Tricks Make Writing Column Easier

By Kenny Williams

There is an endless supply of tips and tricks that make certain tasks on your computer both easy and convenient. Each week I sit down in front of my computer and surf the web to either come up with an idea or research a topic for that week's column. During this process I use Microsoft Word as a scratch pad to paste information that I feel I may use. Over the past few years I have come across some little known features found in Microsoft Office applications that make writing my column easier. This week I have decided to let out a few of these little gems so that you may also benefit from them.

If you use Microsoft Word you have probably had a few instances where you were editing a document and suddenly things don't look right. This often happens because you have accidentally changed the style of the paragraph or heading. This can easily happen in one of a number of ways. To check the different style names you may click various paragraphs to see their style names that show up in the Formatting Toolbar's style window. If you want to save time, you can work in Normal view and opening up the Style Area, which displays all the paragraph styles you've applied. To do this, click View>Normal (This view uses fewer resources than Page View, but doesn't display the document exactly as it will print.) Next choose Tools>Options>View and then type a number in the Style area width box. Now as you work with your documents in Normal view, you see your styles on the left. If you double-click a style name, Word will open a Style dialog box that will allow you to quickly modify the style.

Another useful trick is to select a tabbed column of numbers or a vertical piece of text. For years I thought that I had to select each item separately because I couldn't highlight just one column without the other areas. Then, one day a customer hit me in the head with an enlightenment stick and asked me why I didn't select the text vertically. They then proceeded to show me how by clicking at the beginning of the text selection and hold down the Alt key while dragging the mouse across and down to select a vertical area of text. This type of information is proof that you can never completely know everything about your computer and it is one of the reasons I really enjoy working with customers.

As I am working on my column I like to have multiple windows open with information that I can easily access. In many cases I need to access information from a table of data and I need to make some modifications to different cells near the end of the page. Because of the large number of columns, I couldn't see the column heading. This was frustrating because I kept forgetting which column I was in. I needed to see both the top and the bottom of the page. Knowing there had to be an easy solution I decided to look for it.

I soon found that Word lets you split your document window so you can view two portions of the same document at the same time. A little button allows you to access the Split Bar. It's that tiny bar just above the top of the right scroll bar. To use this feature, Double-click the little bar and a bar will appear across your document window that splits the screen. You can move the bar around to adjust your top and bottom window views. Now you can easily click in the top window to scroll up and display the table headings and also click in the lower windows to scroll down to view the end of the table so you can add more data to the appropriate columns. To make it disappear and return your document to just one window, simply double-click the Split Bar. You can also split the window by choosing Windows>Split and you can turn it off by choosing Windows>Remove Split (this option appears on the menu once Split is activated).

You can find out information on any item on your screen by using a feature called What's This? Most people know that if you see a button that you don't understand, you can hold your mouse over the button to see a little yellow tip that tells you the button name. And you can press the F1 key to get more information about the button. But if you're in a hurry and just want a little quick info, you can also use the What's This? feature. To use this feature press Shift+F1 and your cursor turns into a pointer with a question mark attached. Now click anything on your screen to get more information. If you click a button, you see a bit of information about what the button does. If you press Shift+F1 and click the What's This? pointer on your document text, you get a list of the formatting that has been applied. When you're done with the feature, press the Escape (Esc) key to turn it off.

If you have any useful tips that you would like to pass on, please email them to me. As always, if you have any questions comments or suggestions I can be reached via email at WebserverColumn@yahoo.com