Center for Instructional Design and Development : Technology Tips : Word



		Technology Tips Archive: Word Selecting Long Passages of Text Deleting Words Moving to the Beginning or End of a Document Adding Line Numbers Centering Text Vertically on the Page Easy text selecting techniques Changing case Format Painter Add a Line Break within a List Inserting Symbols Resize a table the same width as the page How many words are in that paper? My Toolbars are missing Show All Menu Commands in Office 2000 Applications Adding Watermarks to documents Sorting Data in a Document Selecting Long Passages of Text Do you ever have problems highlighting a long passage of text in Word. Sometimes the mouse doesn't seem to cooperate or it goes too quickly down the page or maybe the difficulty results from the fact that the passage spans multiple pages. Well, here is a simple solution: Move the mouse pointer in front of the first word in the passage that you would like to select and click Press and hold down the shift key Scroll to the last word in the passage that you would like to select, place the mouse pointer after it and click (make sure you are still holding down the shift key) Back to top Deleting Words So you're typing along and you're not really happy with the word you just used (or you made a typo). What do you do? If you're like most of us you hit backspace umteen times to get rid of the word one letter at a time. You think to yourself... Is there a faster way to delete a word? You bet there is! If the word is to the left of the cursor, press and hold the Control key and hit the Backspace key. If the word is to the right of the cursor, press and hold the Control key and hit the Delete key. For the Mac use the Command key (the apple button) instead of Control Voila! No more backspacing character by character or highlighting to delete a word. Your wrist will thank you! Back to top Moving to the Beginning or End of a Document So you have this long document and you wonder if there is a simple way to move to the end of it or the beginning of it easily. Well, mystery solved... To move to the beginning of the document hold the Control key (Ctrl) and press the Home button. Are you asking where the Home button is? Look above the arrow keys, between the main section of the keyboard and the number pad. To move to the end of the document hold the Control key (Ctrl) and press the End button. On the Mac use the Command key (the apple button) instead of Control. Back to top Adding Line Numbers Have you ever been in this situation: You are preparing a manuscript to submit to a journal for publishing consideration. The journal requires electronic submission and has specific guidelines for the document format, one of which is line numbers. So how do you include line numbers in Word? Choose File > Page Setup on the PC or Format > Document on the Mac Click the Layout tab Click the Line Numbers… button Check Add line numbering Start at - tells Word what number to start counting from From text - determines where the numbers will be placed on the page relative to the text Count by - determines the frequency with which numbers will appear Numbering - determines how each page or section is counted. Choose continuous to count non-stop from beginning to end. Back to top Centering Text Vertically on the Page Recently I completed a document that had a nice title page. I thought it would be nice to center this information on the page, not just horizontally, but vertically as well. So here I am hitting return and eying it on the screen to see if it's in the middle. Then I thought to myself there has to be a better way. And there is: Choose File > Page Setup on the PC or Format > Document on the Mac Click the Layout tab Towards the center of the dialog box is the heading Vertical alignment. Click the arrow in the box that follows to vertically align the text to the top, center or bottom of the page. Click OK and you're done. Back to top Easy Text Selecting Techniques: When editing a document, the need often arises to simply move an entire sentence or paragraph. There are quick and easy methods to select these parts of a document, as outlined here: Selecting an entire sentence Hold the Control key [on the Mac use the Command key (the apple button) instead of Control]. Click on any word in the sentence Selecting an entire paragraph Triple-click on any word in the sentence Triple-click simply means 3 consecutive mouse clicks Back to top Changing Case Has this ever happened to you? You're typing along and unbeknownst to you, you've hit the Caps Lock button. Now you have a nice long sentence in upper case letters. You could delete everything and retype it or you could simply change the case of the letters. Select the text that you want to change the case of Choose Format > Change Case... Select one of the available options and click OK Back to top Format Painter You've probably seen the Format Painter button on your toolbars in Word, but do you know what it does? Well suppose you have formatted some text on your page. Perhaps you changed the font, font size, made it bold and so on. Then suppose you have text elsewhere on the page that you would like to format the same way (see below). This sentence contains formatting that you wish to copy. What if you want this sentence to look like the one above? Well, the Format Painter allows you to copy the formatting from one object and apply it to another. Here's how it's done: Select the text that contains the formats you need Click the Format Painter button on the toolbar Click-and-drag over the text that you that formatting copied to Note that the Format Painter turns off instantly once you click on something. To lock it once simply double-click the button on the toolbar. Back to top Add a Line Break within a List All of us use lists from time to time (i.e. bullets or numbers) in our documents. For many of us, the need has arisen to add a line break (or hard return if you will) within the list and without advancing to the next bullet or number. In simple terms we want to move the next line but we don’t want to create another bullet just yet or you want to add a blank line between bullets and you don’t want to be bothered with turning the list off and back on. The example below should give you an idea about what I mean. This is item one in my list This is an addendum to item one This is item two So how’s this done you might ask. Well, it’s remarkably easy. Simply press and hold the Shift key and then (while still holding down the Shift key) hit Enter (PC) or Return (Mac). Voila! Back to top Inserting Symbols Have you ever needed to type a degree symbol after a temperature? Or needed an accent mark over your e? Or wanted to type a foreign word with the proper letters that we don't have in our alphabet? When you are typing in Word, inserting symbols is easy. When typing the word, stop when you get to the point where you want to insert the symbol or special character Choose Insert > Symbol You will see this window pop up: When you click on the character you want, it will show up larger (as shown) so you can see if it's what you need. Click Insert Close the window and go on typing Back to top Resize a table the same width as the page When you create a table, Word sizes the table to span the page width by default. However, as you customize your table's column count and column widths, the default page-width table sizing is sometimes lost. So, to resize a table so that it fits the width of the page (within the margins): Select the entire table Choose Table > Table Properties... Click on the Table tab Check the Preferred Width check box in the Size area Choose Percent from the Measure In dropdown list Change the Preferred Width setting to 100% Click OK Word resizes the table to fit the page, retaining the table's relative column widths. Back to top How many words are in that paper? Let's say you are in the process of submitting a grant proposal or an abstract for an article or presentation and you are required to stay under a certain number of words. In the old days we would advance the page in the typewriter and meticulously count words. Not anymore. Open and/or type your document in Word Choose Tools > Word Count... You will see this window pop up with everything you need and more: Back to top My Toolbars are missing! It's not uncommon to inadvertently turn off or hide toolbars in our Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Getting them back is just a couple clicks away. In any Office application simply click the View menu Choose Toolbars. When the menu expands you will notice the list of toolbars. Those with a check mark preceding them are visible or on. Simply click the name of the toolbar to turn it on. Back to top Show All Menu Commands in Office 2000 By default, Office 2000 applications (including Word, Excel, & PowerPoint) display only the commands that you use most often. Microsoft refers to this "feature" as personalized menus. Do you find this annoying? Do you oftern have a hard time finding what you're looking for simply because you can't see everything that's there? Luckily, you can turn this feature off. Here's how: Choose Tools > Customize Click the Options tab Uncheck the Menus show recently used commands first check box. Here's the result: NOTE: You can do this from any Office application and it applies to all of your other Office applications at the same time. Back to top Adding Watermarks to documents Watermarks are those faint designs you see in the background of some documents. Typically they are embedded in the paper when it's manufactured and best visible when you hold the paper up to light. But in today's digital age they can be added to your Word documents electronically. Watermarks have both visually appeal and, in some instances, utility. For example, a company logo in the background gives your document a professional look while the word "DRAFT" reminds readers that the document is merely a work in progress. Adding watermarks to Word documents is easy: Choose Format > Background > Printed Watermark on the PC or Insert > Watermark on the Mac Decide on a picture or text as you watermark (if you choose text, notice the variety of options) Click Ok Back to top Sorting Data in a Document Did you know you can easily sort a list in alphabetic order whether it's in a table or not? As long as the list follows a couple simple guidelines, it's easy. First, the list is going to sort by the first letter of each line so, for example, if you are creating a list of names, make sure you enter them last name, first name. Second, there must be a paragraph break or "hard return" after each list item. In other words, hit the enter/return key after each item on the list. If you remember these two things, sorting the list after the fact is a breeze. If there is other text in the document select only the items in the list, if not just click somewhere in the list Click Table > Sort... (even if the data isn't in a table this command works) In the dialogue box that pops up make sure it says Paragraph under Sort by and click OK (Note that you can also sort lists of numbers and dates by changing the item listed in Type) Back to top

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Technology Tips Archive: Word

This sentence contains formatting that you wish to copy.