You can put Conditional Images in Microsoft Word documents, so that when a user performs one action, an image appears. This saves you having to create two pieces of text for each condition.

Why Create Conditional Images In Microsoft Word

Let’s say you have a User Guide and you want to show different images depending on what the user does. You could create another chapter and show what happens if/when the user performs one action. Or you could put conditional images into the Microsoft Word file so different images appear depending on what the user does.

Sound complicated? It’s not really.

Using Macros to Create Conditional Images

Here’s what to do:

1. Create a Style for each condition.
2. Create a macro that hides or shows that conditions on need.
3. When you insert the graphic, style it by Condition.

For example, we will create UserGuideBasic and UserGuideAdvanced and style them accordingly:

• Make two paragraph styles: UGB and UGV.
• Make two macros (one to hide UGB, the other to hide UGV).
• Make a button for each.
• Enter the graphic and style the paragraph to UGB.
• Click the button to hide UGV and make it disappear.

Next Steps

You can use Macros to all type of weird and wonderful things with your User Guides and other technical documents.

Let me know what other Macro tricks you know.

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides new technical writing tips every day. Make sure to get his free tips, tools, and templates at http://www.ihearttechnicalwriting.com/

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Portable Document Format (PDF) is the defacto file format for presenting device-independent documents on and off the Web. While PDFs have become quite popular on the Web, many PDFs used in web sites are designed for high quality print output and are not optimized for the Web.

Creating Small PDFs

The main factors in creating small PDFs are image resolution, image type (bitmap or vector), the number of fonts used and how they are embedded, PDF version, and the level of compression. In general the higher the PDF version number, the smaller the file. Acrobat 5 (PDF version 1.4) added JBIG2 compression, which is superior to the CCITT or Zip algorithms when compressing scanned monochromatic copy.

JBIG2 (Joint Bilevel Image Experts Group) encoding compresses monochrome (1 bit per pixel) image data from 20:1 to 50:1 for pages full of text. Like other dictionary-based algorithms (LZW, ZIP) JBIG2 creates a table of unique symbols and when a subsequent symbol matches one in the table, it substitutes a token pointing to the table index. JBIG2 also compresses the entire table.

Acrobat 6 (PDF version 1.5) added the ability to compress the entire file (Clean Up Settings dialog). However, since over 90% of Acrobat users have version 5.0 or greater, using PDF 1.4 is a safer alternative. Acrobat will usually display (with a warning) a more recent PDF version, but new compression schemes will spawn an error when opened in older versions of Acrobat. At the time of this writing, Adobe says that of those 90%, 50% use version 5 and 40% use version 6.

To create the smallest possible PDFs file size for the Web minimize the number of fonts, bitmapped images, and substitute vector based-graphics instead. Minimize the number and complexity of forms in your PDF document, and avoid the use of multimedia.

There are different methods to create PDFs, including outputting to PostScript and Distilling, GDI/Printing, one-click “Direct to PDF,” and dynamically on the server-side. However you create a PDF, the techniques and tools listed below can help you enhance and optimize your PDFs for the Web.

Avoid Refried Graphics

For graphics that must be inserted as bitmaps, prepare them for maximum compressibility and minimum dimensions. Use the best quality images that you can at the output resolution of the PDF. Inserting compressed JPEGs into PDFs and Distilling them may recompress JPEGs, which can create noticeable artifacts. Use black and white images and text instead of color images to allow the use of the newer JBIG2 standard that excels in monochromatic compression. Be sure to turn off thumbnails when saving PDFs for the Web.

Use Vector Graphics

Use vector-based graphics wherever possible for images that would normally be made into GIFs. Vector images scale perfectly, look marvelous, and their mathematical formulas usually take up less space than bitmapped graphics that describe every pixel (although there are some cases where bitmap graphics are actually smaller than vector graphics). You can also compress vector image data using ZIP compression, which is built into the PDF format. Acrobat Reader version 5 and 6 also support the SVG standard.

Minimize Fonts

How you use fonts, especially in smaller PDFs, can have a significant impact on file size. Minimize the number of fonts you use in your documents to minimize their impact on file size. Each additional fully embedded font can easily take 40K in file size, which is why most authors create “subsetted” fonts that only include the glyphs actually used.

Fix Fat Forms

Acrobat forms can take up a lot of space in your PDFs. You can use PDF Enhancer from Apago to reduce forms by 50% by removing information present in the file but never actually used. You can also combine a refried PDF with the old form pages to create a hybrid PDF in Acrobat.

Optimizing Existing PDFs

In many cases you won’t have access to the original document, just the resulting PDF file. Many PDFs we’ve seen are not fully optimized for the Web, using conservative settings more appropriate to high-resolution printers. For computer monitors viewing web-based PDFs, you don’t need high resolution images and exact reproduction of font faces, you just want to convey your information in an efficient way. Using the techniques outlined below, you can shrink your PDFs, while still maintaining the textual data for search engines, and reasonable quality for print output. Some webmasters offer two versions of their PDFs, once for fast web display, and one for printing.

Save As…

Once you’re done making changes to your PDF document choose File -> Save As and overwrite your existing PDF file. By default, save as removes changes that are appended to PDFs by the Save command, linearizes the file for fast web viewing, and removes unused objects.

The result is a compact, linearized PDF that displays the first page (or an arbitrary page) quickly, while the rest of the file downloads in the background. Although linearized PDFs are slightly larger, they also increase perceived speed. Note that optimizing a signed document will invalidate its signature.

By Andy King
http://www.websiteoptimization.com

More at: http://www.usedarticles.com/view/web-design-and-development/294.html

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Want to know how to Create Keyboard Shortcuts in MS Word?

In MS Word you can assign frequently used commands to a keyboard shortcut. To create a shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Right-click in the toolbar area.

2. Select Customize and click the Keyboard button.

3. To auto fix a table’s content, highlight Table on the Categories list, and then click AutoFixContent in the Commands window.

4. Type the keyboard combination into the Press new shortcut key box.

5. Click Assign.

If this combination is already in use, Word will advise you to find another combination or replace an existing one.

Did this work for you?

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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.

1. Right-click on the toolbar.

2. Select Customize and then the Commands tab.

3. Scroll down the Categories list and click on All Commands.

4. Scroll down the Commands list to Web Address.

5. Drag the Web Address onto your toolbar.

The web address bar is now displayed on your document’s path and filename.

6. 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.

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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.

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You can now download the Word 2003 to Word 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide.
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MS Word automatically creates a hyperlink when you type the address of an Web page, such as www.ivanwalsh.com, into a document. This happens only if you have not turned off the automatic formatting of hyperlinks functionality. If you want, you can also create customized hyperlinks to documents, for example, to a shared drive. Note that these hyperlinks can be absolute or relative to the Word document depending on how you setup the links. Here is how to create your links.

Before we start

The Update links on save option in Web Options is turned on by default in Word. This means that when you create a hyperlink in a Word document, it converts the hyperlink into a relative hyperlink.

What’s an Absolute Hyperlink?

• An absolute hyperlink contains the full address of the file or Web site, for example, the following address is an absolute hyperlink:
  eg http://technicalwriter.ivanwalsh.com/

What’s a Hyperlink Base

• A hyperlink base is the path that is shared by the file that contains the hyperlink and destination file.

What’s an Relative Hyperlink?

• This hyperlink contains an address relative to the address of the destination file. This address is also known as the hyperlink base.For example, a document has the following hyperlink base:
  C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents

  A document that is named “Template.doc” is located at the following file path:

  C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\SDLC\Template.doc

  The relative hyperlink to this document contains only the relative address to Template.doc, e.g.

  SDLC\Template.doc

How to use absolute hyperlinks instead of relative hyperlinks

• To use absolute hyperlinks in ALL Word docs, follow these steps
  

  Method 1: Word 2007

  1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.

  

  2. Click the Advanced Tab.
  3. Under General, click Web Options.
  4. Click the Files tab.
  5. Click to clear the Update links on save check box.
  6. Click OK two times.

  Method 2: Word 2003

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
  2. Click the General tab.
  3. Click Web Options.
  4. Click the Files tab.
  5. Click to clear the Update links on save check box.
  6. Click OK two times.
• To use Absolute hyperlinks in a single document:
  

  Method 1: Word 2007

  1. Open the document in which you want to use an absolute hyperlink.
  2. Click the Microsoft Office Button, point to Prepare, and then click Properties.
  3. Click Document Properties, and then click Advanced Properties.
  4. Click the Summary tab.
  5. In the Hyperlink Base box, type x, and then click OK.

  Method 2: Word 2003

  1. Open the document in which you want to use an absolute hyperlink.
  2. On the File menu, click Properties.
  3. Click the Summary tab.
  4. In the Hyperlink Base box, type x, and then click OK.

How to reset hyperlinks

To reset existing hyperlinks, follow these steps:

1. Open the document.
2. Right-click the hyperlink that you want to change, and then click Edit Hyperlink.
3. In the Look in box, click the document that you want the hyperlink to open. Or, type the URL address of the destination in the Address box.
4. Click OK.

How to set a hyperlink base

To set a hyperlink base for all hyperlinks or URLs in a document:

Method 1: Word 2007

1. Open the document in which you want to set a hyperlink base.
2. Click the Microsoft Office Button, point to Prepare, and then click Properties.
3. Click Document Properties, and then click Advanced Properties.
4. Click the Summary tab.
5. In the Hyperlink Base box, type the path that you want to use for all the hyperlinks that you create in this document.
6. Click OK.

Method 2: Word 2003

1. Open the document for which you want to set a hyperlink base.
2. On the File menu, click Properties, and then click the Summary tab.
3. In the Hyperlink base box, type the path that you want to use for all the hyperlinks that you create in this document.
4. Click OK.

To override the hyperlink base

Type the full address of the hyperlink in the Address box in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

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You can create a custom toolbar in Word 2003 to organize the commands you use most often or those you want to use for a specific task. The advantage of this is that once it’s setup, you can get the most from Word and not have to dig around looking for those hidden commands.

Here’s how it works:

1 On the Menu bar: 
Select Tools.
Select Customize.

2 In the Customize dialog box:
Select the Toolbars tab.

3 On the Toolbars tab:
Select the New button.

4 In the New Toolbars dialog box, enter the name you want. Select OK.

Your new toolbar appears on your screen.

5 In the Customize dialog box:
Select the Commands tab.

6 On the Commands tab you have two options:

To add a button to a toolbar

1. Select a category in the Categories box.
2. Drag the command you want from the Commands box to the displayed toolbar.

To add a built-in menu to the toolbar

1. Select Built-in Menus from the Categories box.
2. Drag the menu you want from the Commands box to the displayed toolbar.
3. Select Close.

I’m trying to figure out how to do this in Word 2007, without much luck so far. Will let you know if it gets to work.

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2. How to find the AutoFormat feature in Word 2007?
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One of the things that annoys me the most in Word 2007 is the so-called ribbon. This is the menu bar that runs across the top of the screen and hold the menu options. As well as being very different that Word 2003, it tends to get in the way when taking screenshots or when I need to get more screen space.

You don’t have to have the ribbon on all the time.

To turn off the ribbon, follow these steps:

1. Click the drop down arrow across from the MS Office button.
2. This removes the ribbon from the user interface.
3. If you want to turn if back on again, click on the drop-down and turn it back on.

Let me know if you have other questions about Word 2007 and I’ll answer them for you.

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Before you start, make sure that the Text boundaries option in Word is not selected.

FWIW: these steps worked at the time of writing but (as you may know) things change with Microsoft applications, so you may have to experiment a little.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Start Word 2003.
• On the Tools menu, click Options.
• In the View tab, under Print and Web Layout options, verify that the Text boundaries check box is selected.
• If the Text boundaries check box is selected, click to clear the Text boundaries check box.
• Remove all the Asian languages from the Enabled languages list.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings.

• In the Enabled languages list, select and remove all the languages that you do not use except English (U.S.).

To do this, follow these steps:

• In the Enabled languages list, select a language that you want to remove, and then click Remove.

• Click OK to update the language settings.

Note: You can also press the CTRL key and select more than one language, and then click Remove to remove those languages.

XXXX

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2. What are Crop Marks – Microsoft Word 2002 / 2003 / 2007 Tips
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When you open a document in Microsoft Word, margin marks or crop marks may appear on each corner of the page.

Crop marks are markers that appear in the top left and right of your Microsoft Word documents.

These are called ‘crop marks’.

To remove these, you have to disable Asian language support.

These markers often appear after you open a file which has an Asian language setting; Microsoft Office might activate this setting to display embedded fonts. It’s just trying to be helpful.

What causes Crop Marks?

This occurs if you have one of the following Asian languages turned on in Microsoft Office Language Settings:

• Chinese (Traditional)
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Japanese
• Korean

Margin marks or crop marks are different from text boundary marks. To turn on or turn off text boundaries, use the Text boundaries option in Microsoft Word.

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The bright white text area of most word processors can become a quite tiring on the eyes after a few hours. You can of course jiggle the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor but a far better solution is to give your blank pages a light grey tint. 

1. Open Word so that you can judge the effect. 
2. Click Start, Control Panel and then Display. 
3. Select the Appearance tab and click into the area marked Window Text. 
4. Click in the Color box, open the color palette, and chose the shade of grey that’s most comfortable.

   FYI: The tint only applies to the display and will not affect the way documents look when they are printed. 

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In Word, if you go to the Font Size drop-down menu, the largest value shown is 72 point.

However, to get whatever font size you like – up to 999.5 points – just type in the number and Word will update the font size.

Try it!

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You can configure Word to automatically scroll down a document.

This can be very useful for reading long documents, or when giving presentations.

To turn of the auto scroll, follow these steps:

1. Click Customize on the Tools menu.

2. In the Commands tab, scroll down and highlight ‘All Commands‘ in the Categories window.

3. In the right-hand window find and then drag Auto Scroll onto a toolbar.

4. Close Customize.

You can then and click on the Auto Scroll button to start the scrolling. Use the arrow keys to vary speed and direction.

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Originally uploaded by vormplus

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