task pane.
FIND/DISCOVER/LOCATE SYNONYMS IN WORD Word provides you with an instant Thesaurus for finding synonyms as you write. (A synonym is a word that carries the same or similar meaning to another -- for example, "giant" and "big."). To use this easy tool, just highlight the word you need a synonym for and press Shift + F7. Or right-click on the word in your document and choose Synonym from the pop-up menu.
BUILD A TABLE OF CONTENTS IN WORD 2003 Word 2003 lets you build a table of contents (or TOC) for any document you create - if, of course, you format your headings with the proper, built-in heading style. Heed these steps to add a TOC to your document.
POSITIONING A WORD TABLE As long as a table doesn't fill the page, you can place it against the left or right margin or put it squarely between the margins. You can even make text wrap around the table. Follow these steps to do so:
DOING ADDITION IN WORD TABLES You can easily add up sums in a Word table with one click of a button. To total up the numbers in a column or row, place the cursor in the cell that is to hold the total. Next, click the AutoSum button on the Tables and Borders toolbar. (The AutoSum icon looks like a sideways capital M.)
AUTOFORMAT A WORD TABLE By far the fastest way to get a good-looking table is to let Word do the work
for you. Click your table and choose Table, Table AutoFormat. You see the Table
AutoFormat dialog box. Rummage through the Table Styles until you find a table
to your liking. The Preview box shows what the different tables look like. (On
REPEATING HEADING ROWS IN WORD TABLES In a Word table, the heading (or header) row is the first row in the table -- the one that usually describes what each column contains. Without a heading row, readers can't tell what the information in a table is or means. Making sure that the heading row appears on a new page if the table breaks across pages is absolutely essential. To make the header row (or rows) repeat on the top of each new page, place the cursor in the header row (or select the header rows if you have more than one) and choose Table, Heading Rows Repeat. By the way, repeating header rows appear only in Print Layout view, so don't worry if you're in Normal view and you can't see them.
MOVING COLUMNS/ROWS IN WORD 2003 TABLES There is no elegant way to move a column or row in a Word 2003 table, so you should move only one column or row at a time. If you try to move several simultaneously, you open a can of worms that is best left unopened. To move a column or row:
Column: Click in the topmost cell of the column to the right of where you want the (cut) column to appear. (In other words, if you want what is now column 4 to become column 2, then 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 of 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 on the shortcut menu.
RESIZING TABLE ROWS AND COLUMNS In Word 2003, the fastest way to adjust the width of table columns and the height of table rows is to "eyeball it." To make a column wider or narrower, move the cursor onto the gridline or border between rows or columns. When the cursor changes into a double-headed arrow, start dragging. Tug and pull, tug and pull until the column is the correct width or the row is the correct height. You can also slide the column bars on the ruler or the row bars on the vertical ruler (in your in Print Layout View) to change the width of columns and height of rows.
BUILD A SIMPLE TABLE IN WORD 2003 The Insert Table button, which resides on the Standard toolbar in Microsoft Word, is the fastest way to create a simple table. First, click on the spot where you want your table to appear in the document. Next, click on the Insert Table button (a small white box with gray grid lines and a dark blue bar on the top); a drop-down grid then appears. Select the desired number of columns and rows by dragging the cursor down and across the grid, and release the button to create the table. Easy, huh? If you prefer the dialog-box approach to creating a table, then use this command: Table, Insert Table. The advantages of using this command over the Insert Table button are that you can pick an arbitrary number of rows and columns, and you can access the Table AutoFormat features. Follow these steps to create a formatted table using the Table, Insert Table command:
SELECT MORE CELLS IN A WORD TABLE After you select a cell or block of cells in a Word 2003 table, you can include additional adjacent cells by entering the Extend Mode rather than by starting again. To enter the Extend Mode, press F8. At this point, EXT appears in bold letters in the status bar. To leave the Extend Mode, press Esc. You can use the mouse to extend your selection simply by clicking the outermost cell in the new block of selected cells, or you can use the keyboard by pressing Shift and one of the arrow keys.
SORTING ROWS IN A WORD TABLE Sorting means to rearrange all the rows of a Word 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 that 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.
CLEARING TABS IN WORD 2003 You can clear just one tab or all tabs in a Microsoft Word document by using the Tabs dialog box. (Using this dialog box allows you more precision than the Tab Ruler.) To clear just one tab:
To quickly clear all tabs:
USING LEADER TABS IN WORD 2003 One thing you can do in the Tabs dialog box that you can't do with the ruler is to set a leader tab. A leader tab produces a row of dots when you press Tab. You see these tabs sometimes in indexes and all the time in tables of contents. To set up a leader tab, follow these steps:
Now you can observe how it changed your text, or if you haven't typed the text, you can start typing it now. Use only one tab to create the leader, and then type the reference. For example: Marlon Brando, Tab, Vito Corleone.
UNDERSTANDING SMART TAGS Word 2003 guesses at who's who in your document. When Word believes that it has found someone, it wiggles a dotted purple underline beneath that person's name. To Word, this person is a contact. And the purple underline is a sign that Word has attached a smart tag to the name. If you point the mouse at the smart tag, the Smart Tags icon appears. Click that icon to display the Smart Tag menu, which works only if you have Microsoft Outlook on your computer and it's all set up and ready to use as your contacts database. To disable smart tags, choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options and click the Smart Tag tab. Remove the check mark by the Label Text with Smart Tags option, and click OK.
USING THE RESEARCH TASK PANE IN WORD 2003 Beyond spell checking, beyond the Thesaurus, and even beyond Word 2003's ability to translate text into a foreign language is the Research task pane. What it does is to instantly (or longer with a dial-up Internet connection) connect you to the Internet to peruse several online references regarding whatever it was you recently Alt+clicked with the mouse. For example, say you type the word Mesopotamia in your document. Press and hold the Alt key and then click the mouse on the word Mesopotamia. Instantly, you see a whole slew of interesting references about Mesopotamia via the Internet. Now that's Research!
COPY AND MOVE WORD TEXT WITH F2 One way to move or copy a block of text in Word is to use the F2 key after you select the block. This can be very handy, but it works best if you're copying or cutting and pasting immediately. If you need to copy, work, and then paste later, use Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V. Otherwise the F2 key works like this:
If you select a chunk of text with the mouse before Step 4, the block you're pasting will replace that chunk of text.
CREATE A TEXT BOX IN WORD A Word text box is a special shape designed to place text on your document without regard to the normal margins of the page. The most common use of text boxes is to add little bits of text to drawings. To create a text box, follow these steps:
Note:The default wrapping style for a text box is In Front of Text. With this setting, the text box obscures any normal document text that happens to fall behind the text box. In most cases, you want to change this setting to something more appropriate, such as Tight or Square. To do that, right-click the text box, choose the Format Text Box command, click the Layout tab, and change the Wrapping style.
FORMAT A TEXT BOX IN WORD 2003 You can format the text you type in a Word text box by highlighting the text and using the text formatting controls on the Formatting toolbar. You can format the text box itself by using the Fill Color, Line Color, and Line Style buttons. By default, text boxes fill with white and have a thin black line. If you don't want a line around the text box, click the Line Color button and choose No Line. The text in a text box is indented, by default, a tenth of an inch from the left and right of the text box and five hundredths of an inch from the top and bottom. If you want to change this indentation (try using zero), right-click the text box, choose Format Text Box, and click the Text Box tab. Here, you can set the top, left, right, and bottom margins.
LINKING TEXT BOXES IN WORD You might use text boxes to create a sidebar that has text related to the main topic of your Word document. If the sidebar is particularly long, you can continue it in another text box. Follow these steps to create a set of nicely linked text boxes:
You can link as many text boxes together as you want.
CREATING HIDDEN TEXT Besides writing comments to critique a document, 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.
HIGHLIGHTING TEXT IN WORD Word comes with a text highlighter that lets you mark up and colorize the text in your document without damaging your computer monitor. To highlight your text, click the Highlight button on the Formatting toolbar. Now you've entered Highlighting mode. The mouse pointer changes to something that looks like a thick pencil held at an angle and a capital I over it. When you drag the mouse over your text, that text becomes highlighted - just as you can do with a highlighter on regular paper.
COPYING A TOC Suppose you want to copy a Table of Contents (TOC) 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.
ADDING A STYLE TO A WORD TOC Microsoft Word formats the entries in a table of contents (TOC) with a set of standard styles named TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3, and so on. If you don't like any of the predefined formats listed in the Formats list in the Index and Tables dialog box, choose From Template from the Formats list and click the Modify button. A special version of the Style dialog box appears, which shows only the standard TOC styles. You can then change the appearance of your table by modifying the various TOC styles.
IN SUMMARY, A VERY NEAT TRICK In the category of "How the heck did they do that?" comes Word 2003's AutoSummarize tool. Just like those pre-highlighted, used college textbooks, this tool takes any document and immediately fishes out all the relevant points, highlighting them on screen. To AutoSummarize a document, choose Tools, AutoSummarize. Heed the steps on the screen. In a few minutes (longer if your computer is unplugged), the AutoSummarize dialog box appears. Click OK. (You can peruse the options in the AutoSummarize dialog box on your own, if you like; clicking OK generally does what you want it to do.) Splat! Your document then appears on the screen with relevant parts highlighted in yellow. Also visible is an AutoSummarize floating palette. To return to normal editing mode, click the Close button on the AutoSummarize palette. So what should you use this feature for? Well, if one of your New Year's resolutions is to use one of the more obscure features of Word 2003, then you've just accomplished it. But wait until January 2, or it doesn't count for next year.
CREATE WHITE-ON-BLACK TEXT To produce dramatic white-on-black text, you must first create a black background. Second, you create white-colored text. Here's how you create a black background:
AUTOCORRECTING TYPOS IN WORD You can add the words you consistently misspell to the Word 2003 list of autocorrected words. The next time you spell something incorrectly, right-click the word, and choose AutoCorrect on the shortcut menu. Next, choose the option that shows how the word is correctly spelled. Your misspelling gets added automatically to the AutoCorrect list. The next time you make the same typo and hit the spacebar, the misspelling gets fixed like magic.
INSERT A WATERMARK IN WORD In a Word document, you can add a watermark to each page. A watermark is a pale image or set of words that appears behind text on each page. To create a text watermark choose Format-->Background-->Printed Watermark. You see the Printed Watermark dialog box. Next, click the Text Watermark option button and type a word or two in the Text text box (or choose an AutoText entry from the drop-down list). Choose a font, size, color, and layout for the words. If you deselect the Semitransparent check box, you do so at your peril because the watermark words may be too dark on the page. 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.
WHAT'S "NORMAL" IN WORD TEMPLATES The Normal.dot global template is also known as plain ol' Normal. It's where Word contains all the settings made for any new document you create with the Ctrl+N shortcut or by clicking the New button on the toolbar. You can change the Normal template if you want. For example, if you want to change the standard font and size (and whatever other formatting) Word uses when it opens a new document, simply make those changes to Normal.dot. Change the font and margins for the Normal style. Then save Normal.dot back to the hard disk. That's it. Be careful not to modify Normal.dot too much, however. It's a good idea to keep Normal.dot as a baseline standard; so instead of modifying it too much, consider creating another template instead.
MAKING A WEB PAGE FROM A WORD TEMPLATE You can save a lot of time by creating Web pages from Word templates. Instead of doing the layout work yourself, you can let Word do it for you. After you have created a new folder to hold your Web page, follow these steps to create a Web page from a template:
You get a generic Web page with sample text and perhaps a placeholder graphic. Your job now, if you choose to accept it, is to replace the generic text with your own words. You can call on all the formatting commands in Word, import clip art, and do what you will to make this Web page a lively one.
INSERT A WATERMARK IN WORD In a Word document, you can add a watermark to each page. A watermark is a pale image or set of words that appears behind text on each page. To create a text watermark choose Format, Background, Printed Watermark. You see the Printed Watermark dialog box. Next, click the Text Watermark option button and type a word or two in the Text text box (or choose an AutoText entry from the drop-down list). Choose a font, size, color, and layout for the words. If you deselect the Semitransparent check box, you do so at your peril because the watermark words may be too dark on the page. Click OK in the Printed Watermark dialog box to see your watermark. To tinker with your watermark or remove it, choose Format, Background, Printed Watermark. Change the settings in the Printed Watermark dialog box. To remove the watermark, click the No Watermark option button |