Word
Any Version

Check Box
THE QUESTION: TechRepublic reader dychell@zdnetonebox.com wanted to know how to create a check box that would work like a radio button within a Word 97 form. Dychell wants the "Yes" check box disabled if a user selects "No" and vice versa. Although Dychell has already made a macro to address the problem, the results were unsatisfactory.
THE ANSWER: Reader E.Rick suggested using a drop-down list that offers the mutually exclusive choices of "Yes" and "No."
ENABLING DRAG AND DROP IN WORD
Here is a Word question from reader Dan D.: "At home I can use drag and drop in Word. But for some reason, this feature doesn't work on my office computer. Both computers use Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition. Is it possible that the people who installed Microsoft Office turned this feature off? If so, can I turn it on?"
Yes, it is possible to disable drag and drop--which of course means it's possible to enable it again. To do this, run Word and choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Edit tab. Now select the check box labeled Drag And Drop Editing and click OK to close the dialog box and record your new selection.
Drag and drop should work just fine now.

MAP IT

If you commonly create Word 97 documents that contain a large number of headings, you can make use of Word's document mapping feature. Let's say your documents get rather long at times, so finding what you want can often be time-consuming. Just choose View, Document Map.
With Document Map active, all your headings will appear in a separate pane at the left side of your document window. To get to one of the topics all you have to do is click on the heading and Word will take you there.
If your documents have subheadings, a small plus sign will appear at the left of the headings that contain a subheading. Click on the plus sign to expand the list and display the subheadings. For Document Map to work, you must use Word's default headings and subheadings. If you make your own heading styles, Word won't know what to call a heading.

CLICK-TOC

Congratulations: You've used Word 97's outstanding Table of Contents feature to create a table of contents for your document. Now you can be sure that even your easiest-to-disorient readers will never get permanently lost in that tangle of nouns and verbs you generously refer to as your prose. But enough about THEM. What about YOU? What do you get out of having a table of contents? Quite a bit as it turns out, because your TOC also serves as a cute little hyperlinked map of your document, enabling you to jump to any page with a click of your mouse. Try it yourself: - In your TOC, find the page you'd like to go to. - Click the page number. Presto--you zip to the page in question. HOW TO FOOL DOCUMENT MAP In the last tip we discussed how to use Word 97's Document Map (choose View, Document Map). Since Document Map won't work unless you use standard headings and subheadings, you may think you can't use it for those special documents that use a nonstandard template. If you're forced to use a special template and would like to use Document Map, go ahead and use the standard headings. Then when you finish working with the document, use Find and Replace to replace all those headings with your special heading styles. For example, suppose you need to use a heading style named MyHead1 and you substitute Heading 1 so you can use Document Map. After you finish, press Ctrl-H to open the Find and Replace dialog box. Click on the Find What text entry box to select it. Click on More and then click on Format and choose Style. Now locate MyHead1 and click on it. Now click on the Replace With text entry box and click on Format, Style again. This time, locate and click on Heading 1. Now click on Replace All and Word will substitute your special heading for all the occurrences of Heading 1. NUMBER YOUR LISTS Version 95 If you want to let Word handle numbered lists for you, here's how to stay in control of what type of lists you get. If you would like to use Roman numerals, enter I followed by a period, a space, and the text. When you press Enter, the next Roman numeral will appear. It should look like this: I. This is the first line II. This is the second line III. And this is the third line If you want standard numbers, enter 1 followed by a period, a space, and your text. Now you'll get this: 1. This is first 2. This is second 3. This is third Want to use letters? Type A followed by a period, a space, and your text. Like this: A. This is first B. This is second C. This is third You can also automatically create bulleted lists. Let's say you'd like to use a round bullet. Type * followed by a space or tab, then your text. When you press Enter, the bullet for the next item in the list will appear. Finally, if you'd like to use a fancy greater-than sign (>) as a bullet, type > followed by a space or tab, and then your text. THERE'S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ORIGINAL Today we'd like to cover a document formatting misdemeanor we've all committed at one time or another: the gaudy subhead. Like all subheads, it starts out innocently enough: We add some bold text, maybe a little italic. But then, in an effort to help even the most hapless simp distinguish the subhead from the general run of text, we let things get out of hand: We add garish color, bizarre capitalization, underlining (which, since the extinction of the typewriter, really has no place in a document) and, thanks to Word 97's new features, even animated text effects. Before long, our once elegant subhead is a glaring, flashing, overdecorated verbal flare, resembling those neon signs that pulsate over Las Vegas strip clubs. Luckily, you can rescue your subhead by returning it to its original formatting, with one quick keystroke: - Select the gaudy subhead. - Press Ctrl-spacebar DRAW! Some Office 97 users wonder why you'd want to use Draw Table rather than just using Insert Table. They point out that it's easier and quicker to insert a table since Word does most of the work for you. They are correct--except when you need rows with different numbers of cells. Let's say you need a table with four cells in the top row and six in the bottom row. Choose Table, Draw Table. Now use the drawing tool to draw the outline of your table. Then use the tool to draw a horizontal line in the table. Now draw three vertical lines in the top row and draw five vertical lines in the bottom row. IMAGES EVERYWHERE Version 4.x, 95 You know you can insert images into a Word document. You can also insert images into the header and footer. But how about the mailing label? Why not put an image in the mailing label too? You can do this, but the method isn't quite as obvious as inserting pictures into documents and headers. Here's what to do. Locate a BMP file that you'd like to use in your labels. Now choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the dialog box opens, click Labels. Now click in the Address box. Press Ctrl-F9 to create a field. Enter into the field "IncludePicture C:\\windows\\MyOwn.bmp" where the picture is in the Windows folder and is named MyOwn.bmp. Make sure you use the double slashes (c:\\) as shown for every subdirectory when you enter the file name). Now, while the cursor is still in the field, press F9. The picture will load and appear in the label. If the picture is too large, use the mouse to size it. This works best with small, simple figures. For example, inserting a small company logo should work well. Try to size the picture before you insert it into the label. If the picture doesn't look good at a reduced size, then it certainly won't look good in the label. If you use a black-and-white printer, you need to make sure the picture you intend to insert into the label will print well on your printer. TEXT WRAPPING Text wrapping in Word 97 is much better than in any of the previous versions. For example, you can now wrap text around non-rectangular objects. To check this out, choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art and choose a picture (try to find a triangular one). Size the picture and move it into place. Now right-click the picture and choose Format Picture. When the Format Picture dialog box opens, click the Wrapping tab and then click the image labeled Tight. Next, drop down to the next row and click the image labeled Both Sides. Click OK. The text should wrap around your new object now. INS-TANT PASTE Now that Word 97 has quite sensibly disabled the Ins key (instead of using it to toggle to the completely useless Overtype mode), it's free for you to use for something else. Word lets you program the Ins key to paste (or "insert") the contents of the clipboard--in other words, use the Ins key as a shortcut for the Paste command. Here's how to do it: - Choose Tools, then Options. - Click the Edit tab. - Select "Use the Ins key for Paste." - Click OK. We've rigged our Ins keys to spray insecticide. (Just kidding.) ANCHORS AWEIGH When you insert an object into a paragraph, you may want to make sure that the object stays with its paragraph. To do this, position the object where you want it. Now right-click the object and choose Format Picture. Click the Wrapping tab and set the wrap conditions that you think will look best. Next, click the Position tab and select the Lock Anchor check box and the Move With Text check box. Click OK. IF YOU DON'T USE IT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LOSE IT Having trouble with drag and drop? You're not alone--because a sophisticated feature like drag and drop isn't for everyone. If you're not in the habit of using drag and drop, it can be more of a hassle than anything else because it can enable you to accidentally move text you didn't intend to move. The good news? Drag and drop is OPTIONAL. You can disable it, ensuring forever that selected text won't move unless you specifically cut, delete, or replace it. Here's how to disable drag-and-drop capabilities: 1. Choose Tools + Options. 2. Click the Edit tab. 3. Deselect Drag-and-Drop Text Editing. 4. Click OK. SIZED OR CROPPED? When you insert a picture, such as a Clip Art object, into Word, you often have to size it to make it fit your document properly. You can size a picture without distorting it by simply watching the display at the bottom left of the Word window. This display reports the current size as a percentage of the original width and height. As long as the two numbers match, the scaling is distortion-free. To crop a picture in Word, hold down the Shift key while you use the mouse to drag one of the picture handles. WORKING WITH SECTIONS When you need to change the formatting of one portion of a page (or document), the best approach is to insert a section. To do this, position the cursor where you want the new formatting to start and choose Insert, Break. When the Break dialog box opens, select the Continuous radio button and click OK. Now you can set the formatting and add your new text. When you want to go back to the original formatting, choose Insert, Break again and select Continuous. Click OK. Note: If you decide to delete a section mark, the format of the section before the break will change to match that of the second section. Make sure this format change is what you want before you delete a section break. AREN'T YOU DASHING? What separates the word processor from a typewriter? Typographical experts (also known as "font weenies") insist that it's the word processor's ability to use typographically correct dashes instead of minus signs--specifically, an em dash instead of two minus signs and an en dash instead of one minus sign. "This is great for them," you reply, "but if I aspire to font weenie-dom, how can I insert these characters into my documents?" Easily, as follows: - * To type an em dash( — ), press Ctrl + Alt + the minus sign on the number keypad. - * To type an en dash ( – ), press Ctrl + the minus sign on the number keypad. GROUPING IN WORD Grouping of objects isn't limited to PowerPoint. In fact, it's a good idea to group objects in Word, too. Grouping them keeps them together and easier to deal with. Let's say you've inserted several Clip Art objects into a Word document. You've placed these objects just where you want them in relation to the page and to each other. You don't want to lose this relationship, so click the first object and then press and hold down the Shift key while you select the remaining objects. If the Drawing toolbar isn't available, choose View, Toolbars, Drawing. Now click the Draw button in the Drawing toolbar and choose Group. Your objects will become one. Note that you cannot Ungroup Clip Art in Word. If you need to make a custom picture by ungrouping and removing some portions, use PowerPoint and then copy the result and paste it into your Word document. IF THIS REMINDS YOU OF HIGH SCHOOL, WE APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE Ask your average grown-up to list the five things he or she hated most about high school, and invariably you'll get the same list: - * Wedgies - * Zits - * Cafeteria food - * Vomiting on prom night - * Writing papers with footnotes Well, here's great news, about 20 years after you needed it: Word 97 makes footnotes a snap! And it doesn't just make footnotes easy to create (as we documented in an earlier tip); it also makes them easy to reference, too. To read the reference associated with any footnote or endnote in a Word 97 document, just double-click the footnote or endnote number. You're instantly zipped to the relevant footnote or endnote text. And if you're jealous of today's high school students because they have Word and you don't, take heart: Improved weaving techniques and more durable cotton cloth make the wedgie an even more painful experience than it was in your day. Technology is a double-edged sword, no? DO IT ALL AT ONCE If you often need to open more than one Word document when you start a work session, here's an easy way to do it. Choose File, Open. When the Open dialog box appears, click a file that you want to open. But don't click Open yet. Instead, hold down Ctrl and click another file you'd like to open. Then keep the Ctrl key down while you click yet another file--you can hold down the Ctrl key and click as many files as you want to open. "Now" click Open, and all the files will load. MAKING WORD SPILL THE BEANS If you write Word macros, at times you'd probably like to get some information about the system. You can get all the system info by simply inserting the command MicrosoftSystemInfo into your code. This opens the Microsoft System Information dialog box. If you'd like to get specific information for your macro to use, you can use code such as the example shown here: Sub MAIN Dim info$(30) GetSystemInfo info$() FileNewDefault FormatTabs .Position = "1 in", .Set Insert "CPU" + Chr$(9) + info$(1) InsertPara Insert "Windows" + Chr$(9) + info$(3) InsertPara Insert "Disk Space" + Chr$(9) + info$(5) + " bytes" End Sub This code uses GetSystemInfo to gather information about the computer. It reports the type of CPU used, the current version of Windows, and the remaining disk space. There are some differences in the way this macro reports information in Word 6 and Word 7. In Word 6, the results are CPU i486 Windows 3.95 Disk Space 302448640 bytes In Word 7, the same macro reports CPU Pentium Windows 4.0 Disk Space 305725440 bytes IS THIS PAGE BLANK? If you write Word macros, you may sometimes need to know when a particular page is completely blank. For example, if you need to search a page for some particular text, there's no point in searching a blank page. Try this code: StartOfDocument If AtEndOfDocument() = -1 Then Stop() The code moves the insertion point to the start of the document and then checks to see if the insertion point is at the end of the document. If the start and end are the same, then the page is blank. When you get to the Stop, a dialog box will appear informing you that the macro was interrupted. If you don't want this message, use If AtEndOfDocument() = -1 Then Stop(-1) This will cause the macro to stop without a message. EAT YOUR WORDS Sometimes you type something so stupid, so awkward, so utterly wrong, that deleting it by conventional methods is simply not satisfying enough. Select the text and press Delete? Too quick--not painful enough. Backspace over the offending text? Too conventional. Undo? May not get it all. Carve the text out of your monitor screen with a diamond-tipped glass cutter? Too expensive (plus, the tube will implode and you'll be blinded by flying shards of glass). No, the next time you want to eliminate some embarrassing text, try this: 1. Position the insertion point marker at the beginning of the embarrassing text. 2. Press Ctrl + Delete repeatedly. Call us crazy, but you'll swear Word is EATING your miscreant prose, one word at a time. Enjoy! THEY AREN'T JUST FOR HEADERS AND FOOTERS ANYMORE Since the days when sorry, pattern-bald monks transcribed books by hand, page numbers have always appeared in one of two places: either in the document's header or the document's footer--nowhere else. For hundreds of years, there's been no change in the position of page numbers. In fact, if you were asked to pick the one phenomenon among all earthly phenomena that has not changed and will never change, you may be tempted to say that it would be the position of page numbers in a printed document (or the inexplicable appeal of headcheese). But you would be wrong. In the first case, Word lets you put a page number anywhere you can put the insertion-point marker: 1. Position the insertion-point marker anywhere you want a page number to appear (even in a Microsoft Draw 97 text box). 2. Press Alt + Shift + P. In the second case, Jell-O vegetable molds replaced headcheese in the who-would-have-thought-people-would-eat-this? category. Hundreds of years of tradition down the drain. Makes you all tingly, doesn't it? PLAYING THE BLUES Do you ever get tired of looking at black text on a white background? If so, Word will give you some relief. All you have to do is choose Tools, Options and click the General tab. Now select the "Blue background, white text" check box and click OK. Now you can spend your time looking at white text on a blue screen. Sorry, no other colors are offered. I HAVE NO STYLE We have an e-mail from a subscriber, C. G., who says that his Word program suddenly stopped doing a complete spell check. When he does a spell check, he gets a dialog box that says "The spelling and grammar check is complete." This happened after his IS department sent him a new style sheet to use. Actually, Word 97 includes the solution right in the dialog box. But it can be confusing. What happened was that the new style sheet was set for No Proofing. To correct the situation, choose Format, Style. When the dialog box opens, click Normal (or your main style name). Now click Modify and then click Format. Click Language now and you'll probably see that the style is set to No Proofing. Select English (if that's what you need) and click OK. Click OK again and then click Apply. This should take care of the problem. If not, you need to check some of the other styles that you commonly use in your documents and set them all to the correct language. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 1 OF 3 You say you like Word's paragraph styles because they let you format entire paragraphs with two clicks of your mouse. The problem is that the first click is SLOW--you click the little arrow next to the style list, wait for what seems to be most of the day, select your new style, see the change in your paragraph, save your file, and go to bed. Unless you decide you'd prefer a different style, in which case you're pulling an all-nighter. Okay, we're exaggerating. But you can apply some styles much faster with the following keystroke shortcuts (be sure to select the paragraph[s] you want to change first, either by highlighting all the text or placing your insertion point within it): - * To apply the Normal style, press Ctrl + Shift + N. - * To apply the Heading 1 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 1. - * To apply the Heading 2 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 2. - * To apply the Heading 3 style, press Ctrl + Alt + 3. - * To apply the List Bullet style, press Ctrl + Shift + L. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 2 OF 3 Last time, we passed on some shortcuts for applying styles via the keyboard. Today, we show you how to scroll through the style list via the keyboard so that you can quickly apply all styles, even those without shortcuts: 1. Press Ctrl + Shift + S. This selects the current style in the toolbar's style box. 2. Press the up arrow or down arrow key until the style you want to apply is selected. 3. Press Enter to apply the selected style. Believe it or not, you can expect one more style application tip next time (we're nothing if not exhaustive--and we don't mean people quickly tire of us, either). ANOTHER SELECTIVE SERVICE You can select text with the mouse, you can hold down Shift and use the arrow keys, you can double-click, triple-click, and you can click in the margin. Do you need another way to select text? Probably not, but here it is anyway. Click at the beginning of text you'd like to select. Now look at the bottom of the Word window. See the button marked EXT? Double-click EXT and it will become active (you'll see this when it happens). Now you can use the arrow keys to select text. You don't have to hold down anything while you do this. When you're finished, press Esc. APPLY STYLES WITH STYLE--PART 3 OF 3 If you thought "The Godfather" was the best trilogy ever produced, hold your judgment until you read this, the long-awaited third part in our critically acclaimed three-part "Apply Styles with Style" trilogy. You thrilled to our style-selection keyboard shortcuts in Part 1. You were on the edge of your seat for the keyboard style-selection tip in Part 2. But nothing compares to the excitement you'll experience in this, the granddaddy (godfather?) of all style-application tips. To repeatedly apply a style you just applied: 1. Select the next paragraph to which you want to apply the style. 2. Press Ctrl + Y. Okay, so it's a sleazy adaptation of the well-known Edit + Repeat shortcut. It just goes to show that, except for "Rocky III," the second sequel is never what it's cracked up to be. DON'T INVADE MY SPACE! Word wrap is an amazing thing--one of the most basic benefits of word processing. Type a word that's too long to fit on the current line, and Word automatically moves it to the next line. You can't beat it with a stick. Unless, of course, Word's word wrap separates words you'd rather keep together--such as someone's first and last name, or the word "Chapter" and the chapter number. No problem; if you want to keep two words together no matter what, link them together with a nonbreaking space: 1. Type the first word. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + space to insert the nonbreaking space. 3. Type the second word. >From now on, these words always appear on the same line. If Word can't fit the second word on the current line with the first, it moves BOTH words to the next line. Pretty cool when words mate for life, don't you think? ADD CONTINENTAL FLAIR TO YOUR WRITING You're the cosmopolitan type. You smoke imported cigars. You eat at restaurants with French waiters and menus that require a translator. You have (and know how to use) a BIDET. And now, you've even joined a pen pal club, just so you can tell your friends and coworkers that you correspond regularly with people from all over the world. The problem? These pen pals have the gall to insist that their names and addresses be spelled correctly, including those special characters--accents, circumflexes, and so on--that make foreign text, well, look foreign. Luckily, Word 97 lets you appease your international clique, and impress your friends at the same time: - To type a character with an acute accent, press Ctrl + ' followed by the character. - To type a character with a grave accent, press Ctrl + ` (the apostrophe under the tilde) followed by the character. - To type a character with a tilde, press Ctrl + Shift + ~ followed by the character. - To type a character with a circumflex, press Ctrl + Shift + ^ followed by the character. - To type a character with a diaeresis, press Ctrl + Shift + : followed by the character. If you go through this trouble to appear cosmopolitan, consider dual citizenship. WHY BOTHER WITH EXCEL? If you're working with a Word document and you have a need for a small spreadsheet, you can create the sheet in Excel and then insert it into the Word document. But, if the spreadsheet requirements are rather minimal, why not just use Word? To create a spreadsheet in a Word document, choose Table, Insert Table. When the Insert Table dialog box opens, choose the number of columns and rows you need for your spreadsheet (you can adjust this later). Now click OK to insert the table. View the table just as you would an Excel worksheet, the first cell in the upper left corner is A1. Moving down vertically, you'll find cells A2, A3, A4, etc. The next column is B1, B2, B3, etc. Let's look at an example now. Let's say you inserted a table with five columns and four rows. Enter into cell A1 the word Month. Now move down to A2 and enter Jan. Next, go to A3 and enter Feb. In A4, type Total. Go to cell B1 and enter a name. In cell B2, enter the sales figure for January. Enter all figures using a dollar sign ($). Move to B3 and enter sales for February. In cell B4, press Ctrl-F9. Between the brackets, type =sum(b2:b3) and then press F9. The sum will appear in cell B4 complete with the dollar sign. If you change any of the numbers, you need to press F9 again to tell Word to perform the calculation. How's that for easy? IN-LINE CALCULATIONS We pointed out in the last tip that you can set up a table in a Word document to handle calculations. Here's another useful way to deal with short calculations in Word. Suppose you're writing an informal quote or invoice, and you want to show the total cost of a purchase. You don't have to grab your calculator or open Excel. All you have to do is tell Word to do the calculation for you. Let's say you sold someone 120 Dingles @ $12.32 each. What's the total? Type a line like this: Thank you for your purchase of 120 Dingles. Please remit $ Immediately after the $, press Ctrl-F9 and enter =120*12.32 Now press F9 and the total will appear in the line as shown here: Thank you for your purchase of 120 Dingles. Please remit $1478.4 Add the trailing zero and you're ready to go. WHEN IS THE RIGHT SIZE THE WRONG SIZE? Subscriber L.R. has a challenge for us. She has two pictures that she wants to import into a Word document. Both pictures are 320 by 200 pixels. However, picture A is twice as large in the Word document as picture B. She knows she can resize the pictures to make them fit, but she doesn't understand why they should be different sizes. Here's what we suspect is happening. Although both pictures have a resolution of 320 by 200 pixels, chances are that the dots per inch (dpi) are different. For example, a 320 by 200 picture at 300 dpi will be twice the size of a 320-by-200 picture at 150 dpi. If you have a scanner, you can check this out. All you have to do is select a small picture and scan it at 150 dpi. Then save the picture and scan it again at 300 dpi. Save the latter picture. Now you can insert both into Word. Choose Insert, Picture. Then locate and select the 150-dpi picture. Choose Insert, Picture again and this time select the 300-dpi picture. When viewing them side by side, you'll see that the second picture appears larger in the Word document. You may also notice that the 300-dpi picture looks a bit sharper. AN ODD COLUMN Creating columns in Word is a snap. You just choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, you can select from one, two, or three columns. You'll notice that you can also choose a small column at the left or a small column at the right. If you like, you can set the column size yourself. All you have to do is deselect Equal Column Width and then set the size of each of your columns. After you finish setting up the columns, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. DELETE IT NOW There are times when you choose File, Open in a Microsoft Office document and just happen to notice a file that needs deleting. You don't have to wait until you finish what you're doing and then use Windows Explorer to delete the file. All you have to do is select the file in the Open window and then press Delete. This will delete the file and you can go ahead with your work MAKING A BLANK When you choose to use bullets or numbering in a Word document, the new number or bullet appears when you press Enter. If you'd like to insert a blank line between one bulleted line and another, you can press Shift-Enter. To get to the next bulleted line, press Enter. This produces the effect shown here. 1. Line one 2. Line two 3. Line three 4. Line four 5. Line five DOES IT EQUATE? Word users need to generate documents that contain equations. This is certainly no problem for Word. Here's how to add equations to a document. As an example, let's assume that you want to create a document for some young arithmetic students, such as: 2X=Y+5 You can make this look better if you choose Insert, Object, Microsoft Equation. Now type in the equation, and the Equation editor will put the line into a more pleasing form. The real advantage of the Equation editor becomes apparent when you need to enter more complex equations. For example, showing a square root in Word can be cumbersome, but if you use the Equation editor, it will look just as any mathematician would expect it to look. Because we can't show you samples, the best approach is to open the Equation editor and experiment with it. SMALL AND ATTRACTIVE In the last tip, we showed you how to print tickets using Word (use Tools, Envelopes and Labels). This time, let's look at how you can add some graphics to your tickets to enhance their appearance. A few weeks ago, we described a technique allowing you to insert pictures into labels. This time, we'll show you a different technique. Choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the dialog box opens, click Options and then Details. Make sure the sizes are correct (label size: 2 inches by 4 inches, 2 across, 5 down) and click OK, and then OK. Right-click the label text entry box and choose Fonts. Select a font and size and then click OK. Now enter the label text. When the text is in place, make sure the Full Page of the Same Label radio button is selected and then click New Document. When the document appears in a standard Word document, click where you want the picture to appear in the first ticket. Let's assume for this example that you want to use ClipArt. Choose Insert, Object, Microsoft ClipArt Gallery. Choose a picture and click OK. Now size the picture and, when it suits you, click the picture to select it. Press Ctrl-C. Next, click in each of the labels where you want the picture to appear and press Ctrl-V. This places the picture in each of the labels. To save the document, choose File, Save As. Name the document, choose a location for it, and click Save. To print the tickets, choose File, Print. When the Print dialog box opens, go to the Number of Copies entry box and type in the number of pages you want to print. If you need 100 tickets, enter 10 (10 pages with 10 tickets on each page). Click OK to begin printing. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, PLEASE How would you like to use Word to create an online questionnaire? Suppose your organization needs to know the approximate income of each of its active members (this is only an example; in the real world you'd probably have to hide out for a while after suggesting this). Open a new Word document and type in all the header information. With the sales pitch in place, let's get to the questions. Type something like this: $10,001 - $20,000 $20,001 - $40,000 $40,001 - $60,000 $60,001 - $80,000 $80,001 - $100,000 Over $100,000 Now click the document to the right of $20,000 (maybe add a space and then click). Choose Insert, Form Field. When the dialog box opens, select Check Box and click OK. The check box will appear in your document to the right of $20,000. Do the same now for all the numbers. To use the questionnaire online, choose Tools, Protect Document. When the Protect Document dialog box opens, select Forms and click OK. Now the only thing anyone can do is select one of the check boxes--they can't modify the document. After someone finishes the questionnaire, you need to save the document. Choose File, Save As and type in a name. Click Save to save the document. You can open the documents that you collect and print them later. If you want to mail some of the questionnaires, the check box will show up just fine, so the members can make the selection with a pen and mail it back to you. This is one style of questionnaire to fit all purposes. MARK IT ON THE CALENDAR If you'd like to print a personalized calendar for each month, you can use Word for the job. Try this. Choose Table, Insert Table. Enter 7 columns and 6 rows. Click OK. Now type in the days of the week in the top row. Then move to the correct starting point for the month and enter 1. Use the Tab key to step through the cells, entering the correct number in each one. Now you can add at the top of the page, the month's name and whatever other text and pictures you'd like to use. Print the page in standard portrait layout. NOW THAT'S SMALL Have you ever needed to work with small documents in Word? Say a brochure, or a card? Let's say that your organization needs some tickets for a show you're putting on. You can use Word to generate them if you like. To walk through the procedure, let's assume that the tickets will be 2 inches by 4 inches. You want to enter the name of the show, the date and time, and the location. The best way to handle this job is to use Word labels. Choose Tools, Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, click the Labels tab. Click Options and then click Details. In Details, set the height to 2, the width to 4, the number across to 2, and the number down to 5. Leave the other settings as they are (the default). Word will ask you to confirm your changes. Click OK to get back to the Envelopes and Labels dialog box. Now type in the text you want to use for your ticket. If you'd like to change the font or font size, right-click the label and choose a font and font size. After you make the selection, click OK to get back to your label. Make sure the Full Page of the Same Label radio button is selected and then click Print to print your tickets. MAKING BOOK If you'd like to make a booklet, all you need is Word and some standard 8.5 by 11 paper. The trick is setting up the printer and visualizing where the pages will appear. To make a four-page booklet, you'll fold the paper in half. Give this a try now, before you even think about writing and printing the booklet. Fold the paper and then place it on the desk with the inside of the fold upward. You're looking at page 2 and page 3. The back of page 2 is page 1, and the back of page 3 is page 4. Now you can create a document. Choose File, Page Setup. When the dialog box opens, click the Paper Size tab and select Landscape. Click OK to exit the dialog box and record the change. Now choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, click Two columns and then click OK. Now choose View, Page Layout so you can see what's going on in both columns. Now write your document, remembering that pages 1 and 4 will appear on one Word page, and pages 2 and 3 will appear on another Word page. Let's assume that booklet pages 1 and 4 are on Word page 1. To print your booklet, choose File, Print. When the dialog box opens, select Pages and type in 1. Click OK to print. Now remove the printed page from the printer and insert it in the paper tray printed side up (in most printers). This time choose File, Print and select Page. Type in 2 and click OK to print the other side of the paper. With both sides of the page printed, you can now fold the paper to make your booklet. Note: Not all printers feed the paper the same way. You need to determine how your printer works. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY If you'd like to print only the data from a Word form, you can instruct Word to do this for you. Choose Tools, Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Print tab. Select the check box labeled Print Data Only for Forms and click OK. The selection remains in effect only for the current document. When you open a new document, the selection will return to the default. FRAMED! Word offers two ways to deal with text in a box: You can frame text, or you can add text to a text box. First, let's look at framed text. To add a frame to your document, choose Insert, Frame. Use the mouse to draw a frame. Now you can click in the frame and add text. Use the mouse to drag the frame to the location of your choice. To set up the frame, right-click it and choose Format Frame. In this dialog box, you can choose how you want text to wrap around the frame, along with how far the text should be from the frame and other parameters. After you make all your selections, click OK. Next, let's look at the text box. To add a text box, click the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar. If the Drawing toolbar doesn't appear in your Word window, choose View, Toolbars, select Drawing, and click OK. After you've drawn the text box, click it and then enter the text. If you use the mouse to move the text box over some existing text, you'll see that text doesn't wrap around it. You can place the text box over text and other objects in your document. In conclusion, use the frame when you want text to wrap, and use Text Box when you don't. BUMPER CROP Yep, you guessed it--another tip about pictures. Today's perspicuous picture pointer has to do with the fact that sometimes PART of a picture is better than the whole thing. And how can you display only PART of a picture once you insert it into a Word 97 document? By cropping it, of course. Here's how: 1. Click on the picture you'd like to crop (the Picture toolbar appears). 2. In the Picture toolbar, click the Crop button. 3. With the mouse, drag any of the "handles" (little squares) toward the center of the picture. Instead of resizing the picture, Word "crops" away as you drag, leaving you with less--which, as advertising weenies have been drumming into your head most of your life, is sometimes more. DOCS, DOCS, DOCS--CAN'T WE OPEN SOMETHING ELSE? If you've had Word 97 even for a couple of days, you've probably got the knack of opening Word documents. But even though Word is one of the best-selling word processors around, literally scores of other word processors, past and present, are out there--each one with a document file type all its own. Which probably doesn't mean a thing to you, until someone hands you one of these "foreign" files and asks you to edit it with Word. How can you open, and work on, this strange--that is, not created in Word--file? If it's one of the file types that Word recognizes, it's a cinch. 1. Choose File + Open. 2. Using the Look In drop-down box, navigate to the drive containing the foreign file. 3. In the Files of Type drop-down box, find and select the file type. (Of course, if the type isn't listed here--and you don't mind working on just the text, without any of the document's original formatting--choose Recover Text From Any File.) 4. Click Open. Word opens your file. It may not look exactly as it did in the original word processor, but it should be close enough. DON'T BLOW EVERYTHING OUT OF PROPORTION Last time, we explained how to brighten your documents with pictures. If you've followed our instructions, you may have noticed that Word 97 inserts full-size pictures--which, in most cases, are way too big. Quick thinker that you are, you tried to shrink the pictures by dragging the "handles" (the small black squares) around them inward. But woe is you: After spending a few moments adjusting a picture's size in this fashion, you found that it was warped out of proportion. How can you get the picture back into proportion and then make sure it stays in proportion when you resize it? To return a picture to its original size--and simultaneously, to its original proportions: 1. Click the picture to select it (the Picture toolbar appears). 2. Click the Reset button on the Picture toolbar. To resize a picture while maintaining its original proportions: 1. Click the picture to select It. 2. Hold down the Shift key. 3. Drag any of the corner handles until the picture is the desired size. Looks a lot better, doesn't it? GET THE PICTURE Words, words, words--when you're working with a word processor, you see a lot of them, fill pages and pages with them. Yes, words can be powerful, but no matter how good a writer you are, pages full of words can, well, PUT YOUR READERSHIP INTO A DEEP CATALEPTIC COMA. Here's an idea: How about perking up those words of yours with a few pictures? Word 97 gives you two ways to add pictures to any document. To add a picture from any picture file: 1. Choose Insert + Picture + From File. 2. Word opens to its default clip-art folder. To explore the files in this folder, double-click any of the subfolders (Background, Popular, and so on), then select the files and preview them in the box to the right. (NOTE: You can also navigate to ANY folder on the disk drive containing the picture file you want to add.) 3. When you've found the picture file you want to add, click Insert. To add a picture from Word's Clip Art Gallery: 1. Choose Insert + Picture + Clip Art. 2. In the list on the left side of the dialog box, select a picture category. 3. Select the picture you want to insert, and click Insert (or simply double-click the picture). Either way, Word inserts the picture in your document. And you have to admit--things are looking better already. LEAVE THE HARD WORK TO THE HARD DISK Someone hands you a floppy disk containing a Word 97 document that needs to be edited. You open the document and it looks great. You start working and everything seems fine. But when you scroll ahead through the document, you can't help but notice that the display is, well, a tad sluggish. And when you save your first changes(conscientious user that you are), you can't believe how long it takes. What has gone wrong? Well, in case that continual grinding noise coming from your computer's floppy drive hasn't tipped you off, Word is working off the floppy disk--and that's a whole lot slower than your hard drive. Lucky for you, you can speed things up by saving the document to your hard disk, as follows: 1. Choose File + Save As. 2. In the Save In drop-down list, select your hard drive (usually C:). 3. In the window below the drop-down list, locate and double-click the My Documents folder (or whatever folder you use to save Word 97 documents on your hard disk). 4. Click Save. Word saves the document to your hard disk and works off of the hard disk version from now on. MAKE SURE YOUR ENTIRE MESSAGE MAKES IT THERE If you're a longtime Word 97 tip reader, you know how to fax any Word 97 document right from within Word 97. (If you missed that tip, NAH-NAH--you'll just have to wait until we run it again, perhaps in our upcoming "Word 97 Greatest Tips" album, which we're hoping William Shatner will narrate.) Anyway, perhaps you've faxed a few Word documents, only to have the recipients call you and ask, "What happened to the ends of all your @#&!!#* lines? They're chopped off!" After you chide these people for their inappropriate language and accuse them of being poorly bred, you return to your desk and ask yourself, "Indeed, what IS happening to the ends of all my @#&!!#* lines?" Chances are, you've made the mistake of trying to fax a document with margins smaller than a half-inch. Because most fax machines can't print on the outer half-inch of a page, anything in that area gets chopped off on the receiving end. So next time you fax, if you're not sure that all of your margins are a half-inch or larger, check as follows: 1. Choose File + Page Setup (or double-click the ruler). 2. If necessary, click the Margins tab. 3. Check the margins. If they're all set to more than a half-inch, you're fine. If not, increase them appropriately. 4. Click OK and then fax away! (Just a little rhyme to keep Robert Frost spinning in his grave.) ONE MORE TIME . . . After the past three days of tips, some folks would say "enough already" and move on to a new topic (probably accompanied by audible sighs of relief from their audience). But not us here at Dummies Daily, no sir. If there's a dead horse that needs beating, a not-quite-dry sponge that needs wringing, or a stone from which the last drop of blood can be squeezed, well, we're your guys. All this to say that today we have one more picture tip. Suppose that, for some reason or another, you'd like to add a little space between your picture and the edges of its picture frame. Now, you COULD add a margin to the frame, but that means opening a dialog box and typing in numbers, two onerous tasks we try to help you avoid at any cost. Instead, you can "crop out"--that is, add space by cropping AWAY from the center of the picture. Here's how it works: 1. Click on the picture to select it. 2. In the Picture toolbar, click the Crop button. 3. With the mouse, drag any of the "handles" (little squares) AWAY from the center of the picture. Instead of taking part of the picture away, this kind of cropping ADDS space. Now you can wrap text around the picture without the picture crashing into the text, or add a border to the frame without the picture crashing into the border, or just generally keep the picture from crashing into stuff. You don't have to thank us. THEY CALL ME Last time, we showed you how you can use the Spike (how we love that name) to cut several unconnected text or graphic items and then paste them all at once. This time, we have something a little more up close and personal for you. Many of you are no doubt wondering, what is it like to BE the Spike? How does the Spike deal with the jealousy of all the other drably named features? If we could look into the Spike's soul, what would we see? Of course, there are no answers to these deep questions--as much as we hate to admit it, the Spike is a feature without any feelings to explore or soul to look into. But while you can't look into its soul, you can peek at the Spike's contents any time (such as when you forget what you've put in there), as follows: 1. Choose Insert + AutoText. 2. Click the AutoText tab. 3. In the Enter AutoText Entries Here list box, select Spike. Word displays as much of the Spike's contents as will fit in the Preview box below. UNITS OF MEASUREMENT--AS YOU TYPE! Ever notice how often software makers use the phrase "as you type" to describe some whiz-bang feature? "Format text--as you type!" "Calculate totals--as you type!" Makes you wonder why the first word processor manufacturers didn't advertise, "Displays words on-screen--as you type!" Anyway, as the title of today's tip suggests, we're not above this type of marketing hype. Still, what follows is a pretty good tip. Suppose you're specifying a measurement (a margin size, a frame size, line spacing, and so on) in one of Word 97's dialog boxes--and you don't want to measure in the units provided. Well, you don't have to. You can simply include your measurements with your number, as follows: 1. In the appropriate box, type the number. 2. Then--WITHOUT ADDING A SPACE--type "in" for inches, "cm" for centimeters, "pi" for picas, or "pt" for points. For example, if you want a left margin that is 5 picas wide, you would: 1. Choose File + Page Setup. 2. Click the Margins tab. 3. Type the following in the Left box: 5pi 4. Click OK or press Enter so that Word can change your margin as you type! UNSPLIT RESPONSIBLY Maybe it's happened to you (because, when you think about it, EVERYTHING happens to you): Because you're a lifelong (or at least, long-standing) subscriber to the Word 97 Dummies Daily tip, you know all about the Split command, which lets you split the Word display to show one part of the document in one window and another part in the other window, saving you lots of scrolling, especially when you're working with long documents. But then, when your work is done, you unsplit the display and for some reason, Word closes the wrong part of the split screen, forcing you to scroll to wherever it is you wanted to be. How can you prevent this frustrating, recurring fate? It's easy, really. Before you unsplit a split display, do the following: 1. Click to position the insertion point in the pane where you want to begin working AFTER you unsplit. 2. Then unsplit the display (by choosing Window + Remove Split). Word keeps the active pane (the one in which you clicked) open, and closes the other one.

ADDING MACROS TO WORD MENUS

Here is a question from reader Pat W.: "When you publish Word macros, you always suggest placing the macro in the toolbar as a button. Is it possible to add the macro to an existing menu item? I would prefer to have at least some of my macros in the menu."
Yes, you can add macros to menus. Let's say you have a macro named DoAll you would like to add to your Tools menu. Choose Tool, Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Commands tab. Under Categories, select Macros. In the right pane, grab your macro (DoAll) and drag it to the Tools menu. When the menu opens, drag the macro to its desired location and release the mouse button. Click Close to dismiss the Customize dialog box. You can now choose Tools, DoAll.

FIND THE NEXT OCCURRENCE IN WORD DOCUMENTS

We recently ran a tip on how to repeat a Find in Word 97. We suggested clicking the double down arrow at the bottom of the scroll bar. As Rhonda D. and several other readers pointed out, you can use various keystrokes. Press Shift-F4 or Alt-Ctrl-Y. And now for today's tip... CORRECTING CAPS LOCK WITH WORD'S AUTOCORRECT Reader Kerry R. sent this Word question: "When I first started using Word 97, the program would automatically correct Caps Lock on some words. For instance, if I typed something like 'THis', Word would change it to 'This'. "This function no longer works. Can you explain how to get it working again?" The function you have lost is in AutoCorrect. To make the change, choose Tools, AutoCorrect. When the AutoCorrect dialog box opens, select the check box labeled "Correct TWo INitial Capitals" and then click OK to continue. Correcting the Caps Lock key is a separate function. For example, if you were to press the Caps Lock key accidentally, you might type something such as 'tHIS IS A TEST'. However, if you enable the Caps Lock function, Word will convert the sentence to 'This is a test' and turn off Caps Lock. To do this, choose Tools, AutoCorrect and then select the check box labeled "Correct accidental usage of cAPS LOCK KEY". Click OK to close the dialog box and continue. MOVING TEXT IN WORD DOCUMENTS Here is a Word tip from reader Betty V.: "There is a nifty way to move text up or down in Word or PowerPoint. Just select some text, then hold down Shift-Alt while you use the up or down arrows to move the text to a new location. This works well for rearranging bulleted or numbered lists, rearranging rows in tables, or moving entire paragraphs up or down in a document. I discovered this trick when I accidentally put my fingers on the wrong keys." USING THE ASSISTANT IN WORD MACROS Some time back we published a macro to count headings. Reader John F. asks if it is possible to put the information from such a macro into the Office Assistant. It is possible, and we decided to try it using a variation of the original Count macro. Here it is. To enter this macro, run Word and press Alt-F11. Select Modules on the left side of the Visual Basic editor window, then choose Insert, Module. Now enter this code as shown: Sub Count() Dim Counter As Integer, KeepFile As String, KeepCount As String KeepFile = ActiveDocument.Name With ActiveDocument.Content.Find .ClearFormatting .Style = wdStyleHeading8 Do While .Execute(FindText:="", Forward:=True, Format:=True) = True Counter = Counter + 1 Loop End With KeepCount = Str(Counter) With Assistant .FileName = "Clippit.act" .Visible = True End With With Assistant.NewBalloon .BalloonType = msoBalloonTypeButtons .Heading = "Article Count" .Text = Chr(13) + KeepFile + Chr(13) + " Contains " + KeepCount + " Articles" .Show End With With Assistant .FileName = "Clippit.act" .Visible = False End With End Sub Next, chhose File, Save Normal to save your new macro in the Normal.dot template. Press Alt-Q to return to Word. Now, in the Word window, choose View, Toolbars, Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Commands tab. Click Macros in the Categories list and use the mouse to drag the DoCount icon to the toolbar. Click Modify Selection and change the name to Count. Click Close to close the dialog box and save your new button assignment. We used Heading 8 in this example, but you can change that to whatever you need. We used Clippit simply because it's always loaded when you install Microsoft Office 97 with Office Assistant.

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CHECKING INDENTATION WITH WORD'S STYLE LIST Subscriber Audrey N. submitted this Word tip: "I always used to select a style to see if it was indented. I have since discovered that you can tell whether a Word style is indented or not by simply locating it in the Style list. Suppose you want to know if Heading 8 is indented. All you have to do is choose Format, Style, click the arrow at the right side of the Style list box, and locate Heading 8. If it is indented, the indentation appears in the list." Thanks for the tip, Audrey.

A WORD FONT SELECTION QUESTION Shanda W. asks this question about setting Word fonts: "When I need to change the font for a selection in a Word document, I usually just select the text and choose Format, Font. Doing this has never presented a problem before, but I recently tried it and none of the fonts appeared in the entry boxes. Do you have any idea what might have happened? What can I do to get Word to operate as it did before?" Word probably hasn't changed. The most likely reason for what you describe is that you selected text with mixed fonts or font formats. For example, if you open a blank Word document and type This is a test. And so is this. all in the same font and format, you can select the text and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box opens, the font name, style, and size all appear in their usual entry boxes. But if you set the first sentence to a different font, then make it bold, no entries appear in the boxes because Word can't report information on a mixture of fonts, styles, and sizes.

AN ANIMATION FOR POWERPOINT SLIDES Here is an animation effect that reader Louis M. sent to us: "I work for a company that produces safety equipment for small airplanes. I was asked to create a slide show that would show a small plane plummeting to the ground. I know this might sound a little strange, but we needed the effect for our presentation. "To create the show, I located a small plane in ClipArt and inserted it onto the slide. I set its animation to Crawl From Left. Next, I held down Ctrl and dragged away a copy of the plane. With the copy still selected, I chose Draw, Ungroup. Then I chose Draw, Group. I did this so I could rotate the plane. I set this plane's animation to Flash Once, Fast. "Once I set the animation, I continued to drag away copies of the second plane. The idea was to drag as many as possible to produce smooth motion. As I dragged away each new copy, I selected Rotate and rotated the plane to point more vertically. "The technique I used turned out rather well. Although there is some jerkiness to the downward motion, most people didn't really seem to notice. "If you drag away each copy, you don't need to set the animation for each one--it takes on the attributes of the one before it." "After you insert the object you want to animate, right-click it and choose Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and choose Flash Once, Fast from the list. Now click the Timing tab and select the Animate and Automatically check boxes. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply your changes." As Louis mentions, you won't need to apply your changes again unless you want to alter the animation for one of the copies. Thanks for the tip, Louis.

CREATING SPECIAL SHORTCUT KEYS FOR WORD Reader Carl J. submitted this Word tip: "Although you have discussed assigning shortcut keys to various Word operations, I have never seen a tip on how to create two-part shortcuts. "One use for two-part shortcut keys is to make it easier to assign headings in your Word documents. For example, you could press Alt-H and then type in 1, 2, 3, and so forth to tell Word which heading to use. "Suppose you frequently use Heading 8 and would like to make a shortcut key assignment. Run Word and choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Heading 8 to select it and then click Modify. In the Modify Style dialog box, click Shortcut Key. Now press Alt-H and type 8. "Click Assign to assign the keys, then click Close to close the dialog box. Back in Modify Style, select the Add To Template and Automatically Update check boxes. Click OK to close the dialog box. Back in the Style dialog box, click Apply to close the dialog box and apply your selections. "You can repeat this process for other headings." Thanks for the tip, Carl.

USING TABLES INSIDE A WORD TEXT BOX Here is a Word tip from reader Joyce R.: "Did you know that you can insert a table into a text box? All you have to do is click in the text box and choose Table, Insert Table." Yes, you can insert a table into a text box as you describe. You can also right-click inside the text box and choose Draw Table to create a table in the text box. However, this applies only to text boxes--you can't insert a table into a rectangle or any other shape. Thanks for the tip, Joyce.

ADD A WORDART BUTTON TO EXCEL Reader Vernon N. sent the following Excel question: "Is it possible to place a WordArt button into Excel's toolbar? I know I can choose Insert, Picture, WordArt, but I use WordArt quite a bit and would like to avoid all that." You can indeed put a WordArt button into the Excel toolbar. Choose View, Toolbars, Customize. When the Customize dialog box opens, click the Commands tab. In the Categories list, click AutoShapes to select it, then drag the WordArt icon from the dialog box's right pane to your toolbar. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box. Now you can open WordArt with a single click. This method also works in Word for Windows 97.

DELETING WORD STYLES Darlene B. sent in this Word question: "I would like to delete all the current styles in Word and start over with my own style names. I find that I can't delete either the Normal or the Default Paragraph Font style. Is there a way to get rid of these two styles?" To see what Darlene is doing, run Word and choose Format, Style. When the Style dialog box opens, click Default Paragraph Font or Normal, and you will see that the delete button is inactive. You can't delete a standard Word style. This includes Headings, as well as Normal and Default Paragraph Font. You can't even modify Default Paragraph Font. However, you can modify Normal and Headings. Just select Normal and click Modify to change the Normal style. Sorry, but Default Paragraph Font has to stay around.

CONVERTING A TEXT BOX TO A SHAPE IN WORD Subscriber Karen L. submitted this Word 97 tip: "I just discovered that you can easily convert a text box to another shape. Maybe other people don't know how to convert a text box." Karen is correct--it is very easy to convert a text box to a shape. Let's take a look at how to do this. Run Word and choose Insert, Text Box. Draw the text box using your mouse and type some text. Now select the text box by right-clicking it, then go to the Drawing toolbar and choose Draw, Change AutoShape. Select one of the shapes, and your text box magically assumes your selected shape, with the text inside the shape. Thanks for the tip, Karen.

GUESS WHO? Hello there! It's me again--your mother, brought to you by those nice people at Dummies Daily. How many times did I have to tell you not to sit too close to the TV screen? You don't remember? The answer is THOUSANDS. And did you learn? I don't think so--because every day you sit inches from your computer monitor, WHICH IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FANCY-SCHMANCY TV SCREEN! Now, the nice Dummies people told me that you're probably sitting so close to the monitor because you need to read the small type; but if you make the type bigger, you'll do too much scrolling--whatever that is. Well, take a tip from your cyberchallenged mom: Try Word 97's Online Layout View. Click the Online Layout View button (second from the left, to the left of the horizontal scrollbar) OR choose View + Online Layout. Word enlarges your text so that you can read it from a distance, AND it wraps the text to fit your screen rather than your page margins. Sure, your document won't look exactly as it will in print, but at least you won't go blind. And not being blind should make it easier to dial my phone number once in a while. WHAT'S THE FORMAT? You open a Word 97 document, and for a moment you're completely taken aback by its beauty. One paragraph in particular catches and holds your eye. The formatting is sensational, even beautiful. There's only one problem: You can't for the life of you figure out how it got that way. Well, here's one way to find out: 1. Choose Help + What's This? 2. Click in the paragraph. A box appears, describing the formatting applied to both the specific character you clicked and the paragraph that contains it. Even better, you can keep clicking other paragraphs and characters to find out more about them; just press Esc when you have enough information. IT'S STILL WINTER--HUDDLE YOUR LETTERS FOR WARMTH Some folks don't take any special pride in their Word 97 documents; they just type them, send them off, and forget about them. But not you--you pore over line spacing, fonts, bullets, and every other detail until you're satisfied that things look just right. You're demanding. You're uncompromising. Some might even say you're a retentive, nit-picking psychotic. Other peoples' opinions notwithstanding, lately you've noticed that sometimes Word leaves a bit more space between characters than you'd like. How can you "squish" those characters together to get the look your rigorous document-design aesthetic demands? By adjusting the spacing between characters, of course. Here's how: 1. Select the text you want to adjust. 2. Choose Format + Font. 3. In the Font dialog box, click the Character Spacing tab. 4. In the Spacing drop-down box, select Condensed; then adjust the value in the adjacent number box until the characters in the Preview box are as condensed as you'd like them to be. 5. Click OK. And don't be influenced by what others are saying about you--unless they're saying you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe. TELL WORD WHERE YOU'RE SENDING THAT LETTER You may already be familiar with Word 97's Envelope feature: Just choose Tools + Envelopes and Labels, and Word guides you as you address and print an envelope. (It even tells you how to feed the envelope into your printer. In fact, about the only thing it doesn't do is send a typist to your desk to address the darn thing for you.) Well, as automatic as all this seems, there is one way you can make the process even more automatic: 1. In your letter, select your recipient's name and address. 2. THEN choose Tools + Envelopes and Labels. When the Envelopes and Labels dialog box opens, there's your recipient's address, right where it belongs (in the Deliver Address box), which means you don't have to type it a second time. And heaven knows, we want to keep dose tired wittle fingers of yours fwom doing extwa work. THEY CALL ME You want to move some text--or some text and graphics--from one area of your document to another, or from one document to an entirely different document. The problem is, the items you want to move aren't connected, or contiguous. Some are separated by lines, others by paragraphs, and still others by entire pages. Looks like several repeated cut-and-paste operations, right? Wrong. A special Word 97 feature called the Spike lets you "store up" multiple cuts and then paste all of them in one location. Here's how it works: 1. Select the first item you want to move, then press Ctrl + F3 to cut that item and store it in the Spike. 2. Repeat Step 1 for every other item you want to move. 3. Click wherever you want to paste all these items. 4. To paste the contents of the Spike AND EMPTY THE SPIKE (so that you can add a new set of items to it), press Ctrl + Shift + F3. To paste the contents of the Spike WITHOUT EMPTYING THE SPIKE (so that you can reuse the items there, or add to them), choose Insert + AutoText, click the AutoText tab, select Spike in the Enter AutoText Entries Here list box, and then click Insert. So, is Spike a great name for a software feature, or what? Maybe in the next version they'll name a feature Spanky. YOU SAY Before launching into this tip, we'd like to apologize to the lot of you who are probably aware that this is one of the oldest Windows-related tips in the book. It's something that many of you may have discovered yourselves, or had repeated to you thousands of times by one or another program manual, PC guru, or out-to-impress-you coworker. Nevertheless, there are a few people out there who have never heard this tip, so those of you who have are just going to have to suck it up and endure for your less-informed cohorts: In ANY Word 97 dialog box, instead of clicking OK (or Print, or whatever the dark-rimmed default button is), you can simply press Enter. (This is especially valuable if you've just finished typing something into a text box in the dialog box and want to close the box.) If you didn't know this before today, you're immeasurably better off for the knowledge. And if you did, you have the deep satisfaction of knowing you've just killed 30 seconds of valuable time so that others could learn. MARK IT NOW When you work with long documents in Word, you'll find that's it's nice to have some bookmarks to navigate around in the document. Bookmarks are easy to add, easy to use, and leave no unsightly marks of any kind in your text. And you can put them anywhere at all. Just for the purpose of experimentation, click anywhere in your current Word document and then choose Insert, Bookmark. When the dialog box opens, type in a word to use as your bookmark. Now click Add. To check your new bookmark, press F5. When the dialog box opens, type in the new bookmark name and then click Go To. Word will deliver you to the bookmarked spot without any further ado. PUT A BORDER AROUND IT Word 97 allows you to apply a border to an entire page. If you need to make a decorative page for your organization, perhaps you'd like to use a page border. Word includes some artwork for your border. Let's say you want to write a letter to some fellow animal lovers--so a border of cats would look nice. Choose Format, Borders and Shading. When the Borders and Shading dialog box opens, click the Page Border tab. Now locate the list box labeled Art and click the arrow at the right side of the list box to expand the list. Select the artwork you want to use (in this case, the cats) and then click OK to close the dialog box and record your selections. Word will now automatically switch to Page Layout view (unless you're already there), and your border selection will appear. BE YOUR OWN POST OFFICE (WITHOUT ALL THE BULLETS AND SHRAPNEL) Ever wish you could make your envelopes look really cool by printing your own address bar codes on them? Well, not to comment on your superficial worldview, but being cool isn't the only reason to add bar codes to an envelope. According to the U.S. Post Office, bar-coded mail goes through the system faster because it can be sorted by big, expensive machines you helped pay for. Enough postal education: The big news is that if you use Word to address your envelopes, you can also have it add postal bar codes, with just one click of your mouse! Here's how: 1. In the document you're printing an envelope for, select the delivery address. 2. Choose Tools + Envelopes and Labels. 3. Click the Envelopes tab. 4. Click Options. 5. In the Envelope Options box, select "Delivery point barcode" (you see a bar code appear above the address on the Preview envelope). 6. Click OK and then click Print to print your bar-coded envelope. Then, before you mail it, be sure to run around showing everyone how "cool" it is. FONTS-Y ENVELOPES You've just spent an hour or two typing a beautifully formatted, subtly motivating "past-due" letter to one of your habitually late-paying customers. (We won't say how subtly motivating, but you did include an unprintable pun on the phrase "in arrears.") Then you print an envelope for the letter, using Word's automated envelope printing, and--what's this? The envelope address is in a font different from the one you used in your letter! How could this be? Easy--Word does not automatically address your envelopes with the same font you use in letters. If you want Word to use the same font on your envelope, you have to tell it to do so. 1. In your letter, select the delivery address. 2. Choose Tools + Envelopes and Labels. 3. Click Options. 4. Under Delivery Address, click Font. 5. In the Font box, select the font you want to use for your delivery address--either the same one you used in your document or something else (such as Courier New, to make it appear as though you painstakingly type your envelopes on a typewriter). 6. Click OK. 7. If you want to change your return address font, under Return Address click Font, choose a font, and click OK. 8. Click OK and then click Print to print your envelope. PEACE OF BIND Say you're preparing a report that's so important--so absolutely earth-shattering--that the gods who rule over the budgets where you work have actually consented to pay to have the report BOUND. Which means that you have to include a little more space in the left margin (or in the left and right margins, if you're printing on both sides of each page) to accommodate the binding. Now, you COULD just increase your margin size(s), but that solution is risky because, in the course of preparing the document, you could forget what the extra margin is for and perhaps "adjust" it away. A better idea would be to add a "gutter" to your document, which is a kind of special and very visible space designed especially for your binder. 1. Choose File + Page Setup. 2. IF YOU'RE PRINTING ON BOTH SIDES OF EACH PAGE, select Mirror Margins; otherwise, skip this step. 3. Set Gutter Size to a width that accommodates your binding. For example, if you're going to use a three-ring binder, set the gutter size to .5 inch; for wire or plastic comb binding, setting it to .375 inch is probably fine. 4. Click OK. A gray strip appears outside the appropriate margin of each page. Your margin measurements are calculated IN ADDITION to the gutter. So, if you have a .5-inch gutter and a 1-inch margin, your text begins 1.5 inches from the left edge of the page. PUT YOUR PRINTER IN REVERSE Some printer manufacturers understand that PEOPLE READ DOCUMENTS STARTING WITH PAGE 1 and, armed with this knowledge, build printers that stack your pages precisely in order. However, other printer manufacturers--who must have landed here from another planet, say, last week--don't understand this little "quirk" of human nature, our stubborn insistence on reading pages in the order the author intended. And so they build printers that stack your pages in reverse order--the last page face up on the top--so that you have to reorder them by hand. If you have the latter type of printer, not to worry. Word 97 offers a little feature that lets you print your pages in the proper order, whether your printer wants you to or not: 1. Choose File + Print. 2. Click Options. 3. Under Printing Options, select Reverse Print Order. 4. Click OK and then click Print. As your pages emerge in the proper order, be thankful that these same printer manufacturers don't publish novels. TWIST AND SHOUT YOUR WORDS No matter how fancy a font-and-attribute combination you come up with, sometimes typed text just isn't as eye-catching as you need it to be. Wouldn't it be great, you think, if you could add some real pizzazz by twisting the text, or curving it or shaping it? Well, you can--with a little program built into Word 97, called WordArt. Here's how you use WordArt: 1. Right-click any toolbar and from the shortcut menu choose Drawing. 2. In the Drawing toolbar, click the Insert WordArt button (it looks like a slanted "A"). 3. Choose a shape and style combination from the WordArt Gallery and click OK. 4. Type your text in the box and, if you like, change the font, font size, and attributes. 5. Click OK. Your WordArt--that is, your twisted text--appears on-screen, along with the WordArt toolbar. Resize your WordArt the same way you resize a picture; experiment with the other buttons on the toolbar to reformat the WordArt. (We'll cover some of those buttons in more detail in future tips.) DO THE ELECTRIC TABLE SLIDE You've spent most of the afternoon--or, pitiably, most of your work week--creating what you and several of your cohorts believe to be the perfect Word table. You then show it to your boss, who comes back with this brilliant criticism: "This Flanges column should be to the right of the Widgets column, not to the left of it. And can you move Temperature up a few rows? Otherwise, it's great." Yeah, great for your boss. For YOU, it means reentering all kinds of data--unless you know the secret for MOVING TABLE COLUMNS AND ROWS WITH YOUR MOUSE! To move an entire table column (or columns) to the left or the right, follow these steps (this is tricky, so read carefully): 1. Wave your mouse pointer above the top row of the column you want to move. When a downward-pointing black arrow appears, click to select the entire column(s). 2. Point at any cell in the selected column(s). 3. Drag to the left or the right, positioning the insertion point marker AFTER the last character in any cell of the last column you want to appear to the LEFT of the column(s) you're moving. For example, to move the leftmost column to become the third column from the left, drag until the insertion-point marker is located just after the text in ANY cell of the third column. (Just try this to see how it works.) To move an entire row (or rows) up or down, follow these steps (this is not nearly as difficult to explain): 1. In the left margin, point at the row(s) you want to select, then click to select it (drag to select additional rows). 2. Point to any cell in the selected row(s). 3. Drag up or down. Position the insertion-point marker in the row you want to appear BELOW the row(s) you're moving. CASE STUDY--PART 1 OF 3 If you're like us, you prefer using UPPERCASE LETTERS for your titles or subtitles. Or maybe you like to use capital letters for EMPHASIS. Either way, you probably find the conventional ways of typing in uppercase annoying. Holding down the Shift key while you type? That's uncomfortable. Turning on Caps Lock? Sure, if you can remember to do that--and even then you always forget to turn it off, so yOU gET tEXT tHAT lOOKS lIKE tHIS. Luckily, there's a better way to type text in uppercase: 1. Press Ctrl + Shift + A to switch to uppercase. 2. Type your text. (Note that all the text you type will be in uppercase, whether or not you press Shift.) 3. When you're finished typing in uppercase, press Ctrl + Shift + A again. Perhaps even more useful, to quickly turn existing text to uppercase: 1. Select the text. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + A. Note that if you've typed uppercase text using Ctrl + Shift + A, you can "remove" the uppercase--that is, switch back to lowercase--by selecting the text and pressing Ctrl + Shift + A again. However, if you created the uppercase text by using the Shift or Caps Lock key, this method won't work. We'll show you how to handle that situation in the next tip. CASE STUDY--PART 2 OF 3 Last time, we showed you how to use the Ctrl + Shift + A shortcut to apply or remove uppercase to text, the same way you would apply or remove any other text attribute. But suppose you were unlucky enough to have applied uppercase by using the Shift or Caps Lock key: Does that mean you have to retype all your text--or worse yet, use the Word menu--if you now want it in lowercase? Of course not. Do the following instead: 1. Select the text you want to change. 2. Press Shift + F3. This key "cycles" you through three case options--UPPERCASE, lowercase, and Title Case--starting with the one AFTER the case of the selected text. So if you've selected uppercase text, press Shift + F3 once to change it to lowercase, again to convert it to title case, and once again to switch it back to uppercase. If you don't mind using the Word menu, try this: 1. Select the text you want to change. 2. Choose Format + Change Case. 3. Choose the case you want and click OK. CASE STUDY--PART 3 OF 3 Let's review, shall we? Two tips ago, we showed you the keystroke shortcut for switching to and from uppercase text. And last time, we showed you how to cycle through uppercase, lowercase, and title case. That should cover just about every kind of case issue you're liable to encounter. Ahem. Aren't we forgetting a little thing called SMALL CAPS? Yes, small caps--those tiny uppercase letters that seem to drive people wild. Is there a way, you ask, to apply small caps to text without resorting to the dreaded Word menu? Sure: 1. Select the text you want to set in small caps. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + K. And yes, this works as a toggle, just like the uppercase shortcut discussed two days ago: Press Ctrl + Shift + K while typing to switch to small caps; press it again to turn off small caps. DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT WE COULD SAY THE WORD 'CEDILLA' ALL DAY LONG A few weeks ago, we showed you how to type special characters in Word 97 by using specific keystroke sequences. (To get an "e" with an acute accent, for example, press Ctrl + ' and then press e.) But as a reader who chose to identify him/herself by e-mail address only pointed out, WE FORGOT THE C-WITH-CEDILLA character. And so, without further ado ... To create a c with a CEDILLA(ç): 1. Press Ctrl + , (that is, Ctrl + comma). 2. Press c (or Shift + c for an uppercase C). Your cedilla character appears. By the way, don't try this with any other letter--only the "c" takes a CEDILLA. (There--we got to say it again!) HEADINGS, HEADINGS, HEADINGS, HEADINGS . . . Nothing beats a Word 97 table for organizing text into neat little rows and columns. And if you have TONS of text to organize, no problem: Your table can have as many rows and span as many pages as necessary. Well, maybe "no problem" isn't entirely accurate--at least not yet. When you create a table comprising many pages, you may have one problem: The column headings that appear on page 1 do not show up on subsequent pages, making it easy to forget which information goes to which column as you work your way through the table. The solution: You can set your table column headings to REPEAT themselves in the top row of each page of your table. Here's how: 1. On the first page of your table, select the row (or rows) containing your column headings. 2. Choose Table + Headings. Page through the rest of your table, and you'll see those same headings repeated at the top of every page. NOW you can say "no problem." THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO GRAB THE MOUSE, BUT SUPERSCRIPT ISN'T ONE OF THEM In a lot of ways, superscript and subscript are forgotten text attributes. You probably hardly ever use them, right? And even on those rare occasions when you DO need them, you must dig through a few menu layers to get at them--except, of course, if you have Word 97 and know the following shortcuts. To change text to superscript: 1. Select the text. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + + (that is, Ctrl + Shift + the plus sign key). To change text to subscript: 1. Select the text. 2. Press Ctrl + + (that is, Ctrl + the plus sign key). You can also use these same keystrokes to toggle superscript and subscript on and off as you type. For example, press Ctrl + Shift + + to start typing in superscript, and then press Ctrl + Shift + + to stop. ANOTHER VICTORY IN THE NEVER-ENDING BATTLE TO KEEP YOUR FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD You l-o-o-ove fonts. You just love 'em. Arial, Garamond, Haettenschweiler, whatever--you just can't get enough of the little buggers. Only problem is, as much as you love fonts, you have to use the mouse to get at them. So every time you create a document, you're thrust into a deep left-brain vs. right-brain conflict: Do you satisfy your creative self by littering your document with a variety of fonts, or do you appease your practical (and, we might add, somewhat anal) self by adhering to your strict antimouse ethic? Good news for you and your analyst: You can keep BOTH sides of your brain happy--by using your keyboard to select fonts. Here's how: 1. Press Ctrl + Shift + F. This activates the Font list box in the Formatting toolbar, just as if you had clicked the box yourself. 2. Press the down arrow or up arrow keys to select the font you want to use. 3. Press Enter to apply the font. JUST WHO ARE THE DUMMIES, ANYWAY? Since we've started the Word 97 Tip of the Day, we've offered all kinds of tips for cutting, copying, and pasting text. But leave it to us to overlook the best tip of all--and leave it to one of our crack readers to point out the omission. Trevor Williamson of Mount Pleasant, California, tells us that the best way to move or copy text, or anything else in your Word document, is to do the following: 1. Select the elements you want to move or copy. 2. Using the RIGHT mouse button, drag the selection to where you want to paste it. 3. From the menu that appears, choose the option you want: Move Here, Copy Here, Link Here, Create Hyperlink Here, or Cancel. What's so great about this method? You don't have to remember HOW to drag to copy rather than to move, for instance, and you don't have to choose Cut instead of Copy. You just select, drag, and do what you want when you get there. TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE If you liked yesterday's tip (about how to select fonts by using only the keyboard), you'll love today's tip--because today, we show you not one, but TWO great ways to change font size, using nothing but your trusty old keyboard. To change your font size to the next larger or next smaller point size listed in the Formatting toolbar's Font Size list, do either of the following: - Press Ctrl + Shift + > to go to the next higher size. For example, if your current font size is 12 (as in 12 point), pressing Ctrl + Shift + > bumps the size up to 14 point. - Press Ctrl + Shift + PUT IT THERE If you commonly work on large Word documents, leaving off in the evening and then picking up where you left off next morning, you might find it useful to have your document automatically scroll to where you left off. Here's a very simple macro that will do the job for you: Sub Main EndOfDocument End Sub To enter the macro, choose Tools, Macro. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in the name of your new macro. Because you want this macro to run automatically, you have to name it "AutoOpen." After you enter the name, click on the arrow at the right side of the Macros Available In list box and choose Normal.dot (Global Template) to make it always available. Next, click Create. Now enter EndOfDocument between Sub Main and End Sub. Press Ctrl-S to save the macro. You'll be asked if you want to save the document. Click Yes. Now, when you open a document, Word will automatically scroll to the bottom of the document. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY DRAWINGS? Today's Word 97 tip is YET ANOTHER response to our voluminous reader mail. This time, Dummies Daily subscriber Deepika Sharma writes: "When I save a Word 97 document containing drawings as HTML, the drawings do not show up in the browser. Is there a way to make the drawings appear?" If you drew those drawings with the tools in Word 97's Drawing toolbar, the answer is no. But all is not lost: If you draw them as follows, they show up just fine: 1. Position your insertion point where you want your drawing to appear. 2. Choose Insert + Object. 3. In the Object Type list, choose Insert + Object + Microsoft Word Picture; then click OK. 4. NOW use the tools in the Drawing toolbar to draw whatever you want, wherever you want (don't mind the picture boundary--we handle that in the next step). 5. When your drawing is finished, on the Edit Picture toolbar, click the Reset Picture Boundary button (the boundary adjusts itself to enclose your picture). 6. Click Close Picture to return to your Word document. 7. Choose File + Save as HTML and save the file. Word converts the image to a GIF graphic, which will appear in your browser. However, after this conversion occurs, you can no longer edit the picture with Word's Drawing tools. So make sure your little creation looks the way you want it to look BEFORE you save it. YOU CAN MARK YOUR PRINTOUT, BUT YOU CAN'T PRINT OUT YOUR MARKS A Dummies Daily subscriber named David Hartman (we don't think it's the former "Today Show" host, but you never know--we do have subscribers in high places) wrote us with the following question: "The Show/Hide feature is often helpful in diagnosing a problem with Word 97 documents. Is there a way to print a document with these characters showing?" Well, David, we left no stone unturned. We tried printing with Show/Hide turned on. We checked Word's extensive Help files. And then it occurred to us: Show/Hide shows and/or hides NONPRINTING CHARACTERS--that is, characters that don't print. So we're afraid the answer is no, you can't print your document with visible tab, space, and carriage return characters, as useful as that might be. Sorry we have to give you bad news. DON'T HAVE A FIT--HAVE AN AUTOFIT You've just finished creating a table, and as much as you hate to admit it, it's an unspeakable mess. In some columns, long labels are wrapping to second and third lines; in others, short labels leave big, gaping spaces in their too-large cells. How can you whip this disaster into shape? Well, you could scroll through each column, find the longest label or number in each, and adjust the width of each column accordingly. Or you could click a single button and let Word 97 handle it for you, like so: 1. Select the entire table. 2. Choose Table + Cell Height and Width. 3. If necessary, click the Column tab. 4. Click the AutoFit button and then click OK. AutoFit automatically adjusts the width of each column to accommodate the long label without wrapping. Now, isn't that better? EITHER THAT TABLE GOES, OR I GO Did you know that Oscar Wilde's last words were reputed to be "Either that wallpaper goes, or I go?" It has nothing to do with anything. It's just funny and sounds the same as the title we chose for this tip. Anyway, if you've done any work at all with Word 97's tables, you've probably noticed that they're darn hard to get rid of. Select the entire table and press Delete, and you delete everything IN the table, but not the table itself. Well, we offer TWO ways to "off" your table. Way Number 1: 1. Click anywhere in the table. 2. Choose Table + Select Table; OR press Alt + 5 on the number keypad (Num Lock must be turned off). 3. Press Shift + Delete; OR click the Cut button on the Standard toolbar. Way Number 2: 1. Hold your mouse above the top row of the top column of the table. 2. When your mouse pointer changes to a black down-pointing arrow, click to select the entire first column. 3. Drag to the right to select the remaining columns. 4. Right-click and choose Delete Columns from the shortcut menu. If we think of another way to obliterate tables, you'll be the first to know. HERE'S ONE FOR YOU ORDINAL PEOPLE Do you use ordinals often in your documents? Okay, let's step back for a minute: Do you know what an ordinal is? An ordinal describes something's rank or numerical occurrence relative to others in a group. "First," "second," and "third" are ordinals. Now back to the first question: Do you use ordinals often in your documents? If you do--and if you've been spelling them out to avoid the awkward-looking "1st," "2nd," and so on--we've got news for you: Word 97 automatically superscripts any "st," "nd," "rd," or "th" you type immediately after a number so that your ordinals have a more sophisticated look. Rather have your ordinals slum? You can turn off this automatic superscripting as follows: 1. Choose Tools + AutoCorrect. 2. Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab. 3. Under Replace as You Type, deselect Ordinals (1st) with Superscript. 4. Click OK. You'll never have to put up with uppity ordinals again. GIVE YOUR TABLES THAT CHISELED LOOK Have you ever created a Word 97 table so beautiful--and so packed with timeless information--that you wish you could set it in stone? (We're just joking here, reaching for another of our inimitable segues--so if your answer is a heartfelt "Yes," better check out the Dummies Daily Nut-Job Tip of the Day. Hey, that's a joke, too. Sheesh.) Anyway, you can't really set a table in stone, but you can do the next best thing: Format it with a 3D, chiseled look, using one of Word's Table AutoFormat styles. Here's how: 1. Select your table (the entire thing, please). 2. Right-click the table and choose Table AutoFormat from the shortcut menu. 3. In the dialog box that appears, select 3D Effects 1, 3D Effects 2, or 3D Effects 3 from the Formats list. 4. Click OK. Word slightly embosses certain rows and columns, giving your tables a chiseled look that's so realistic people will want to touch it. Be sure to slap their hands if they try. HEY, PATHFINDER Yeah, lots of folks think it's pretty cool to put the name of their document file in their header or footer. But let's face it--thanks to the morass of folders and subfolders you've created on your hard disk, knowing the file name of a document is just the beginning of the battle. Maybe it would be a better idea to include the path in your header, too: 1. Choose View + Header and Footer. The Header and Footer toolbar appears, and your insertion point moves to the header. 2. If you want to insert your path into the footer rather than the header, on the Header and Footer toolbar, click the Switch Between Header and Footer button; otherwise, go to Step 3. 3. Position the insertion point wherever you want the file name and path to appear. 4. Again in the Header and Footer toolbar, select Filename and Path in the Insert AutoText drop-down list. 5. Click Close. You'll have no trouble finding the file now--unless, of course, you accidentally deleted it. But that's a tip for another day. JUST WHAT IS THAT A PICTURE OF, ANYWAY? How can you keep a caption attached to a picture so that if the picture moves, even to the next page, the caption moves with it? It's a question that has plagued word processor users since the programs became able to import pictures. But it no longer has to plague you because Word 97 makes attaching captions to pictures as easy as ever: 1. On the Drawing toolbar, click the Text Box tool. 2. Draw a text box where you want your picture to appear. 3. Choose Insert + Picture + From File (Or Clip Art). 4. Select and import your picture; it appears in your text box. 5. Press Enter. 6. Type your caption. Because your picture and your caption are in the same text box, they stay together--always. You'll never again have to wonder whether that's a picture of a hot air balloon or Uncle Wilfred in his striped golf pants picking up a cigarette butt. MAKE SOME CENTS OF YOUR KEYBOARD Time for a brief editorial from your friends here at Dummies Daily: Just what--we'd like to know--was the inventor of the typewriter keyboard thinking when they NEGLECTED TO INCLUDE A KEY FOR THE CENTS SIGN? Yep, they had room for the all-important caret (^), the indispensable tilde (~), the absolutely crucial diacritical mark (`), but even though the keyboard was invented at a time when just about everything cost cents instead of dollars, somehow there just wasn't a place for the cents sign. Well, about 70 years--and three digits of inflation--too late, Microsoft Word wants to bring this neglected symbol back to your keyboard. To type a cents sign, press Ctrl + / then c. Isn't progress wonderful? THERE ARE SOME KEYSTROKES EVEN WE CAN'T SAVE We won't mention his name because we don't want to embarrass him, but recently a subscriber wrote us with the following question: "When I hit Ctrl + O [to open the Open dialog box], my cursor defaults to the File Name box. Is there a way to set the default so that my cursor is in the File list, so I can use the keyboard to open the file I need?" Well, because we know how taxing it can be to press a WHOLE EXTRA KEY whenever you open a file, we really, really wish we knew a way to put that cursor where you want it. But we don't (short of a macro, and we don't DO macros here at Dummies Daily). So I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to dig deep into your reserve of excess energy and add just one more keystroke to your file-opening routine: Press Shift + Tab. Pressing Shift + Tab always takes you to the PREVIOUS option in any dialog box--which in this case is the File list. And now you can continue to use your keyboard to select and open your file. BUTTONS: THE BIGGER, THE, ER, BIGGER Toolbars--ya can't beat 'em (although sometimes I'm sure you have the urge), except that, well, sometimes those buttons seem a little small. In fact, sometimes you have to squint at them for a few seconds just to figure out what's pictured on them--and this is before you can even try to figure out what the picture is supposed to mean. Hey, cheer up. Turns out there's relief for your tired eyes. If you don't mind sacrificing document display space, you can make your buttons larger--almost four times as large (that is, twice as tall and twice as wide). Here's how: 1. Right-click ANY toolbar. 2. Choose Customize from the shortcut menu. 3. Click the Options tab. 4. Select Large Icons. 5. In this case, Word actually shows you the results of the change BEFORE you click OK, just in case you want to change things back. 6. If you like your new larger buttons, click OK. If you don't, deselect Large Icons and then click OK. FILL THE VAST EMPTINESS Sometimes, you look at your Word 97 display and come face to face with--THE VOID. Oh, the frame is there--your scrollbars, your status bar, your toolbars, and so on--but there's nothing but a gray space where a document should be. You feel empty. Life is pointless--nothing but nothingness, as far as you can see. Oh, snap out if it. Or, more accurately, CLICK out of it, as follows: 1. Right-click THE VOID (that is, anywhere in the blank space within the Word 97 window frame). 2. Choose New (to create a new document) or Open (to open an existing document). 3. Pick your template or file from the next dialog box and click OK. Now you have a document a purpose, a sense of fulfillment. And no excuse for perfume-commercial melodrama. REVERT TRICK! Hey, we all make mistakes--sometimes lots of them, all at once. That's why Word has all those levels of Undo. But when the mistakes are many and bad, multiple levels of Undo are not only time-consuming, they're depressing as well--they force you to relive every one of your bone-headed moves. Don't be so hard on yourself. If you haven't yet saved ANY of your silly mistakes, here's a faster and less embarrassing way to get rid of them all and return, or "revert," to the last saved version of your document: 1. If your Web toolbar is not currently displayed, right-click ANY toolbar and choose Web from the shrtcut menu. 2. On the Web toolbar, click the Refresh Current Page button. 3. In the dialog box that appears, click Yes. Word closes the document you're working on without saving your misbegotten changes and then loads the last-saved version of your document--the way it looked before you ravaged it. WHEN YOU ASSUME ... Rather than finish this old joke--attributable, we think (but don't hold us to it), to the esteemed Professor Irwin Corey--let's just jump into our tip. Last month, we ran a tip in which we assumed that EVERYONE knew how to double-underline text. Well, if that didn't send the e-mailbox flag shooting up: We got a few letters from folks who in fact did NOT know how to double-underline text. Not to worry, folks. We're here today to bridge that ugly gap in your Word 97 knowledge. To double-underline text: 1. Select the text. 2. Press Ctrl + Shift + D. If you double-underline often, and you're as mouse-oriented as a cat, you may want to add the double-underline button to your Formatting toolbar, as follows: 1. Right-click ANY toolbar and choose Customize from the shortcut menu. 2. Click the Commands tab. 3. From the Categories list, select Format. 4. From the Commands list, find the Double Underline button and drag it into position on the Formatting toolbar. 5. Click OK. Now you know everything you need to know about double-underlining. WHO HAS TIME FOR "ONE AT A TIME"? How do you insert rows or columns into a table? Lots of folks just keep clicking the Insert Row or Insert Column button repeatedly, until they finally have all the rows or columns they need. If they only knew that they could insert multiple rows or columns at once, how much richer their lives would be! (Well, maybe not richer, exactly, but certainly less DULL.) To insert multiple rows into a table at once: 1. Select the rows currently in the position of the rows you want to add (so if you want to insert a new second, third, and fourth row to your table, select the second, third, and fourth rows). 2. Right-click the rows. 3. Choose Insert Rows from the shortcut menu. Word inserts the new rows and moves the selected rows down to make room for the new ones. To insert multiple columns at once: 1. Select the columns currently in the position of the columns you want to add. 2. Right-click the columns. 3. Choose Insert Columns from the shortcut menu. Word inserts the new columns and moves the selected columns to the right. EVEN YOU CAN DRAW A LINE Admit it--you've never been able to draw. When you were in grade school, the teachers thought your stick people were four-letter words; now, when you play Pictionary, your friends elect you as timekeeper. Well, we have news for you: If you have Word 97, even you can draw beautiful straight lines, lines that would make Mondrian proud. AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TYPE. - To draw a straight line across your page, type five dashes (-) and press Enter. - To draw a double line across your page, type three equal signs (=) and press Enter. - To draw a heavy line across your page, type three underscore lines (Shift + -) and press Enter. - To draw a lovely wavy line across your page, type three tildes (~) and press Enter. - To draw a triple line across your page, type three pound signs (#) and press Enter. - To draw a dotted line across your page, type three asterisks (*) and press Enter. (Note that you have to type these characters at the START of a new line for these little tricks to work.) People still won't be fighting to get you on their Pictionary team, but at least you can finally express yourself artistically. FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE GETTING INTO Remember all the hullabaloo over Windows 95's LONG FILE NAMES? "Yes," we were told, "now you can create file names up to 256 characters long--so you'll always know what's in any file." Of course, these folks forgot one important detail: The File Name boxes in most programs' Open dialog boxes don't display anywhere near the full 256 characters, which means it's still pretty easy to open the wrong file. However, you can preview the file BEFORE you open it: 1. Choose File + Open. 2. At the top of the Open dialog box, click the Preview button (it's the eighth button from the left, or second from the right). The dialog box splits into two panes. 3. In the left pane, select the file you think you want to open; in the right pane, Word shows the selected file's contents. You can scroll through the entire text of the document, if you like. 4. When you find the file you want to open, click Open. Note that Preview doesn't display pictures. You can't have everything. LIKE SHAPES? Do you draw LOTS of AutoShapes in your Word documents? Are you as likely to draw an AutoShape in a document as you are to type a sentence? Don't worry--you're not alone. And just because you're visually oriented, you shouldn't be made to suffer by having to click through several layers of the drawing tools every time you want to draw a particular AutoShape. Why not drag the AutoShape toolbar you use most often to a permanent position under the menu--along with the OTHER toolbars you use most often? Here's how: 1. On your Drawing toolbar, click AutoShapes. 2. From the Menu, select a type of AutoShape: Lines, Basic Shapes, and so on. 3. When the shape palette appears, click the gray bar at the top of the palette and drag the palette to the top of the screen, under the menu with your other toolbars. Now your AutoShape palette is always accessible, even if you hide your Drawing toolbar. DON'T ENOUGH THINGS SIT ON A WHITE BACKGROUND? You've added a picture to your Word document, and it certainly is lovely. But for some reason, it's not quite lovely enough--it just doesn't add the kind of oomph you want it to. What can you do? We humbly recommend that you look first at the picture's background: It's white, just like the rest of the paper. Why not color it, so that the background stands out from the paper and the picture within it stands out against the background? 1. Right-click your picture and choose Format Picture from the shortcut menu. 2. Click the Colors and Lines tab. 3. Under Fill, click the Color drop-down palette and select a color. (Note: Select one that contrasts with the colors or shades in your picture.) 4. Click OK. Now there's a picture that stands out. After all, if your pictures DON'T attract attention, somebody might actually read what you've written. And that can only mean more work. JUSTIFY YOUR PAGE No, we're not suggesting that you need to explain the very existence of your Word 97 page. What we're talking about here is VERTICAL PAGE LAYOUT JUSTIFICATION--which means that you can set Word 97 to space the lines of text evenly on your page so that the lines, no matter how few (actually, you have to have more than one line), fill out your page from top to bottom. Here's how it works: 1. Choose File + Page Setup. 2. In the Page Setup dialog box, click the Layout tab. 3. Under Vertical Alignment, select Justified. 4. Click OK. While this technique probably isn't very useful for longer documents, it's a great way to arrange text in single-page documents such as certificates, flyers, and cover pages. We hope you put it to good use. JUSTIFY A SINGLE LINE Sure, you've justified paragraphs. But have you ever tried to justify a one-line paragraph? It doesn't work, does it? The reason is that the justification command is designed to justify all but the last line of a paragraph. And if the paragraph is just one line long, well, that line is the last line. So to get Word to justify a one-line paragraph, you have to TRICK it into thinking that line is, in fact, NOT the last line in the paragraph. We figured out a way to do this, as follows: 1. Press Ctrl + J (to use justified text). 2. Type the line of text you wish to justify. 3. Put the insertion point at the end of the line and press Shift + Enter. Amazing--Word justifies the line! That's because Shift + Enter inserts a non-paragraph-ending return (also called a "soft" return). As far as Word knows, that line is NOT the last line in the paragraph. Now if you could only trick Word into whitewashing your fence. GET MORE FROM YOUR TOOLTIPS We all love ToolTips--those little explanations that pop up whenever you hold your mouse pointer over a toolbar button. (In fact, ToolTips are the only way we'd ever know what some of those buttons do.) But did you know you can make your ToolTips even more informative by setting them to display the keyboard shortcut that corresponds to the button? Here's how: 1. Right-click any toolbar button and choose Customize from the Shortcut menu. 2. In the Customize dialog box, click the Options tab. 3. Select Show Shortcut Keys in ScreenTips. (Why do they say "ScreenTips" instead of ToolTips? Who knows. We can't see into the minds of the folks who created Word, and we're not sure we'd want to even if we could.) 4. Click Close. Hold your pointer over a button; if the button has a keystroke shortcut counterpart, you see it in the ToolTip. (If it doesn't have a keystroke shortcut, you don't see it--proving that the reasoning of Word creators isn't completely unfathomable.) SPREAD THE WORD Last time, we showed you how to trick Word into justifying one line of text. Today, we offer instruction in another bit of deception: How to trick Word into justifying a SINGLE WORD (so that the word's letters spread evenly from one margin to the other). Here's how you do it: 1. Press Ctrl + J (to activate justified text). 2. Type the word you want to justify, inserting a space after each character. But DO NOT type a space after the last character. 3. With the insertion point at the end of the word, press Shift + Enter. Again-isn't that amazing? Word spreads the word (Get it? "Spreads the word"? Isn't this whole tip falling together for you now?) from one margin to another. This technique is great for creating titles and report covers--and it also works within a text frame! Knock yourselves out. WE REVISIT AN OLDIE BUT GOODIE Recently we received a note from Dummies subscriber Peter Ngo, who asked, "How can I switch between different open documents in Word without using the mouse?" In one of the very first Word 97 for Dummies tips, we pointed out that you can press Ctrl + F6 or Alt + F6 to cycle through your open Word documents--but that because of the locations of these two keys on today's keyboards, using the mouse is probably faster. Well, because of Mr. Ngo's letter--and countless others on this topic--we've come up with a better solution: You can assign a NEW, EASIER-TO-REACH keystroke shortcut to the task. Here's how: 1. Right-click any toolbar and choose Customize from the pop-up menu. 2. Click the Keyboard button. 3. Under Categories, select Window and Help. 4. Under Command, select Next Window. 5. Put the cursor in the Press New Shortcut Key box and then press a keystroke combination you'd like to use to switch windows (Alt + W, for example). 6. Click Assign and then click OK. From now on, your new keystroke combination flips you through your open Word windows. As Mel Allen used to say, "How about THAT?" A LITTLE VARIETY, PLEASE... Most Word 97 users like the fact that the Columns button--on the Standard toolbar--lets them divide the page into as many as six columns of EQUAL WIDTH. But not you. Nothing scares you more than the sight--or even the thought--of uniform, regimented columns. You see their equal widths as part of a plot to remove all personality and diversity from columns, to deny them their individuality, to make them conform to some devious "column eugenics" being masterminded by forces far more powerful than we can imagine. Time for some fresh air, Conspiracy Breath. But before you step outdoors, note that you can change your Word columns to any size you like, as follows: 1. Choose Format + Columns. 2. Under Width and Spacing, find the column you want to adjust; then under Width, enter the exact width you want that column to be. (Note that Word automatically, and equally, adjusts the widths of the other columns so that they all fit snugly between the margins). 3. Repeat step 2 to change the width of any other columns. 4. Click OK. Once again, individuality triumphs. But you still won't rest until you find out who's cloning Pringles potato chips. OUT, DAMNED ITALICS Hey, italics are great for emphasis--if used sparingly. But sometimes, well, people get a little out of hand, putting just about everything in italics (Stephen King, this means you!), so that by the time you finish reading the document you're leaning several degrees to your right. Wouldn't it be nice, then, if you could replace all the italics in a document with regular text, in one fell swoop? Well, you can--using none other than Word 97's standard Find and Replace function. Here's how: 1. Position your cursor at the very beginning of your italics-littered document. 2. Choose Edit + Replace from the menu (or press Ctrl + H). 3. Click in the Find What box and then press Ctrl + I (for "italic"); the words "Format: Italic" appear under the box. 4. Click in the Replace With box and press Ctrl + I TWICE. The words "Format: Not Italic" appear under the box. 5. To eliminate ALL the italic text in the document, click Replace All. To eliminate selected italic text, click Find Next until Word selects the text you want to change; then click Replace to change it. 6. When you're finished, click Close. As you've probably guessed, you can use this same technique to eliminate or change other attributes in your document.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LETTER--BUT NOT SUCH A GOOD ANSWER May 29th, 1998 Another Dummies Daily subscriber, Sam, writes, "I know there is a way to select several sections of text at the same time, but I can't remember how to do it. Can you help?" Uh, Sam, we're afraid we can't. You're probably confusing Word 97 with Excel, which lets you select several unconnected cells or ranges by holding down the Ctrl key and then selecting each cell or range. But Word offers no such capability, maybe because all the selection "bonus" keys have already been assigned: - Hold down the Ctrl key while you select, and Word selects text one sentence at a time. - Hold down the Alt key while you select, and Word lets you select blocks of text on the page irrespective of words, lines, or even characters. - Hold down the shift key while you select, and although you can select text from the insertion point to the next place you click, you cannot select unconnected blocks of text.

Wish we had a better answer; there just isn't one.

LABEL FONT TRICKS May 28th, 1998 Recently, a very sharp Dummies Daily subscriber, identifying herself only as "Charlene," wrote, "I appreciated your tip on changing fonts on envelopes but can't figure out how to change the label font. Is there a way?"--or words to that effect. Well, a way does exist to change the label font--but it's not as simple as the "press the Font button" technique that you use with envelopes. Do the following: 1. In your document, select one of the following: the address you plan to put on the label, the Merge Fields you plan to use on your labels, or the first line of text in the document. 2. Using the Font selector on the Formatting toolbar, select the font you want to use in your labels; if you want to use a different font size on your labels, change that too. 3. Choose Tools + Envelopes and Labels. 4. In the Envelopes and Labels dialog box, click the Labels tab. 5. Your label text appears in the same font you used to format the selected text. Continue to process your labels as usual. Unfortunately, this is the only way we can find to change label fonts. If you change your mind after executing the Envelopes and Labels command, you have to escape out of the dialog box and start all over again.

MORE ON REPLACING ATTRIBUTES May 27th, 1998 Yesterday, we gave you kind of a "smarty-pants" way to replace attributes in a document--"smarty-pants" because it requires you to actually remember the keystroke shortcuts for the attributes you want to find and replace. Well, today we offer the "dunce-pants" method. Suppose you want to replace all the bold text in your document with, say, double-underlined text--and you can't remember the keystroke shortcuts for bold or double-underline. Word gives you an easy way to replace formatting attributes, even if you can't remember necessary keystrokes: 1. Position your cursor at the very beginning of your document. 2. Choose Edit + Replace from the menu (or press Ctrl + H). 3. Click in the Find What box. 4. Click More and then click Format. From the drop-down list, click Font. 5. In the Font dialog box, under Font Style, select the attribute you want to replace (in our example, you'd select Bold); then click OK. 6. Click in the Replace With box and then click Format and then Font. 7. In the Font dialog box, select the attribute you want use instead (in our example, you'd select Double from the Underline drop-down list); then click OK. 8. To replace all the specified formatting, click Replace All. To change selected formatting, click Find Next until Word selects the text you want to change, and then click Replace to change it. 9. When you're finished, click Close.

WHAT POTSIE WOULD TELL YOUR TEXT TO DO June 1st, 1998 Word lets you do lots of things to attract attention to your text. You can bold it, italicize it, underline it, color it, make it bigger, and so on. But how many of you out there in cyberland know that in addition to all this, you can rotate text, too? Of course, to do this you have to create a text box. But don't let that scare you: 1. Choose Insert + Text Box. 2. Using the cross-hair pointer, draw a box where you'd like your rotated text to appear. 3. Type your text in the text box. 4. On the Text Box toolbar, click the Change Text Direction button (the last button on the right) until the text is rotated the way you want. (NOTE: Word only rotates text in 90-degree increments; sorry.) 5. Adjust the size of the box to fit your text. Don't get our reference to "Potsie" in this tip's headline? Don't be sad--it just means you'll probably live longer than we will.

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