Topic: Tools

The following are additional topics related to the category listed above. A bracketed number after the topic indicates how many articles are related to that subject.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding an Equation Editor Tool Add Equation Editor to the Word Toolbar. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Auto Creation of an Acronym List If you use a lot of acronyms in your documents, you may want a quick way to compile those acronyms and their definitions into an appendix. This tip provides several different approaches you can use to creating just such a helpful addition to your document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Automatic Scrolling One of Word's undocumented commands is the really cool AutoScroll command. This tip explains how to add it to your toolbar and then how to use it to navigate quickly through a document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Automatically Saving Versions Setting up the Versions function to save a copy each time the document is closed. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

AutoText Entries Don’t Stick AutoText can be a great tool, but it is of little worth if you can’t get Word to remember the AutoText entries you create. This tip examines some of the things you can check out if your AutoText entries disappear each time you restart the program. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Breaking a Document Link Word allows you to link external information into your documents. If you no longer need to maintain the active link, you can easily break the link by just a mouse click or two. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Can't Place Merge Field In Header Of a Catalog Merge Document Word can perform several different types of mail merge operations, and the type you choose can affect how you are able to use merge fields in the merge document. This tip explains how catalog merges are different from other types of merges, and how that affects placing merge fields in a header or footer. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Changing an AutoShape Got an AutoShape you previously added to a document, buy you now want to change to a different shape? You can change AutoShapes at will, using the techniques described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Changing Between English Variants What is the easiest way to switch between English spelling variants in a document? This tip examines a couple of ways you can handle the desired conversion. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Changing Document Links If your document contains links to information in other documents, you can modify the source document that is linked to without actually getting rid of the link. This is done by using the Links dialog box, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Changing Label Printing Order When creating labels during a mail merge, the labels on a page are filled out from left to right and top to bottom. If you want the fill order to be different, you must make some changes to your data or use one of the other workarounds in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Changing the Office Assistant How to change the Office Assistant character in Word. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Changing to UK English Understanding how Word uses the Language settings. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Chapter Numbers in Indexes and TOAs Word allows you to define prefixes for page numbers. These are often used for chapter or section numbers in a large document. Getting these prefixes to appear in all the places you want them can, at times, be tricky. This tip provides a step-by-step way to make sure they are included. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Checking for Commonly Confused Words Word will check your document for Commonly Confused words to ensure the proper verbiage is used. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Comments In Text Boxes If you use text boxes in your documents, you may sometime want to place a comment in the text box, the same as you can do with text not in the text box. Word doesn’t allow you to add comments to text boxes, but there are a couple of workarounds you can use to get the same result. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Comparing Document Versions If you’ve got two separate versions of the same document, you’ll undoubtedly want to compare the two so you can figure out where the differences are. Word provides a way you can check for differences between versions, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Converting a Text Box to a Frame These days, most people using Word know what text boxes are but have no idea about frames. Yet, for some purposes, frames are a better choice. This tip focuses on how to convert an existing text box into a frame. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Counting Characters in Text Boxes When you do a word count, the value that is returned does not include any text contained in text boxes. This may not be a significant problem, unless you have a large amount of text in those boxes. This tip discusses ways you can deal with this issue. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Counting Document Lines Determine how many lines there are in your documents. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Creating a Normal Index Adding an index to a document is an easy task. There are a couple of ways you can do it, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating a Quick Letter Some versions of Word provide a handy wizard that is helpful in creating basic letters quickly and easily. This tip discusses the Letter Wizard and how you can use it. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Creating an Executive Summary Word includes an “executive summary” tool that allows you to automatically summarize a document. This tool provides a great starting place for creating almost any summary. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating an Index Entry In order to create an index, you first need to create the entries that will be used to compile the index. Here’s how you do that. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating an Index Entry for a Range of Pages Putting together an index for your documents can be challenging, but Word provides some great tools to make the task easier. If you want to create index entries that span a range of pages, you need to do it using bookmarks, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating Custom AutoText Categories Want to categorize your AutoText entries? You can easily do so using the techniques described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Creating Custom Labels There is a whole passel of labels pre-defined in Word. You are not limited to this passel, however; Word allows you to define the layout of almost any label you can think of. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating Files with Mail Merge When you use mail merge to create a document that incorporates all your data source records, you end up with a large document that is divided into sections. You can use a macro to easily split such a document into individual files, one for each data record. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Creating Labels Using Word to create and print labels is a snap. All you need to do is provide the text you want on the labels, pick a type of label, and then format the text to best fit the label you chose. This tip shows how to do it all, step by step. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Cross-Referencing Index Entries You’ve probably seen an index where an entry says something like “Obsidian: See igneous rock.” This sort of cross-reference is easy to create using the indexing tools that Word provides. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Curving Text Around the Edge of a CD Word works great with text, but not so great if you need to do some specialized things with the text, such as printing it on a curve. This tip discusses some of the options you can follow when trying to print text on CD and DVD labels. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Default Envelope Margins When you create envelopes in Word, you may want to adjust where the return address and main address are printed. Doing so is not as easy as you might desire, but it can be done. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Deleting All Comments Got comments in your document? Want to get rid of them all? The easiest way to do so is going to depend on the version of Word you are using and the complexity of the document you are editing. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Deleting an Old Document Version How to go about deleting old Versions of a Word document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Deleting Index Entries When you construct an index you need to insert all sorts of index fields throughout your document. If you want to later remove an index entry, you need to delete the field for that entry, as described here. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Disappearing AutoText Entries Some detective work on disappearing AutoText entries in Word. Microsoft Word versions: 2000

Displaying Quick Document Statistics Need to see how many pages, words, paragraphs, or lines are in your document? Word makes it easy to retrieve such information. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Embedding an Excel Worksheet How to place Excel data into a Word document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Equation Editor Font Color If you want to change the color used by the Equation Editor, you may be out of luck. In fact, the best solution may be to upgrade to MathType, instead. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Filtering a Discussion See exactly what you want to see during your Discussion. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Finding Changes by Editor Creating a Macro to find changes made by different editors. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002

Fonts in WordArt Ensuring the proper fonts are available for WordArt. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Getting Rid of Blank Labels in a Filtered Merge If you are filtering a mail merge in Excel, and you get blank labels in the printout, chances are good that something is going wrong. (Filtering should suppress those blank labels.) This tip provides some guidance on what you should look for in your merge document to get the desired results. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Getting Rid of Fields Inserted by Third-Party Programs Third-party programs can be used to affect a document and change what is contained therein. Of course, getting rid of what those programs add to a document can be a challenge, as discussed in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Getting Rid of the Office Assistant How to turn off the Office Assistant in Word. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Handling Long Lines In Address Labels When creating address labels using Word’s mail-merge feature, some of the information you merge may be too long for a single line on the label. This tip explains how you can edit or format those long lines so they look better. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Hyperlinks in an Index How to establish a hyperlink between an index and the text in a Word document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Ignoring Punctuation in Names If you have a word that includes punctuation as part of the word itself, then you may be frustrated by how Word treats that word when checking spelling and grammar. Here’s how you can get Word to ignore the punctuation. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Importing AutoCorrect Entries The AutoCorrect feature in Word is quite handy, but getting a lot of entries into the feature can be tedious. This tip provides a macro that will allow you to enter entries quite a bit faster. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Improper Index Page Numbers If you use Word to index a long document, double-check to make sure that the pages mentioned in the index are the correct pages. If you notice a discrepancy, it may be due to how you have hidden text handled in the document. This tip walks you through figuring out what is wrong and fixing it. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Improper Index References When indexing a document, you may get some funny results once in a while. If you get single index entries when you were expecting multiple ones, the reason could be because of the way you have your pages numbered. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Inconsistent Adding of Words to a Custom Dictionary Custom dictionaries are a great way to adapt the spelling and grammar checkers to your needs. If you find that Word isn’t adding words to the custom dictionaries consistently, here’s some things you can check to correct the situation. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Increasing Envelope Address Lines Envelopes in Word are created through the use of styles that define specific elements of the envelope, such as return address and recipient address. You can modify the space allocated for these addresses by modifying the styles used by Word. This tip explains how easy it is to do this task. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Indexing a Range of Pages After you get your document ready for indexing by inserting index fields throughout it, you may want to index only a portion of the whole. You can do this by using the INDEX field with an optional switch that limits the index to a range of text. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Indexing Based on a Range of Letters Word provides many options for creating indexes. One option allows you to specify that the index contain only entries that begin with a range of letters that you define. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Inserting a Sound File in Your Document Got an audio file you want to insert in your document? It’s easy to do when you use the Object dialog box, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Managing the AutoCorrect List If you need to delete all the entries in your AutoCorrect list, the easiest way to do so is with a macro. This tip describes just such a macro. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Merging Only a Date from Access When you are merging data from an Access database, you may get more information than you want, especially when it comes to times and dates. There are two potential solutions to this problem, both of which are detailed in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Only Showing Readability Statistics Perform a grammar check, and Word displays some statistics that represent an analysis of your words. By writing a macro you can access these statistics and display whatever part of them you want. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Pop-up Windows in Word Want to add a small pop-up window over a word in your document? There is no way to do this directly in Word, but you can use the Web features of the program to simulate such a feature. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing a Discussion There are times you may have to work offline. Here is how to print out your discussion. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Quickly Accessing Spelling and Grammar Options Do you need to change the options by which Word checks your spelling and grammar? Here’s a quick way to display the necessary dialog box without the need to traverse the menus. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Randomly Resetting Numbering Using automatic numbering—such as numbered lists—can be a hit-and-miss proposition in Word. Some people use them just fine, while others run into lots of problems. This tip explains some other workarounds you can use to implement numbering that is more reliable. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Recovering Corrupt Document Files with StarOffice A possibility to try if you have a corrupt document. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Refreshing the Discussion To keep up with the Discussion, you will need to refresh the comments to make sure you are in-the-know. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Removing All Bookmarks Got a file that has a bunch of bookmarks you no longer need? Removing them manually can quickly get tiresome. This tip includes a short macro you can use to remove the bookmarks very, very quickly. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Safely Relocking Forms In order to use a form in Word, it must be protected. This means that you cannot make any changes to the form, even if you need to. If you unlock the form to make changes, then when you relock it, the data in the form is wiped out. This tip provides a solution you can use to safely relock your forms without losing data. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Select All Changes By a Particular Reviewer If you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003, and you’ve been tracking changes in a document, you can display all the changes made by individual editors. This tip shows how easy such a task can be. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003

Setting the AutoRecover Directory When you are using Word, it normally saves temporary AutoRecover files that reflect the latest state of your document. If you want these AutoRecover files to be stored in a certain place, you can configure Word to make that specification. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Sharing AutoText Entries in a Network Want your AutoText entries to be available to other people on your company network? Since they are stored in templates, the key is to make sure that your templates are accessible (and used) by the network members. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Small Red Dots under Addresses Does your document have all sorts of different colored underlines on it? Tracking down what most of them are can be easy, but what are those red or purple dots that appear under some things? This tip explains not only what they are but how to get rid of them. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying an Index Entry Separator One of the switches you can use with the index field allows you to specify how index entries should be separated from the page numbers following the entry. Here’s the skinny on how to get just what you want. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying an Index Page-Range Separator When generating an index, Word normally uses a dash to indicate page ranges. You can change the character used for these ranges by using a switch in the index field. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying Index Section Dividers When adding an index to your document, you can use one of the available field switches to specify how the index should be divided up. This tip details your section-dividing options. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying Sub-entries in an AutoMark File An AutoMark file allows you to quickly and easily create an index from a document. This can be a great boon for large documents. This tip explains more fully what an AutoMark file is, how to use the file, and how it should be put together. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Starting a Discussion Tips for getting your Discussion started. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Turning Off Spell Checking For some documents, you may not want spell checking turned on. There are two ways that you can turn it off, depending on whether you want to affect the entire document or only a portion of one. This tip covers both methods. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Understanding Discussions Discussions in a valuable tool for workplace collaboration on the same Word document. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Understanding the Organizer The Organizer is a great tool for, well, organizing the information stored in your templates. This tip introduces the Organizer, gives an overview of what it can do, and provides information on how to display this handy tool. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Updating Document Links If you establish dynamic links between documents, then you can force Word to update those links whenever you want. How you do the update depends on the version of Word you are using, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using AutoComplete Tips AutoComplete tips are a nice, handy reminder of what you can enter into your document with just a keypress or click. In some versions of Word, you can turn off these tips if they bother you. This tip explains how to turn them on and off. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using Mail Merge to Complete Documents Mail merge can be used to put together groups of documents that rely on common information. This tip shows how mail merge could be used to make your document generation easier. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using the Discussion Pane Tips for using the Discussion pane during a Discussion session. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using the Organizer to Manage AutoText There are times you need to move your AutoText entries from one template or document to another. Use Organizer to do this with ease. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using the Organizer to Manage Macros There may come a time when you want to copy or rename macros. You can do this quite easily by using the Organizer tool provided by Word. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using the Organizer to Manage Styles One of the things that the Organizer is great at doing is managing styles. You can use it to move them between templates and documents, rename them, or delete them. This tip shows how. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using the Organizer to Manage Toolbars The Organizer is a great tool for managing different elements that can be stored in documents and templates. This tip shows how you can use the Organizer to manage toolbars. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using the Reviewing Toolbar The Reviewing toolbar is a handy location for many of the tools often used by editors when working on a document. Here’s an overview of which tools are available and what they do. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Versions Not Saving Correctly If you use Word’s versioning tool, you may notice that you sometimes get errors with the versions in your documents. This is not uncommon in large, complex documents, as explained in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Vertically Centering Labels Want the text printed on your labels to be centered vertically? It’s not that hard, and this tip shows the easiest method. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

More Topics

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

Do You Know?

Helpful Links

Great Info!

RSS Feeds