Microsoft Word Tips, Tricks & Templates » secret

How to Add Special Effects to your Next Business Report

Editor — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:16:05 +0000

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.

How to Improve Readability on Laptops and HD Flat Panel Displays

Editor — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:03:00 +0000

If you use a laptop to write, then get this free download from Microsoft. It gives you improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays, such as laptops and flat panel displays. Readability on CRT screens can also be improved.

Tip: Use this online tuner to turn on and tune your Windows XP ClearType settings. If you experience problems download the Windows XP PowerToy version of the tuner. The online tuner does not currently work with Windows Vista.

ClearType improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens and flat panel monitors. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper.

ClearType works by accessing the individual vertical color stripe elements in every pixel of an LCD screen. Before ClearType, the smallest level of detail that a computer could display was a single pixel, but with ClearType running on an LCD monitor, we can now display features of text as small as a fraction of a pixel in width. The extra resolution increases the sharpness of the tiny details in text display, making it much easier to read over long durations.

Get ClearType and read more here.

5 Tips for Keyboard Fanatics & Time Poor Tech Writers

Editor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:30:24 +0000

Donationcoder continue their excellent series of products with TapTap Hotkey Extender, a tiny super-efficient tray-based utility (under <100k) for keyboard fanatics.

It monitors hotkey combinations not supported by most programs (e.g. like doubletap right shift key). When such hotkey combinations are detected, TapTap will simulate a normal hotkey that the user has configured.

In this way, you can configure any of your programs to respond to these extended hotkey events as if they supported it natively.

For Example:
You might have a program which normally triggers on Alt+Ctrl+F5, but you want to configure it to trigger with a double tap of the right control key. You can use TapTap to detect Right Control Doubletap events, and send a Ctrl+Alt+F5 when it does. In this way, you can control your programs the way you want to, and they never know the difference.

TapTap Hotkey Extender is written in lean and mean C++ and highly optimized for insignificant cpu/memory access. It makes no changes to any system files and is completely safe. Comes with an installer but you can unpack the download manually and run it without installing.

Download it here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/TapTap/index.html

New Wikipedia of Organization Charts

Editor — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:44:15 +0000

No Inc have taken AJAX and “Web 2.0-ness” to create CogMap, which is a terrific Wikipedia of organization charts.

Their own site is an organization chart wiki! This means that it is a collection of organization charts online that anyone can edit, add to, and help maintain.

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CogMap is a tool for sales people, entrepreneurs, and recruiters to understand organizations and keep information up to date. If you are like us, you had some of these things happen to you:

Worked at a company without a published organization chart and had no idea who worked for anyone else
Tried to figure out who to call at a company and come up empty
Bought a list of people to call and had all the information be wrong
Met people that all had different titles and been unable to tell who was the decision-maker in the room!

There are several demos over here http://www.cogmap.com/help.php including one on Microsoft.

How to Quickly Reduce Microsoft Word File Size – Secret #1

Editor — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:13:26 +0000

Ever had your Microsoft Word file explode from 1MB to 10MB in just a few minutes? In the tech writing world, Microsoft Word tends to get a bad rap.

One of the arguments put against Word is that its fairly unstable and prone to creating ‘horrors’, such as bloating in size until your (Microsoft!) operating system grinds to a halt.

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Compared with Adobe FrameMaker, this is true. FrameMaker is very stable, BUT can be awkward to use. Not even cut and paste…

I’ll admit it! I prefer Microsoft Word any day.

Bloated file sizes are a real problem. No-one will deny this. But, in the course of creating some long documents in MS Word, I’ve learned a few small secrets.

And these small secrets are guaranteed to save you ALOT of time.

The first offender is Bullet Lists. If there is one thing that’s guaranteed to destroy Word, its bullet lists.

Here’s what tends to happen.

When you click on the Bullet List from the Word toolbar, Word ‘points’ this Bullet List to the Normal.dot file.

In other words, it uses the default settings in the Normal.dot and applies these settings. Fine. No problem!

But… if you then cut and paste a Bulleted List from another document into your working file, Word gets very confused.

“What Normal.dot file do I now link to?”

AND, if you then use a special bullet style, it has a nervous breakdown…

What happens? Suddenly, your machine starts to grind while Word struggles to resolve this issue. And as it can’t, it crashes!

Here’s what to do instead!

In Word, create separate styles for each different bullet lists that you need, for example Bullet Regular, Bullet Indent, Bullet Square and so on.
When you need to use a bullet list, select the correct style from the drop-down menu.
If you want to import a bullet list from another document, first select the Clear Formatting option from the drop down menu (this removes all formatting) and then cut it into the working document. Then apply the correct style.

Follow these three steps and you’ll keep your Word docs happy and healthy.

In the next article, we’ll look at another way to reduce large word files.

This is our first ‘insider secret’ on taming Microsoft Word. What’s been your experience?

PS: Please drop me a line at ivan klariti com and we’ll share it online.

ivanwalsh.blogspot.com

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When is a Word document not a document?

Editor — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:33:47 +0000

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.

Review The Office 2007 UI Bible

Editor — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:25:37 +0000

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.

Visio Hyperlink Problem in Internet Explorer 7

Editor — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:40:48 +0000

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

How to update the Date automatically when you open Microsoft Word 2003

Editor — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:42:42 +0000

You can update the Date and Time in Word when you open it. There are two steps involved here:

To add a date that Word will updated automatically, you need to insert a ‘field’.

1. To do this, go to Insert, Date and Time and choose the format you want.

This inserts a field in the page which displays the time. This time, by the way, is determined by your computer’s clock.

2. Check “Update Automatically” so that it will update when you print.

The second approach is if you want to change the format of the date field or work with the other features.

To do this:

1. Click File, Insert, Field, Date and Time.

2. Select Date from the field names list and pick a format that suits your needs.

Tip: to manually force an update, click in the date and press F9.

WordPress Enter Corporate Marketplace

Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:51:15 +0000

WordPress CEO Toni Schneider outlines why WordPress have moved into the enterprise space. He highlights that, “Fortune 500 companies are discovering WordPress. They are figuring out that blogging is a great tool for fostering more open and active collaboration with customers and between employees.”

WordPress began addressing this “enterprise demand” a few months ago with our professional support subscriptions for companies who need help deploying the WordPress open source package.

He then continues by adding that ”knowing that we have little experience with enterprise sales and integration, we decided to look for a partner. Our search led us to KnowNow, a leading provider of enterprise RSS solutions. KnowNow is building an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers for their RSS aggregation tools. Given their proven ability to satisfy enterprise customers and the complementary nature of RSS and blogging, we feel that they are an ideal partner to bring to market an enterprise optimized version of WordPress.”

You can learn more over here at the KnowNow WordPress Enterprise Edition site.

20 Golden Rules For Submitting Articles

Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:22:03 +0000

The acceptance rate for many freelance writers is between 25% and 40%.

In my own experience though, I’ve had an almost 75% acceptance rate.

Oh, really?

Yes. But, it hasn’t happened overnight. From trial and error, I’ve picked up a few tricks that seem to make all the difference.

If you follow the 20 Commandments listed below, you should be able to turn your queries into paying assignments.

Here’s a suggested plan-of-attack!

1. Keep your query letter concise. Briefly introduce yourself and your article idea. Mention which upcoming issue your article will suit their editorial calendar

2. Always include 2 – 4 relevant credits and a link to your online portfolio; don’t make the Editor do the spadework!

Avoid attaching large files (e.g. massive PDFs) with your introductory query. You’ll choke their inbox! If you don’t have a website, ask if/when you can send over the PDF files.

3. Read several previous issues of the publication to get a sense of its tone and style.

4. Keep to the Editor’s original assignment spec; if you need to change anything, speak with him or her immediately. This assignment spec outlines the topic, scope and direction for your article.

5. Meet your deadline. If there is a problem, call the Editor immediately.

If you miss your deadline, you will probably not get paid, and you will certainly not get another commission.

6. Submit articles in the correct format, such as Microsoft Word. Don’t expect that they have MAC, Quark or WordPerfect. Ask the editor if you don’t know which format is required.

Be proactive in the best possible way.

7. Avoid over formatting the document. Keep it as plain as possible and you’ll save their production team having to re-edit your work.

If they provide you with a template, use it!

8. Send graphics in the required file format, e.g. TIFF files with 300dpi.

9. Whenever possible, send relevant art, charts, screen shots, tables and other graphics (with their sources) to accompany your story.

10. Include a list of sources used in the article, with names, company affiliations and e-mail addresses.

11. Proofread and spellcheck copy before submission. Then do it again!

12. Always keep your audience in mind when writing. Avoid jargon. Spell out acronyms on first reference.

13. Avoid promoting products and/or services in which you have a stake.

If you have a relationship with a vendor, say it to the Editor before starting.

14. Identify any sources (e.g. analysts, executives) that you mention. Don’t just say: “The CEO announced that…“. Mention his/her name upfront.

15. Spell out acronyms when first mentioned, e.g. that the UML is the Unified Modelling Language.

16. Define uncommon or little-used terms, e.g. virtualization; otherwise, only the technologies will know what you mean.

17. Double-check the spelling of individuals and companies, and use the name preferred by the company.

Check how to present company names, e.g. in PeopleSoft the S is capitalized. In addition, the correct term for the web portal is Yahoo! Inc – note the exclamation mark after Yahoo.

18. Avoid clichés, buzzwords and figure-of-speeches. It dilutes the impact of your writing.

19. Don’t indulge in hyperbole — i.e. listing superlative product features.

20. Send the article to the correct email address. This may sound obvious, but…

As I specialize in writing for business and IT publications, the emphasis here is on technology related publications.

However, I’m sure that if you follow the steps outlined above, you will improve your relationship with Editors — which is the first step in winning new business

Get 100 Copyright Free Articles for your Website or Blog

Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:55:08 +0000

You can print, publish, distribute, and post all articles on Klariti.com providing you include the byline with each article.

These free articles are available for you, providing you follow these guidelines.

1. Author’s credits are left intact.

2. Links back to our site.

3. Each article must be published in full. However, you can make minor edits, where necessary. Please contact us beforehand; there is usually no problem.

We hope that you enjoy these copyright free reprints, as they are an ideal way to boost the content of your website, educate your staff, and increase the quality of your products and services.

More at: www.klariti.com

Regards

Ivan

ivanwalsh.blogspot.com

Freelance Writers, Make your Articles Work For You!

Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:52:33 +0000

Submitting articles to publications is a surefire way to increase traffic to your site. It will also raise your profile as a writer and lead to new business leads and freelance assignments.
Every Wednesday, I send out 5 articles to different magazines and publications. It’s hard to determine which are the most effective, but one thing I know – when I stop submitting the articles, my site traffic goes down!

So, here are a few tips when submitting articles:

1. Make sure you have the full rights to publish the material. DO NOT submit material if you have already assigned exclusive publication rights to another person or organization.

2. Avoid promotional type articles. Don’t disguise the real source. If an Editor receives a product review this is not balanced or appears to be ‘slanted’, they will be suspicious and reject it.

3. Write your article on a topic that relates to the main readership. Don’t write an article that you think they SHOULD be interested in. I know this sounds obvious…

4. Don’t criticize a product without backing up your opinion with facts, quotes or research.

5. Use graphics to enhance your article. GIF or JPEGs are the best for web publications. Learn how to reduce their size, if possible. Try to stay under 15K.

Tip: Finally, confirm if you retain ownership of the material.

Many publications do not require exclusivity, which means that you can also publish the article on your own site. Be warned, some publications wont let you do this!

PS – Ask if you can also grant others the right to publish your article.

Take a look at what these sites offer:

Regards,

Ivan

ivanwalsh.blogspot.com

Free MS Spyware Download

Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:39:45 +0000

Get your copy of Windows Defender, a free program from Microsoft that stops pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software.

This new release features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it’s detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. It offers 2 free support incidents for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx