Microsoft Word 97

Microsoft Word is one of the most popular word processors being used. This is not a review on Microsoft Word software, but there are some tips which will make your working with this word processor easier saving you a lot of time and effort. These tips were featured in one of the issues of Digit magazine. I am putting up these tips here as I feel it would be of real help to many.

Retrieving deleted text even after closing Word

You can clear text and bring it back using the spike feature in Microsoft Word. Press [Ctrl] + [F3] after selecting the text or object that you want to clear. This will delete the text and append it to the spike. To retrieve the spike´s contents and to clear it, press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [F3]. However, if you need to keep the contents in the spike after recalling them, select Insert -AutoText -AutoText. In the box labelled ’’Enter AutoText Entries Here’’, scroll through and select the spike option. Clicking the Insert button will then paste the contents of the spike. This can be seen in the Preview window without clearing the spike.

Wondering what a spike is? Well, it´s an AutoText Entry area in which Word stores deleted text. This is not to be confused with the Clipboard. Spike is available even after an application is closed, whereas matter on the Clipboard isn´t.

Shrinking documents

While typing a long document, it may happen that one or two lines of a paragraph slips to the next page. You might have wondered how to bring the lines to fit in the page. Here´s the solution. You can use the ‘Shrink to Fit´ feature to fit everything on the page. Choose Print Preview and click on the Shrink to Fit button. Now your document is more compact and you can feel happy at the thought that you´ve contributed your bit to preserving the environment by conserving paper.

Avoiding breaking of tables

The spillover mentioned while shrinking documents can affect tables also. Here´s a handy tip to keep your tables intact. Select the first column of the table; choose Paragraph from the Format menu. Click the ‘Line and Page Breaks´ tab and check ‘Keep with next´. Now you can be sure that your table doesn´t spill over into the next page.

Changing text in Print Preview

Oops! While in Print Preview, did you suddenly notice that you had typed ‘unclear warhead´ instead of ‘nuclear warhead´? Don´t bother about going back to your normal view. Just click on the magnifying glass button, and the pointer will change to a cursor. Now you can edit your document as you normally would.

Changing the default save folder

You might not want to put all your eggs into one basket or all your documents into the same folder. Word by default shows you the MyDocuments folder to save or to open files. You could modify this default Open/Save folder by making changes to Word´s File Locations tab. Choose Tools - Options and click on the File Locations tab, then choose Documents. Click Modify and specify the path in which you´d like your files to be saved or have Word prompt you to open files from.

Typing from last change

Closed a document abruptly and lost track of where you were? Don´t worry, Word has an elephantine memory. It can remember the place where you made your last change. To open a document and continue typing where you left off when it was saved, open the document, press [Shift] + [F5], and presto! you´re taken to the exact position where you had last made changes in the document.

Pasting from the Web

Are you working on a story and feel that you simply must include that nice little anecdote that you saw on the Web? Well, a direct copy-paste into your document could lead to strange formatting and unhappy colour combinations. To trash all the formatting that accompanies the copied text, select the text you pasted and press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [N] and all the formatting is removed. Basically, this shortcut assigns the default Normal style to the copied text. Alternatively, you could press [Ctrl] + [Spacebar] to remove any formatting that´s copied along with the text.

Quick select a sentence

You might want to select a particular sentence for formatting or deletion. You can select a sentence by pressing [Ctrl] and clicking on any word in the sentence, this selects the whole sentence. Also, you can double-click to select a word, and triple-click to select a whole paragraph.

Inserting page breaks

Assume you have a five-page document, and you want to stop in the middle of page three and begin again on the top of page four. What´s the easiest way to go about it? No, don´t press [Enter], [Enter], [Enter] until your paragraph moves to page four. Why not? Well, if you later add another word or sentence to page three, it will push the text on page four further down, and you´ll have to delete several of the ‘Enters´ to make things work again. The correct way to accomplish this is to click at the end of the paragraph and choose: Insert - Break and then Page Break. This will insert a code that causes a new page to start after it. A shortcut key for this is [Ctrl] + [Enter] at the end of the paragraph.

Password protecting documents

You can protect your documents by assigning a password. But you can also allow others to just view the document (and not make any changes to it). Go to Tools, select Protect Document option. From the window that pops up, choose the Forms option.

You should ideally provide a password, because the user can always go back to Tools to unprotect the document. If provided with a password, the document becomes even more secure. Now your user would be able to navigate through the document but wouldn´t be able to change anything.

Changing fonts using shortcuts

Changing the font size for a set of sentences and resizing another set can be cumbersome. You could use the keyboard to do the job of resizing instead of relying on the mouse to change the point size in the toolbar. [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [>] increases font size, while [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [<] decreases it.

Switching cases

You can change the case of the text in a jiffy using the keyboard. Press the [Shift] + [F3] combo, and the text toggles between Title Case, UPPERCASE and lowercase.

Modifying line spacing

If you change the indentation frequently, clicking on a button time and again is not the smartest way to go about it. Use the keyboard to do the same in a flash. Press [Ctrl] + [1] for single spacing or [Ctrl] + [2] for double spacing. You could also type [Ctrl] + [1.5] to get one-and-a-half line spacing.

Keyboards shortcuts:

[Ctrl] + Z :Undo.

Now this really does simplify our jobs in many areas of word processing isnt it??