You can change the background color of Microsoft Word from White to Blue.

For some people, this makes it easier on the eye as it reduces the glare from the screen.

I have to admit, I prefer blue to white but have difficulties when adding images or inserting text with different color schemes.

Anyway, it’s a nice option to have. Here’s how I do it:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

2. Click Blue Background, White Text.

That’s it!

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1. How To Change The Default Font?
2. Word 2003 Tip – How to Change the Background Color in a Word Document
3. Free Word Template – Page with Blue Border

How do I animate text in a Word Document? For example, to make dancing ants or add sparkles to the text.

1. Select the text you want to animate.

2. Click Format, Font, and then the Text Effects tab.

3. In the Animations box, click the effect you want, for example Sparkle Text.

You can preview the animation in the box at the bottom of the menu.

Only one animation effect can be selected at a time.

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Word crashed. But when you go to re-open it, it refuses to do so. What’s happening here and how do I fix it.

How to Force Word to Close after it Crashes

When Word crashes, the Winword.exe file may still be running behind the scenes. I know.

If it is running, why won’t it open? There is no easy answer to this but here’s how you can get it re-started.

What you have to do is close this the Winword.exe before you re-open Word as otherwise system conflicts may arise, i.e. you may not be able to open Word, as the system sees that Winword.exe is currently running.

To close Winword.exe let’s use the Task Manager

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL. In the Windows Security dialog box, click Task Manager.

2. On the Processes tab, click any instance of Winword.exe, and then click End Process.

3. Close the Windows Task Manager, and then re-start Word.

Final Tip

One final tip here is that when you re-open Microsoft Word, make sure that the files you were looking for can be opened.

If you have difficulty with this, please take a look at this very detailed tutorial over on the Klariti site.

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Have you ever lost a Microsoft Word file and tried to find it? You know it’s there but where is it?

Want to find where it is? Here’s how to do it.

How Microsoft Word saves files

When you write a Microsoft Word document it creates a temporary file (.tmp) that saves your file as you work. When Word crashes — even if you have NOT saved the file —the tmp file is still on your PC.

FYI: Klariti.com also explains different ways to recover lost MS Word documents.

How to Recover a Lost File in Word 2007 or Word 2003

Before we started, I created a new Microsoft Word file, saved it (which creates a tmp file) and then did the following.  This worked on my PC (Windows XP and Word 2007). Fingers crossed that it works for you.

Have to find a lost Microsoft Word file

Follow these steps:

1. In Windows Explorer, click on Tools, and then select Folder Options.

2. Click the View tab.

3. Scroll down and check Show Hidden files and Folder.

This tells Windows to show you files that are generally hidden from view.

Now we’ll look for the *.tmp files and see if this works.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Go back to Windows Explorer.

2. Click on the Search icon on the menu bar. It looks like a magnifying glass.

This opens the search pane in the left menu. We’re going to change the default settings here.

3. Click Don’t Remember for last time modified. This makes it search for every document!

Enter *.tmp for all or part of the document name.

4. In Look In, select the drive you want to search. The screenshots shows My Documents. Maybe you want to search your C or D drive.

5. Click More Advanced Options.

6. Select Hidden Files and Folders.

7. Select Search Subfolders.

8. Click Search. When I did this, I found hundreds of tmp files.

9. From the Explorer toolbar, click View, select Details, sort the files by date and click a file to open it. You may have to do this a few times until you locate your lost file. Obviously, if you just lost it, then open today’s files.

Windows doesn’t know how to open these ~wrl file types so you’re going to have to help it.

10. Click Select the program from a list. We’re going to tell is to open the file in Microsoft Word.

11. Click OK.

12. Select Microsoft Office Word and click OK.

The file opens in Word. But remember the file is still a .tmp file. If you just save it, you’re only saving the tmp file.

13. Click Save As and save the file to .doc.

Remember!

Just to recap, turn on the Explorer options to view the hidden files otherwise you won’t see the tmp files.

Remember to save the files back to a Word file otherwise they are still in tmp format and save them to somewhere on your PC. Right now, they are in the tmp folder. Put them in My Documents, for example.

Other Sites that might be able to help

Klariti.com also explains different ways to recover these lost documents. Lets start by searching for the original document. In other words: you know that you saved your document, but youre not quite sure where you saved it to.

Did you find the files?

I’d be interested to know if these steps work in XP. I don’t have it and so can’t replicate the steps.

If you can, please let us know if these steps work or how to find lost files in XP.

Related posts:

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2. Office 2003 to 2007 User Interface Guides
3. How to Quickly Reduce Microsoft Word File Size – Secret #2

The new Word Blog over on MSDN keeps cranking out the good stuff.

Scroll down this page and read the Q and A about document types.

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Q: When is a document not a document?

A: When it’s a form.

“This is another question that we spent a lot of time discussing when we started to think about building what became content controls. We didn’t just want another tool for doing online forms in Word – not only is there a great tool to do it today, but people already know how to do that in Word and don’t need another way to do the same thing.

Read more here.

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Jensen Harren has compiled the 200 or so posts he’s made since starting last September.

To make it easier for the rest of us he and a colleague created a Table of Contents of all the posts.

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“I’ve been meaning to sit down and create a kind of table of contents for all of the posts here—a starting point for people to read about the Office 2007 UI. But then, I found out that someone already did the work for me. Patrick Schmid, a OneNote MVP and friend of the Office 2007 UI, put together what he called the Office UI Bible on his blog—a fully organized catalog of many of my posts.”

This is worth bookmarking if you’re interested in the new Office user interface.

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3. Visio Hyperlink Problem in Internet Explorer 7

Visio is used by many Technical Writers and Programmers to create diagrams and flowcharts. Some of you have encountered issues involving hyperlinks in Visio’s HTML output and Internet Explorer 7. For example, clicking a hyperlink in a drawing saved as HTML from Visio 2003 results in an error that says “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site. Operation aborted.”

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Then you may want to read this post as it offers some ways to work around it. Visio’s HTML output and IE7

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If you are constantly fussing over fonts for your documents then there’s a very handy feature in Windows that allows you to quickly compare typefaces according to style and design.

1. Open the Control Panel and double-click Fonts.
2. From the View drop-down menu, click List Fonts by Similarity.
   
3. Click List Fonts… and choose a font.

This displays a list of comparable typefaces, ranked according to similarity.

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AppleBlog reports that Quickoffice submitted their app for approval to Apple and if all goes well, it could be available for purchase in the App Store sometime early next

Quickoffice let you view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files and share them over a wireless connection.

It’s a collection of three individual apps, two of which are already available for the iPhone now.

1. Quicksheet ($12.99, iTunes link), for editing Excel spreadsheets

2. Quickoffice Files ($3.99, iTunes link), for viewing a variety of files, and transferring them to and from your device.

The third application in the series is Quickword, which brings the crucial addition of Word document editing.

More at http://www.quickoffice.com/quickoffice_iphone/

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One of the things I’ve noticed while doing the Tech Writers Salary survey is the tendency for US IT companies to start outsourcing their technical documentation.
Most surprising is that the outsourcing is not going to India, which is what I’d expected but rather to Poland and other eastern-European countries, such as Latvia and Estonia.

Most of the writers are English graduates and judging the samples that they have produced, can produce quite good documentation. Some of the wording and phrasing is a little awkward— but on price they can’t be beat.

The trend towards outsourcing technical documentation seems to be a fact of life.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone in the field —that means you!—who is either working with offshore companies or has identified ways to protect their career.

FWIW – I think Programmers have more to fear that Tech Writers when it comes to outsourcing. What I’d like to know is how it’s affected your career prospects and how you can take ADVANTAGE of this situation.

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Download this popular Absence Request Form over here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC061075401033.aspx?pid=CT012261941033

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Learn how to create templates from the people who make Word! 

There are some excellent tutorials over here thatI’d recommend:

“If you want to use a building block in documents based on one template only, you need to save a copy of the template first so I usually start there. You can also add a building block to the Quick Parts for all of your documents. I included the steps for both, below: How to create reusable document parts”

http://blogs.msdn.com/templates/

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Google’s Book Search is just like web search.

If you search on Google Book Search, when Google finds a book with content that contains a match for your search terms, its displays the results. 
 
Browse books online
If the book is out of copyright, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text.

If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy. 

If you find a book you like, click the “Buy this book” and “Borrow this book” links to see where you can buy or borrow it.

http://books.google.com/

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Want to use public domain books for your own projects?

This site explains: “when a work is in the public domain, it means that the work is free to use without paying royalties.

Some people publish and sell public domain titles and make a good living out of it while other creative plagiarizers wrap their own words around the original work and get rich by re-naming the work and claiming it as their own. This is commonly known as creating derivative works.

These resources are handy if you want to read free books online or wish to publish a regular book or an ebook. It helps if you know what you are looking for.

For example, if you know that a particular title’s copywright has expired, it’s pretty easy to find it by title or author.”

Download here: http://www.ezau.com/latest/articles/public-domain.shtml

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