Kutztown University: Information Technology - Help Center

Software FAQ's - Microsoft Word

1. Create a document with a cover page
Creating a document with a cover page is a relatively easy task, although it can be time consuming for those who seldom do it. It's very often the case that the header and/or footer elements within the body of a document are different than those of the first page or the cover. For example, you may have page numbers, the name of the document, and copyright information in the body of the document and wish to have only the copyright information appear in the footer of the cover. You may be tempted to insert section breaks and the like, but there's an easier way to accomplish the task at hand.

Open the document and verify that the cover page is at the very beginning of the document.
Go to Insert | Page Numbers.
Choose the desired Position and Alignment.
Click to deselect the Show Number On First Page checkbox.
Go to Format | Start At.
Type a 0 (zero) in the blank area.
Click OK to exit the Page Number Format dialog box.
Click OK again to exit the Page Numbers dialog box.

Now the header and footer on your cover page (page 0) will differ from those in the body of the document.

2. Create a new dictionary
There are probably plenty of words specific to your company or industry that you won't find in your dictionary but that you must regularly use in your documents. Many users get frustrated when such terms or names, even when spelled correctly, get flagged during a spell check. Teach users to enter those kinds of items into the spell check dictionary or to create a new dictionary.

To add words to the Main Dictionary during a spell check, simply click Add when a correctly spelled word is flagged.

To create a new dictionary, follow these steps:

Go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar | Dictionaries.
Click New.
In the File Name field, type a name for the new dictionary.
Click Save.
In the Custom Dictionaries dialog box, select the dictionary you just named.
Click Edit.
Type the entries, one per line.
Save the dictionary.

To ensure that all dictionaries are consulted during subsequent spell checks, follow these steps:

Go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar.
Deselect Suggest From Main Dictionary Only.

3. Create master and subdocuments
A master document is a document that contains a set of related documents. Master documents are often used to organize large documents by dividing them into several smaller subdocuments. For example, a user might create a master document to organize chapters of a manual or report. In a networked environment, a master document can be shared with many users, allowing users to work on different subdocuments at the same time. To create master and subdocuments, follow these steps:

Open a new document.
Switch to Outline View to create an outline.
Type headings that correspond to the subdocuments (e.g., Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.).
Select each heading individually and click the Create Subdocument button on the Outlining toolbar. Word will name each subdocument based on the headings you create.
Save the master document.
Click the Collapse Subdocuments button to see the names of each subdocument. Note that the documents are stored in the default storage location. If you want the documents stored on a server, move the documents to a central location on the server and then edit the hyperlinks in the master document. Now each subdocument can be accessed independently before being brought into the master document.

4. Dragging and dropping
When you're copying and moving lots of text during an editing session, Word's drag-and-drop feature can help you work quickly and efficiently. To take full advantage of this feature, you must understand the differences between what happens when you drag-and-drop with the left mouse button as compared to the right mouse button.

In general, the left mouse button moves text. To move a block of selected text, left-click on it and drag the mouse. As you drag the text around, a ghost insertion point will appear. That insert point indicates where the text will drop when you release the mouse button. Many users find this mouse-driven approach to moving text much easier than selecting, cutting, and pasting with keyboard shortcuts or menu options.

The right mouse button behaves much like the left mouse button when it comes to dragging-and-dropping text, but with one important difference: The right button gives you choices. When you right-click on a block of selected text and start dragging the mouse, you'll see the same ghost insertion point you see when you drag with the left button. But when you release the right mouse button, Word doesn't automatically execute a cut-and-move. Instead, it displays a menu of options including Move Here and Copy Here.

So if you want to drag and move a block of text, use the left mouse button. If you want to drag and copy a block of text, use the right mouse button.

5. Navigating to comments
Do other people review your documents and send them back to you with comments inserted? One way to find those comments is to navigate through the document manually and look for them, but there's a much more efficient way to find them. Open the View menu and choose Comments. (If the Comments option is grayed out, that means your document doesn't contain any comments.) Word will split your document window and display all of the comments in the Comments pane at the bottom. You can, of course, review the comments right there, but that view doesn't let you see the context in which the comments were entered.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to navigate to the comment's location in the document window: Just click once on any of the entries in the Comments pane. When you do, Word will move to the location in the document where the comment was inserted.

When you're done reviewing the comments, there are three ways to close the Comments pane. First, you can open the View menu and choose Comments again. Second, you can click the Close button on the Comments pane. Finally, you can press [Shift][Alt]C to "press" that Close button from the keyboard. (Since the "C" in "Closed" is underlined, you'd probably expect to be able to press [Alt]C to activate that button. However, that particular button requires that you press [Shift] along with [Alt]C.)

6. Changing indents with the mouse and ruler
If you support or teach Word users, teach them how to use the mouse and Word's ruler (instead of the Format menu) to change the indentation of a paragraph.

Almost every Word user knows how to use the ruler to change the right margin. You click on the Right Indent icon and drag it leftward. (The Right Indent icon sits alone on the ruler, pointing at the right margin setting for the current paragraph.)

It's those icons on the left side of the ruler that give Word users fits. If you mouse over the three distinct parts of the ruler icon on the left, you'll see that each has a name:

First Line Indent: It points downward.
Hanging Indent: It points upward.
Left Indent: It's on the bottom.

What users want to do most often is indent an entire paragraph. To do so, click the Left Indent icon (on the bottom) and drag to the right. Doing so creates new left margin for the current paragraph (or for the selected text).

Using the First Line Indent tool is much like pressing [Tab] at the beginning of a paragraph. Only the first line the paragraph is indented in from the left margin. The rest of the paragraph aligns to the current left margin.

The Hanging Indent is probably the least-used tool. It isn't easy to click, and it indents all the lines in a paragraph except the first one, a style that isn't used very often in business documents.

7. Move paragraph without cutting and pasting
Do you teach or support Word users who are afraid of cutting and pasting? Many novice Word users just don't trust the Clipboard to protect their precious text, so they never use [Ctrl]X to cut. When they want to move a paragraph, they waste time by copying and pasting the paragraph and then deleting the original, or by re-keying the text from scratch.

Here's a great tip for users who prefer not to cut text. To move a paragraph up or down, click once in that paragraph. (You don't have to select it.) Hold down [Alt][Shift] with your left hand and press the up or down arrow key with your right hand. When you press up, the paragraph will move in front of the paragraph above it, and when you press [Alt][Shift] and the down arrow key the current paragraph will move past the paragraph below it. (The paragraph you're moving will never stop in the middle of another paragraph.)

If you inadvertently move the paragraph to the wrong place, you can either move it back manually, press [Ctrl]Z, or click the Standard toolbar's Undo button to "undo" the moves one at a time.

NOTE: Don't press [Alt][Shift] and the right or left arrow keys, at least not yet. Those key combinations change the style, not the position, of the current paragraph.

8. Use Word's built-in backup plan
There's no excuse for losing a file, not when Word can help recover your files after power outages and crashed systems occur. First, help yourself by getting and staying in the habit of pressing [Ctrl]S or clicking the Save icon during breaks when you write or edit.

Second, take advantage of Word's built-in safety net for emergency situations: AutoRecover. With AutoRecover, you tell Word how often to create what Microsoft calls a Document Recovery File. If your system crashes or you have a sudden power loss, Word can usually use the recovery file to restore your file. Translation: If you let Word work for you, you might not lose your work.

To activate the AutoRecover feature, use Tools | Options and click the Save tab. Click the check box for Save AutoRecover Info Every and then enter a value between 1 and 120 in the Minutes field. There is one side effect to having Word create the recovery files fairly frequently. You might get tired of the program interrupting your work, however briefly. Just remember that the moment it takes AutoRecover to work could save you a lot of hassle the next time the lights go out.

9. Convert lines of text to paragraphs
Don't you hate it when you paste text from an e-message or a Web page into Word and the document has hard returns (paragraph marks) at the end of every line? Fortunately, Word makes it easy to convert lines of text to paragraphs. First, you'll use Word's Find And Replace feature to replace each occurrence of two or more hard returns (paragraph marks) in a row with a placeholder such as GGGG. Next, you replace every occurrence of a single hard return with a space. Finally, replace each occurrence of your GGGG placeholder with two hard returns.

Specifically, press [Ctrl]H to summon Find And Replace. To enter the paragraph mark (^p) in the Find What and Replace With fields, click More, select Special, and Paragraph Mark. In the Find What field, enter four paragraph marks for the first pass (just if there are that many hard returns in a row anywhere in your document).

Press [Tab] and enter GGGG in the Replace With field. Then click Replace All. Delete one code from the Find What field and replace three paragraph marks in a row, and do the same for two.

Now, enter one paragraph mark in Find What and a space in Replace With and click Replace All. (At this point, your document will look like one giant paragraph.) Finally, replace the GGGG placeholder with two paragraph marks.

When you do, your paragraphs will be contiguous, and there'll be at least one blank line between each paragraph. (Some documents may still require some minor cleanup.)

10. Adding blank lines to numbered lists
When you use any of Word's line-numbering formats, pressing [Enter] twice in a row tells Word you're done numbering items, and it turns off the numbering. Many users don't bother trying to add blank lines to numbered lists because it's inconvenient to keep turning the numbering back on. Fortunately, entering a soft return lets you keep the numbers going and add vertical white space, too.

To create a blank line within a numbered list, simply press [Shift][Enter] to generate the soft return, then press [Enter] to create the next numbered line in sequence. If, while editing, you decide to add a blank line between two numbered items, you can position the cursor at the end of the first line and press [Shift][Enter] to add the unnumbered blank line. If you just press [Enter], Word will create a new, numbered line, which you can delete.

Source:Word Tips from TechRepublic

Back to Software FAQ's

		Information Technology Help Center 112 Stratton Administration Center (610) 683-1511 helpcenter@kutztown.edu