Create Screentips October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Writing, Style, Templates , add a comment
ScreenTips are those little boxes that appear when you ‘hover’ your mouse over a hyperlink. As the name implies, they usually provide a small tip, or piece of information, about the word or phrase in question.
They can be really useful when you’re writing technical documentation and want to include definitions into your text – without the reader having to revert to the glossary.
To create screentips, follow these steps:
-
Select the word or phrase that needs a screentip.
-
Right-click on it and select Hyperlink.
-
Click the ScreenTip button.
-
Enter your screen tip text, click OK, and give it a name in the ‘Type the file or web page name’ box. To test that it works, go back to the document and hover your mouse over the text. The screentip you entered should appear above the words you selected.
More Dummy Text October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Writing, Style, Templates , add a comment
Use the =rand(x,y) trick to create dummy text or go to Lipsum.com and get dummy text there.
FYI: if you’re going to use this on a regular basis, save it as an AutoText entry.
Controlling Image Placement October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Style , add a comment
This trick is very useful if you insert pictures into your documents and need to position them accurately on the page.
Click on the horizontal ruler at the top of the page. This is the ruler that shows measurements from 1 to 20.
Press and hold down the left mouse button.
A vertical line appears. You can use this for adjusting the layout of images.
While holding down the left button, press and hold down the right button.
The ruler changes to a set of precise measurements, which show the exact distance the vertical line is from the page margins.
You may notice that this leaves a tab marker in the horizontal ruler. If you want to delete this, click on the tab and drag it off the page.
Print the text you only want to print October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Troubleshooting , add a comment
You have many options when printing in Word. As well as printing the current page only, or a range of pages, you can also tell Word to print an area in the document only. Word calls this a selection.
So, for example, if you want to print the first paragraph of an Executive Summary, follow these steps:
-
Select the block of text that you want to print.
-
Go to File, Print and in the Page range box, click Selection.
-
Click OK. Instead of printing the entire page, or set of pages, you’ll print this piece of text only.
Create Underlined Spaces That Remain When Typed On October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Writing, Style , 1 comment so far
Underline spaces can very helpful if you want to tell the reader where to enter data, for example, type their name and address on an application form.
Name:
Address:
City:
The problem is that if you use a normal underline, it doesn’t work. The moment you type on it, the underline disappears. What you want is for the underline to remain where it is – even when you type onto it.
To create underlines that you can type on, follow these steps:
Press Ctrl + Shift + U and then press the Spacebar. This creates the underlines.
Type onto the underline. Notice that it doesn’t disappear.
Adding Filenames and Paths To Documents October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Style , add a comment
Instead of using field codes to add filenames and file paths to your document, you can setup Word so that it displays these in the toolbar. You can then add these links to any page in an open document.
Right-click on the toolbar.
Select Customize and then the Commands tab.
Scroll down the Categories list and click on All Commands.
Scroll down the Commands list to Web Address. 
Drag the Web Address onto your toolbar. The web address bar is now displayed on your document’s path and filename.
To add the file path to your document, click anywhere in the page, right-click in the web address bar, and then copy and paste it into your document.
Spellchecking Word’s Dictionary October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Troubleshooting , add a comment
Word lets you add words to its dictionary and to other custom dictionaries that you may have setup.
This is very handy if you’re using a lot of technical, business, or medical terms and want to avoid accepting them every time you run the spellchecker.
But, of course, you can also make mistakes when typing in these entries, which can then creep into your final draft. The spellchecker won’t find them because it thinks these are valid words.
Luckily it’s quite easy to update the dictionary and correct these errors.
Go to Tools, Options and select the Spelling and Grammar tab.
Click the Custom Dictionaries button.
Click Modify to open the Custom Dictionary.
Edit the list and Save when you’re finished.
Avoid Repeating Words October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Misc, How do I ?, Formatting, Troubleshooting , add a comment
When writing long, complex documents, or writing a document over a number of days, you can get ‘snowblind’ and end up repeating text yourself without knowing it.
Luckily there is a way to check that these repetitions don’t creep into your document. To find places where you may have repeating words, follow these steps:
From the Edit menu, select Find and then open the Replace tab.
In the Find box, enter the word you want to check.
In the Replace box, type ^& (press shift 6 to get the ^ character). This tells Word to find the word but not to replace it. 
Click Replace All.
The results tell you how many times the word has been used.
Creating Mirror Writing October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting, Style , add a comment
Thought it’s not designed to do so, you can get Word to display text in mirror style. This works best if you want to have a heading or title written backwards, for example, to make a brochure or newsletter more interesting.
To write text backwards, what’s often called mirror writing, follow these steps:
Open the Drawing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Drawing) and click where you want the mirror text to appear
Click the WordArt icon (the large blue A) from the drawing toolbar.
Enter your text, select the font type and size, and click OK.
Click the Draw drop-down menu on the Drawing toolbar (extreme left of toolbar)
Select Rotate, Flip, or Flip Horizontal and you’ll get different types of backwards writing.
Experiment with the settings to get the type of layout you want.
View Documents in Full Screen October 25, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Formatting , add a comment
It can be very difficult when reading business and technical documents on a small screen, if you have to keep fighting your way through toolbars, menu bars and other such distractions.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could look at the text and the text only! Well, you can.
-
From the View menu, click Full Screen.
This changes the screen to full screen mode. A small Full Screen toolbar floats over the text. -
Click Close Full Screen to return to the normal view.
FYI: you can also drag this toolbar to the side of the screen, for example, onto the right margin area where it stays locked in place until you exit the screen.
If you use Full Screen quite often, you might want to set it up on your toolbar so you can open it with just one click.