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Most popular Word Tips in October March 27, 2007

Looking at the site stats, the most popular searches for tips and tricks were these: 

1. how to reduce file size

2. how to create boiler plate text

3. how to create drop caps

4. how to recover documents

5. how to automate writing and formatting

Let me know if you’ve got a question about Word and I’ll try to answer you.

Ivan

Does Technology Make Manager Lazy? March 27, 2007

Technology does not replace the need for good management.

Without such management, technology can create more problems than it solves.

It’s hard to resist the easy option. Buy this customer relationship management (CRM) software, and you will efficiently and cost-effectively be able to manage your customer relationships. Buy this content management software, and you will be able to efficiently and cost-effectively manage your content.

Software does not manage. People manage. Software is a tool that can help you manage better, but it is not a manager. It is not strategic. Before you can manage customer relationships, you have to have relationships with your customers.

A person recently told me that their CRM software was great for sending lots to email offers and other marketing material to their customers. To them, this was what CRM was all about:
cost-effectively deluging (spamming) their customers with marketing and sales pitches.

It amazes me the amount of organizations out there that still believe that to create a better intranet or public website, all they need to do is choose the right content management software.
These organizations are not thinking about the quality and effectiveness of the content. They’ll employ junior people to put up this content, and then a couple of years later they’ll wonder where it all went wrong.

I’ve yet to meet an organization that has successfully implemented personalization either for their intranet or their public website. This is not because the concept of personalization is wrong. Properly implemented, it is a very sophisticated and powerful way to give customers what they want.

There are many reasons it fails miserably, however. One of them is that organizations feel that all they need to do is install this fancy software, turn it on, and, hey presto, a wonderful website emerges. No need to worry about the quality of the content. No need to worry about how well it is structured and organized. The magic software looks after all that.

I once spoke with a consultant who told me about working with the British military. Years ago, if you were becoming an officer, you were sent on a course about managing your office.
Part of the course involved learning how to manage your filing cabinet.

Then computers came along and the course was scrapped. Think about it. A computer has at least 100 “filing cabinets”. You need training in managing content far more if you have a computer. But you don’t get it because of this irrational exuberance about what technology can do.

Modern organizations are not professionally managing their content. Senior management often abdicate responsibility. They think that the Web is a technology challenge that they can hand over to IT.

Content management will become one of the key management skills of the 21st century. That’s because we live in a content-driven world.

Technology can support strategy. It can support managers as they do their jobs. But technology is not a strategy, and it is certainly not management.

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

  Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern
  http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Using Microsoft Word to Format Your Photos March 27, 2007

CyberNotes have a great tutorial on formatting your photos in Word. Lots of helpful graphics to get you on your way, too.

“Microsoft Word 2007 has made it easy for you to format your photos and make them look like you spent a lot of time adding effects.  To make use of these features, you’ll want to start by inserting either a picture or clip art.  You’ll do this by clicking on the “insert” tab, and then clicking either picture, or clip art, depending on what you want to work with. 

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2007/03/26/cybernotes-using-microsoft-word-to-format-your-photos/

Change line spacing between sentences to improve readability March 27, 2007

One of the quickest ways to improve the layout of your documents is to use line spacing.

We’ve all seen documents where the material was so densely written that you could hardly read the words? Just a huge block of words. To improve how your text looks, you can increase the line spacing between the sentences. This breathes some life into your page by giving it extra space.

to do this:

1. Select the text that you want to change:

2. On the Formatting toolbar, click Line Spacing.

3. Click the arrow next to Line Spacing, and then the size you want, for example, 2.0. 

This makes your text much easier to read and encourages the reader to approach your material.

Changing the Default Font in Word March 27, 2007

When you open Word, it automatically chooses a font for you, usually Times Roman size 12.

But what if you want Word to start with a different font? How about Arial 11?
Well, the way to do this is to change the Normal.dot file, which is the template file that controls this setting. Normal.dot is Word’s default template.

1. Open Word.
2. Find the Normal.dot file. This is usually found in the Office folder.
3. Open Normal.dot.

Don’t open Normal.dot from Windows Explorer – it will simply create a copy of the template. Changing this will make no difference to Normal.dot’s settings.

4. Change the font type and size.
5. Save the file and close Word.

The next time you open Word, it will use the new fonts you selected.

Viva FormsAssistant! - Create & Fill in Business Forms Automatically March 27, 2007

FormsAssistant is an excellent Microsoft Word add-in for those involved in creating and filling in business forms.

Working from within the Microsoft Word interface, FormsAssistant lets you create new forms, modify existing ones, and fill forms with the appropriate information. By standardizing and automating your business’ forms processing, productivity increases, printing expenses decrease, and errors become less and less frequent.

FormsAssistant saves time by allowing secretaries and data entry people to use form templates for employment applications, surveys, medical insurance paperwork, contracts, form letters, and all types of documents where much of the wording is boilerplate.

To fill in a form, simply click the FormsAssistant icon on the Word toolbar. The program keeps all previously entered values, so you can select and reuse them with a single click. When you have entered all of the data, the form can be saved, printed, and treated like any other standard Word document.

FormsAssistant costs $29.95 (USD) for a single-user license. The program comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Purchase FormsAssistant at http://www.momsoftco.com/, or download a free, fully functional 45-day trial version.

Password Recovery Software for MS Office Files March 27, 2007

Accent OFFICE Password Recovery helps recover lost or forgotten passwords for documents created in Microsoft Office applications, including Access, Excel, Word.

• Point and click mask configuration – Use the on-screen mask representation to specify the range of possible values individually for each position in the mask of password that will be generated.

• Smart dictionary-based attack – Specify parameters for modifying words taken from the dictionary, including changing the letter case, skipping characters, swapping neighboring characters, etc…

• Task Creation Wizard – Use the Task Creation Wizard to easily create a password search task The Wizard leads the user step by step through all stages of creating a task.

• Recover passwords to VBA macros – Instantly recover and restore passwords for VBA modules in any MS Office file.

Accent OFFICE Password Recovery runs on Windows 95-2000, NT4, and XP and is available up for $50 USD at http://www.passwordrecoverytools.com/register.asp.

More info is at www.PasswordRecoveryTools.com.

Sparklines - Word-sized Graphs March 27, 2007

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