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The good Word
David Flynn reveals 10 top tricks and shortcuts that will save you time and frustration using Microsoft's popular word-processing software.
It's one of the world's most popular PC programs, and certainly one that many people use daily. Microsoft Word is the engine behind letters, memos, reports, newsletters and school assignments.
Fancy formatting, begone
Ever copied some text from another document or a web page, pasted it into Word and had the original formatting come along for the ride? You then have to spend time trying to clean up that mess of typefaces, italics, spacing and underlining. Here are two ways to eliminate that fussy formatting with just a few clicks.
The first method is to use Word's Paste Special command instead of the everyday Paste button. Click Edit, Paste Special, then choose Unformatted Text and click OK. The text will appear in the same format as the rest of the document.
If you have to deal with a messed-up paragraph that's already on the page, highlight the offending text and press Ctrl, Shift and N. This resets all selected text to the "normal" formatting of 12 point Times Roman.
Shortcuts to success
Even the fastest typist hits a speed bump when they have to reach for the mouse and start clicking menus and buttons all over the screen.
You'll fly through your work if you make use of Word's keyboard shortcuts. For example, Ctrl and O (holding down the Ctrl key while tapping the letter O) does the same job as clicking File, Open. Pressing Ctrl and N creates a new (blank) document, Ctrl and S saves a document and Ctrl and P prints it.
You probably know that Ctrl and X cuts the selected text out of a document while Ctrl and C copies it, and Ctrl and V pastes the selection into a new location (note how the letters X, C and V are all next to each other, to make this even easier).
Ctrl and F finds a specific word in a document, while Ctrl and H replaces it with another. All those are pretty easy to remember, except for Ctrl and H, we've got no idea what the letter H has to do with replacing a word. Wouldn't R make more sense?
Luckily, Word is flexible enough to let you change short cut keys. Click Tools, Customise and click the Keyboard button. In the Categories list, click Edit (because the Replace option is in Word's Edit menu); in the Commands list, scroll down and select EditReplace. Click in the box labelled "Press new shortcut key" and on your keyboard, tap Ctrl and R to set this keystroke as the new short cut for Replace. Click Assign, then Close.
Follow the same procedure to create keyboard shortcuts for any Word command you often use. The Shift key can also be part of a short cut.
Get zooming
Need to quickly zoom in or out of your document, either to see the big picture or some fine print? If your mouse has a scroll wheel between the two buttons, hold down the Ctrl (Control) key as you turn the wheel in either direction to have the current view increased or decreased by 10 per cent.
Ending INSanity
We've taken a vote on the most troublesome key on the keyboard, and the winner is the one labelled Ins (it stands for Insert).
Most of the time this key does nothing, until you accidentally nudge it while you're hammering away on the keyboard, then realise Word is now in "overtype" mode, so that each letter you type is replacing another character already on the screen.
You can both avoid this annoyance and give the Ins key a useful job. Choose Tools, Options, Edit and click the box labelled "Use the INS key for paste". This will let you paste the contents of the Clipboard into a document simply by tapping Ins rather than reaching for a toolbar icon or pressing Ctrl and V.
Change silly defaults
Many Word features drive some users round the bend. Slap down the worst by clicking Tools, AutoCorrect Options, and clicking on the tab labelled "AutoFormat As You Type". If you don't want Word to turn a web or email address into an underlined clickable link, remove the tick from the box "internet and network paths with hyperlinks". This is also where you can stop Word automatically applying bulleted and numbered lists. You can also force Word to show every option on pull-down menus, rather than just the ones it thinks you need to see. Click Tools, Customise, Options and tick the box labelled "Always Show Full Menus".
Mind your language
We like the squiggly red underline that chastises us for poor spelling - except when it insists on American English. And that's most of the time. The trick is that Word has a default language, which all too often appears set to American English. Select Tools, Language, Set Language, choose to Mark Selected Text as "English (Australian)", then click the Default button to reset the default dialect for Word's spellchecker.
You can highlight anything from a single line to a whole document that's been set using American spelling and change it to Australian English.
Documents redux
Do you find yourself ducking back into a document you've recently used, in order to make just a few more changes? Try using the list of recently used documents that appears at the very bottom of Word's File menu.
By default this lists the last four documents you have opened. You can increase this to show as many as nine documents by changing the value in Tools, Options, General, in the box labelled "Recently Used File List".
Favourite folders
Most people use sets of folders to organise their work, rather than dump everything into the My Documents directory. But no matter how many folders you create, we'll bet you tend to visit the same handful.
The time-wasting way is to constantly dig down into the same maze of folders. The fast way is to place shortcuts to these folders onto the list that appears in the left side of the File Open window (as well as the File Save and File Save As screens).
Word calls this the My Places bar. By default it holds a handful of icons for locations such as My Documents, My Computer and the Desktop. Let's say you want to add a short cut to a folder called Reports. Click File, Open, navigate to the Reports folder and open it. Now click the Tools button near the top-right corner of the window and from the drop-down menu that appears, click Add To My Places, voila - a folder labelled Reports appears at the bottom of the icon strip.
It'll be just out of view beneath the My Network Places icon, but you can fit more icons onto the strip by right-clicking anywhere in the My Places bar and choosing Small Icons. Right-click any of the shortcuts to move them up or down the list. To remove a folder from the list, right-click and choose Delete.
While you're there, take note of other "on the fly" file tricks such as the toolbar icon to create a new folder and the view button to change how documents are displayed in the box, ranging from tiny icons to seeing an actual preview of its contents.
Get your Word's worth
Every student faced with an assignment or essays set to a certain number of words should know about the word-count feature in the Tools menu. It can calculate the number of words in an entire document, or just those in any highlighted part of a document.
To keep a closer eye on the word count, Word can display a running tally on a miniature toolbar: click View, Toolbars, Word Count. For added convenience, create a short-cut key such as Ctrl, Shift and W.
Smart shorthand
If you often have to type a long, unwieldy or hard-to-spell name, title or phrase, use Word's AutoCorrect feature to do the hard yakka. Click Tools, AutoCorrect Options and click the AutoCorrect tab.
In the box labelled "Replace", enter a simple abbreviation you wouldn't normally type; and in the box labelled "With", enter the full name, title or phrase. Click Add and OK when you're done, and then try entering the abbreviation into the document. As soon as you hit the space bar, the abbreviation should be replaced by the full phrase.
Four fab freebies
As big and beefy as Word is, there are still plenty of ways it can be improved. Here are four nifty programs, all of them free, to make your life even easier.
OfficeBoosters (http://www.officeboosters.com) has several enhancements for Microsoft Office. The best is WordToys, a swag of time-saving tools for enhanced editing, formatting and printing. You can try the full version free for 30 days, after which it turns into a free version with some of the features disabled but with plenty of goodness still on tap. If you want the full version, it costs $25.
Also from the OfficeBoosters team is Vippy (http://www.officeboosters.com/vippy.htm). This makes the default Word cursor slightly taller and colours it red, so it's much easier to spot at a glance than the usual black cursor that is easily lost on the screen.
PureText is a simple add-in that strips all the formatting from a slab of text so you can copy it into a Word document (it's an alternative to using the Paste Special command detailed elsewhere in this article). Get it at http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext.
PrimoPDF (from http://www.primopdf.com) transforms any Word document into a PDF document that can be viewed and printed on almost any computer. It's incredibly fast and, unlike Adobe's Acrobat Professional software, it costs nothing.
Infofile
These tips have all been written based on Word 2003, which is the most recent version of Microsoft's mighty word processor. In most cases they'll also work with the earlier versions of Word 2002 (which is also known as Word XP, as it was part of the Office XP family) and Word 2000.
David Flynn reveals 10 top tricks and shortcuts that will save you time and frustration using Microsoft's popular word-processing software.
It's one of the world's most popular PC programs, and certainly one that many people use daily. Microsoft Word is the engine behind letters, memos, reports, newsletters and school assignments.
Fancy formatting, begone
Ever copied some text from another document or a web page, pasted it into Word and had the original formatting come along for the ride? You then have to spend time trying to clean up that mess of typefaces, italics, spacing and underlining. Here are two ways to eliminate that fussy formatting with just a few clicks.
The first method is to use Word's Paste Special command instead of the everyday Paste button. Click Edit, Paste Special, then choose Unformatted Text and click OK. The text will appear in the same format as the rest of the document.
If you have to deal with a messed-up paragraph that's already on the page, highlight the offending text and press Ctrl, Shift and N. This resets all selected text to the "normal" formatting of 12 point Times Roman.
Shortcuts to success
Even the fastest typist hits a speed bump when they have to reach for the mouse and start clicking menus and buttons all over the screen.
You'll fly through your work if you make use of Word's keyboard shortcuts. For example, Ctrl and O (holding down the Ctrl key while tapping the letter O) does the same job as clicking File, Open. Pressing Ctrl and N creates a new (blank) document, Ctrl and S saves a document and Ctrl and P prints it.
You probably know that Ctrl and X cuts the selected text out of a document while Ctrl and C copies it, and Ctrl and V pastes the selection into a new location (note how the letters X, C and V are all next to each other, to make this even easier).
Ctrl and F finds a specific word in a document, while Ctrl and H replaces it with another. All those are pretty easy to remember, except for Ctrl and H, we've got no idea what the letter H has to do with replacing a word. Wouldn't R make more sense?
Luckily, Word is flexible enough to let you change short cut keys. Click Tools, Customise and click the Keyboard button. In the Categories list, click Edit (because the Replace option is in Word's Edit menu); in the Commands list, scroll down and select EditReplace. Click in the box labelled "Press new shortcut key" and on your keyboard, tap Ctrl and R to set this keystroke as the new short cut for Replace. Click Assign, then Close.
Follow the same procedure to create keyboard shortcuts for any Word command you often use. The Shift key can also be part of a short cut.
Get zooming
Need to quickly zoom in or out of your document, either to see the big picture or some fine print? If your mouse has a scroll wheel between the two buttons, hold down the Ctrl (Control) key as you turn the wheel in either direction to have the current view increased or decreased by 10 per cent.
Ending INSanity
We've taken a vote on the most troublesome key on the keyboard, and the winner is the one labelled Ins (it stands for Insert).
Most of the time this key does nothing, until you accidentally nudge it while you're hammering away on the keyboard, then realise Word is now in "overtype" mode, so that each letter you type is replacing another character already on the screen.
You can both avoid this annoyance and give the Ins key a useful job. Choose Tools, Options, Edit and click the box labelled "Use the INS key for paste". This will let you paste the contents of the Clipboard into a document simply by tapping Ins rather than reaching for a toolbar icon or pressing Ctrl and V.
Change silly defaults
Many Word features drive some users round the bend. Slap down the worst by clicking Tools, AutoCorrect Options, and clicking on the tab labelled "AutoFormat As You Type". If you don't want Word to turn a web or email address into an underlined clickable link, remove the tick from the box "internet and network paths with hyperlinks". This is also where you can stop Word automatically applying bulleted and numbered lists. You can also force Word to show every option on pull-down menus, rather than just the ones it thinks you need to see. Click Tools, Customise, Options and tick the box labelled "Always Show Full Menus".
Mind your language
We like the squiggly red underline that chastises us for poor spelling - except when it insists on American English. And that's most of the time. The trick is that Word has a default language, which all too often appears set to American English. Select Tools, Language, Set Language, choose to Mark Selected Text as "English (Australian)", then click the Default button to reset the default dialect for Word's spellchecker.
You can highlight anything from a single line to a whole document that's been set using American spelling and change it to Australian English.
Documents redux
Do you find yourself ducking back into a document you've recently used, in order to make just a few more changes? Try using the list of recently used documents that appears at the very bottom of Word's File menu.
By default this lists the last four documents you have opened. You can increase this to show as many as nine documents by changing the value in Tools, Options, General, in the box labelled "Recently Used File List".
Favourite folders
Most people use sets of folders to organise their work, rather than dump everything into the My Documents directory. But no matter how many folders you create, we'll bet you tend to visit the same handful.
The time-wasting way is to constantly dig down into the same maze of folders. The fast way is to place shortcuts to these folders onto the list that appears in the left side of the File Open window (as well as the File Save and File Save As screens).
Word calls this the My Places bar. By default it holds a handful of icons for locations such as My Documents, My Computer and the Desktop. Let's say you want to add a short cut to a folder called Reports. Click File, Open, navigate to the Reports folder and open it. Now click the Tools button near the top-right corner of the window and from the drop-down menu that appears, click Add To My Places, voila - a folder labelled Reports appears at the bottom of the icon strip.
It'll be just out of view beneath the My Network Places icon, but you can fit more icons onto the strip by right-clicking anywhere in the My Places bar and choosing Small Icons. Right-click any of the shortcuts to move them up or down the list. To remove a folder from the list, right-click and choose Delete.
While you're there, take note of other "on the fly" file tricks such as the toolbar icon to create a new folder and the view button to change how documents are displayed in the box, ranging from tiny icons to seeing an actual preview of its contents.
Get your Word's worth
Every student faced with an assignment or essays set to a certain number of words should know about the word-count feature in the Tools menu. It can calculate the number of words in an entire document, or just those in any highlighted part of a document.
To keep a closer eye on the word count, Word can display a running tally on a miniature toolbar: click View, Toolbars, Word Count. For added convenience, create a short-cut key such as Ctrl, Shift and W.
Smart shorthand
If you often have to type a long, unwieldy or hard-to-spell name, title or phrase, use Word's AutoCorrect feature to do the hard yakka. Click Tools, AutoCorrect Options and click the AutoCorrect tab.
In the box labelled "Replace", enter a simple abbreviation you wouldn't normally type; and in the box labelled "With", enter the full name, title or phrase. Click Add and OK when you're done, and then try entering the abbreviation into the document. As soon as you hit the space bar, the abbreviation should be replaced by the full phrase.
Four fab freebies
As big and beefy as Word is, there are still plenty of ways it can be improved. Here are four nifty programs, all of them free, to make your life even easier.
OfficeBoosters (http://www.officeboosters.com) has several enhancements for Microsoft Office. The best is WordToys, a swag of time-saving tools for enhanced editing, formatting and printing. You can try the full version free for 30 days, after which it turns into a free version with some of the features disabled but with plenty of goodness still on tap. If you want the full version, it costs $25.
Also from the OfficeBoosters team is Vippy (http://www.officeboosters.com/vippy.htm). This makes the default Word cursor slightly taller and colours it red, so it's much easier to spot at a glance than the usual black cursor that is easily lost on the screen.
PureText is a simple add-in that strips all the formatting from a slab of text so you can copy it into a Word document (it's an alternative to using the Paste Special command detailed elsewhere in this article). Get it at http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext.
PrimoPDF (from http://www.primopdf.com) transforms any Word document into a PDF document that can be viewed and printed on almost any computer. It's incredibly fast and, unlike Adobe's Acrobat Professional software, it costs nothing.
Infofile
These tips have all been written based on Word 2003, which is the most recent version of Microsoft's mighty word processor. In most cases they'll also work with the earlier versions of Word 2002 (which is also known as Word XP, as it was part of the Office XP family) and Word 2000.
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