BOOT CAMP 332 (29/06/04)
TOP TIPS 3 – Word
There are plenty of
excellent word processor programs on the market but credit where it is due and
one of the things Microsoft has got right is Word. It’s the world’s most popular
word processor, combining exceptional ease of use with countless advanced
features but as ever there is room for improvement. This week we have a few old
chestnuts, next week how to use or switch off some of Word’s many useful,
obscure and annoying features. All tips are meant for Word 2000 onwards, though
many of them also work with earlier versions.
This is one of our most
requested Word tips so no apologies for repeating it. If you access one or more
documents on a regular basis then you should create a ‘Work’ menu on your
toolbar, for single click access to your chosen documents. To set it up right
click into an empty area of the toolbar select Customize then the Commands tab,
scroll down the Categories list and highlight ‘Built In Menus’. On the Commands
list opposite scroll down to ‘Work’ then click hold and drag and drop it onto
the toolbar then close Customize. Open each document in turn that you want to
include on the Work menu then go to the Work menu button and click ‘Add to Work
Menu’. To remove entries from the Work menu press Ctrl + Alt + - (hyphen) and
the cursor changes to a thick bar, place it over the entry you want to delete
and click the left mouse button.
When returning from a
break editing a really long document it is useful to be able to go back to the
point where you left off. Word remembers the positions of last three changes you
made after a document has been saved and closed. To recall the edits simply open
the document and press Shift + F5, to step through the three change
points.
Typing common accented
characters in Word is easy if you can remember a few simple keyboard shortcuts.
To insert an acute accent on a, d, e, i, o or u press and hold Ctrl, tap the
single quote key, release Ctrl and type the letter. For example Ctrl + ‘ + e
gives é. To produce a cedilla press Ctrl + , (comma) + c. Circumflex a, e, i, o
or u is Ctrl + ^ (Ctrl + Shift 6) then the letter. For grave a, e, i, o, u or y
the combination is Ctrl + ` (the key to
the left of ‘1’). To add tildes to a, n and o press Ctrl + ~ (Ctrl + Shift #) and for umlauts on a, e,
i, o, u and y use Ctrl + : (colon).
Here’s another old
favourite, Word’s bright white desktop can be quite tiring on the eyes after a
while, so tone it down a little. To do that right click into an empty area of
the Windows desktop and select Properties to bring up the Display Properties
dialogue box. Select the Appearance tab to show the Desktop windows settings.
(In Windows XP you need to click the Advanced button). Now click into the white
area labelled Window Text, below that the ‘Item’ box should change to Windows,
on the same line click ‘Color’ then the ‘Other’ button. Drag the Luminance
slider on the right of the large multi-colour palette box down a few notches to
add a touch of grey to the white box marked ‘Color’, click OK and check Word’s
desktop, increase or decrease the setting to taste. Note that this change is
global and will alter the appearance of all Windows
applications.
Word can throw the
occasional wobbly and many problems are due to a corrupt document template file
called ‘normal.dot’, which contains many of Word’s configuration settings,
custom dictionary, macros and so on. Whilst Word is working normally it’s a good
idea to make a copy of your normal.dot file and keep it somewhere safe. In
Windows 9x (98/SE/ME) you’ll find it in C:\Windows\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates. In XP it should be in: C:\Documents and
Settings\<yourname>\Templates. If Word starts misbehaving rename your
existing normal.dot file to normal.old and replace it with your archived copy;
if you haven’t made a backup don’t worry, Word will create a new normal.dot,
however many of your personal settings and customisations will be lost.
Incidentally, copying normal.dot to another PC is an easy way of transferring
your custom dictionary and settings to another copy of Word, though both
versions must be the same.
When adjusting margins
or tabs on the horizontal ruler, or objects on a page, you will find the
increments are fairly coarse and ‘snap’ to a hidden grid. To make really fine
adjustments hold down the Alt key and if you look at the ruler you will see the
display changes to give a more precise reading, in hundredths of an inch or 0.01
of a centimetre.
Word has many hidden features, this one is especially
useful for designing layouts by creating blocks of text made up of ‘the quick
brown fox …’, repeated over and again. Simply type ‘=rand()’ (without the
quotes) and press Return where you want the block of text to appear. If you want
larger blocks of text put a number inside the bracket, i.e. =rand(20) will
repeat the block twenty times, if you add a comma, i.e. =rand(3,5) you can
specify the number of sentences per paragraph.
Next week – More Word Tips
JARGON FILTER
GRID
A hidden matrix of horizontal and vertical lines to which
text and objects are automatically aligned
LUMINANCE
Brightness or intensity
PALETTE BOX
Used to quickly select a colour
TIP OF THE WEEK
Here is a sure fire way to make sure that your documents,
however long and tedious they might be, will get noticed. Word has a number of
animated text effects that can make your words really stand out on the screen.
Try this, open a new document and type a word or two, highlight it and make it
really big, 36 point say, (and don’t forget Word lets you size text and
characters up to 999.5 points – in 0.5 pt increments – simply by typing the
number into the size box next to the font name). With the words still
highlighted go to Font on the Format menu and select the Text Effects tab, now
take your pick from the list, which includes ‘shimmer’, ‘Las Vegas’, ‘Blinking
Background’ and ‘Marching Red Ants’. Warning! Use sparingly, otherwise it can
get very annoying…
|