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BOOT CAMP 139
TOP TIPS PART 3 -- MICROSOFT
WORD
Word is the world’s
most popular and at times frustrating word processor. Here are some more Top
Tips from the Boot Camp archive to help you to tame Word and make you more
productive.
TINT HINT
The bright white desktop
can become a quite tiring on the eyes after a few hours. You can of course
jiggle the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor but a far better
solution is to give your blank pages a light grey tint. Open Word (or any word
processor for that matter) and load a page of text, so you can judge the effect.
Next, from the Start button select Settings, Control Panel and the Display icon.
Select the Appearance tab and click into the area marked Window Text. Next click
on the Color box and choose the Other option. This will bring up a colour
palette, select grey or white from the block of colour options and use the
slider to the right of the multi-colour panel to adjust the level. Click OK and
if necessary re-adjust until you are satisfied with it. The tint only applies to
the display and will not affect the way documents look when they are
printed.
SCROLL OF
HONOUR
There's a hidden feature
in Word 97 and 2000 that automatically scrolls the page or document you're
watching. It's really handy for reading long documents, or you can use it to
turn your PC screen into a teleprompter or autocue, for displaying speeches and
scripts. It was originally designed to be used with 'wheel' type mice but it
works on any standard two or three button mouse. Click on Customise on the Tools
menu, select the Commands tab, scroll down the list and highlight 'All Commands'
in the Categories window. In the right hand Commands window find, single click
and hold on Auto Scroll, drag and drop it onto a toolbar and a button will
appear. Close Customise and click on the Auto Scroll button, you can vary the
speed and direction using the arrows that appears in the left hand scroll bar.
COMMAND CRIB
SHEET
Here's one for the many
fans of Word 97 and 2000's labour-saving keyboard shortcuts. As you may have
discovered there is no master list of shortcuts in Word Help and tracking down a
specific command -- there are more than 200 of them -- or finding out if a
particular one even exists, can be a frustrating and time-consuming business.
Wonder no more, here's an easy way to print out a complete list of Word
shortcuts and commands, to keep by your PC for quick reference.
Go to the Tools menu and
click on Macro then Macros. In the 'Macros In' drop-down menu select Word
Commands, now move your mouse pointer to the Macro Name pane and highlight
ListCommands, click Run and in the dialogue box that appears select Current Menu
and Keyboard Settings and click OK. A new document will open, with a table
showing all of the available commands and shortcuts. Just use Save As to give it
a name and print it out. Be warned in its raw form it runs to around 10 pages
(12pt text) but with a little judicious editing of the commands you'll never
need or use it can be trimmed to a more manageable 5 to 6 pages.
QUICK
PRINT
If you regularly need to
switch between two settings on your printer (i.e. portrait and landscape mode,
etc.) when printing from different applications, you can avoid a lot of messing
around by making Windows believe you have two or more printers. Open the
Printers folder in My Computer and click on Add New Printer and follow through
the installation procedure for your existing printer. At the point when Windows
asks the printers name change to default, Printer 2 for example. When the setup
is complete right-click on the new printer icon, select Properties and change
the settings as required. Now all you have to do is select the new printer in
your application's Printer Setup dialogue box, or simply drag and drop the file
onto the Printer 2 icon.
QUICK TEXT
In Word 97 and 2000
there's a useful hidden facility called Random Word. Every so often you might
want to create a block of text quickly, to test out your faxing or E-mail
facilities, or produce dummy text to check a page layout. You can of course copy
and paste text from another document but Random Word is far quicker. Simply type in the following: =rand() and
press Return. Word will then generate three paragraphs, each containing the
sentence 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', five times. You can
alter the number of paragraphs and sentences by inserting numbers into the
brackets. For example, =rand(6,8)
generates a text block of 6 paragraphs, each containing 8 sentences.
AUTO BACKUP
MACROS
This
Word Basic macro for Word 97 saves your current document, then makes a backup
copy on floppy disc. It assumes your hard disc is drive C: and you're backing up
to a floppy in drive A. From the Tools menu click on Macro, then Macros, give it
a name and click on the Create button. The Word Basic window opens and you will
see a flashing cursor after the words 'Sub' (and before the word End Sub). Type
in the following text, observing all line breaks:
Dim
strName$, Ini$
Dim
ch
WordBasic.FileSave
strName$ =
WordBasic.[Filename$](1)
ch
= Len(strName$) - 1
While
Mid(strName$, ch, 1) <> "\" And Mid(strName$, ch, 1) <>
":"
ch
= ch - 1
Wend
strName$
= Mid(strName$, ch + 1)
WordBasic.PrintStatusBar
"Backing Up" + WordBasic.[Filename$](1) + " To " + Ini$ + strName$
WordBasic.CopyFile
WordBasic.[Filename$](1), "A:\" + strName$
WordBasic.MsgBox
"Boot Camp Backup Complete"
To
assign the macro a button on the toolbar (or keyboard shortcut) click on
Customize on the Tools menu, select the Commands tab, scroll down the list in
the left hand window and click on Macros. Drag and drop your new macro onto a
toolbar. Select an icon using the same procedure for macro
recording.
Unfortunately
this WordBasic macro only works with Word 97. Word 2000 tries unsuccessfully to
translate it into VisualBasic, so we are indebted to Daily Telegraph Science
Correspondent Robert Uhlig for coming up with this version for Word 2000. Again
copy it exactly as is, line for line, if you want to use another backup device,
maybe a CD-R/RW or Zip drive simply change the drive letter in the line:
‘ChangeFileOpenDirectory
"A:\"
Sub
Allsave()
'
'
Allsave Macro
Dim
Pathroute
Pathroute
= ActiveDocument.FullName
ChangeFileOpenDirectory
"A:\"
ActiveDocument.SaveAs
FileName:=ActiveDocument.Name, FileFormat:= _
wdFormatDocument,
LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:=True,
_
WritePassword:="",
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False,
SaveFormsData:=False, SaveAsAOCELetter:= _
False
ChangeFileOpenDirectory
"C:\"
ActiveDocument.SaveAs
FileName:=Pathroute, FileFormat:= _
wdFormatDocument,
LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:=True,
_
WritePassword:="",
ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False,
SaveFormsData:=False, SaveAsAOCELetter:= _
False
StatusBar
= ActiveDocument.Name & " saved in active directory and on backup
drive"
End
Sub
Next week – Windows
security
JARGON FILTER
CD-R/RW
Two types of disc used
in CD-ROM recorders, CD-R is a record-once format, where data cannot be altered
once it is on the disc, CD-RW is a read/write format, where data can be added
and erased. Both types of disc can be read in most recent read-only CD-ROM and
DVD-ROM drives
MACRO
A sequence of
frequently used commands, used to automate a repetitive
task
VISUALBASIC &
WORDBASIC
Text based programming
languages used to create macros
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