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Rearranging Paragraphs with Two Keystrokes

Fifosys News Desk — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:03:38 +0000

Do you need to swap the second and third paragraphs in the document you’re working on? Don’t waste time dragging text around within your document using the mouse. Just click on the paragraph you’d like to move, hold down Shift-Alt, and move the paragraph up or down using the arrow keys. Each press of the arrow key causes the selected paragraph to jump over one adjacent paragraph.

Taming Squiggles and Smart Tags

Fifosys News Desk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:23:10 +0000

Some of the features that are supposed to help you can just be downright annoying. Take those squiggly red and green underlines Word puts under words and sentences. Intended to point out spelling and grammatical errors, these are often wrong or inappropriate. To turn off the squiggly lines, choose Options from the Tools menu, select the Spelling & Grammar tab, then uncheck Check spelling as you type and Check grammar as you type.

Similarly, the Smart Tags that appear under dates, telephone numbers, pasted text, and so on can be distracting. You can choose AutoCorrect Options from the Tools menu, then select the Smart Tags tab to turn off individual features or all Smart Tag displays.

Drawing a Line

Fifosys News Desk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:14:00 +0000

You can create a line across the page of your Word or Outlook document with just a few keystrokes. Type three consecutive hyphens and press Enter to get a normal line. Type three underscores and Enter, and you’ll get a bold line. And if you type three equal signs and press Enter, you’ll get a double line.

Edit Two Parts of a Document

Fifosys News Desk — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:30:36 +0000

Are you worried about the consistency of your introduction and conclusion? A spectacular yet underused feature is Word’s ability to display two different parts of a document at the same time. To do this, you can either select the Split option from the Window menu to display a dividing line in the current window. Alternatively, you can drag down the tiny divider tool at the top of the right scroll bar. You can navigate to different parts of the document in each pane and use F6 to jump between them.

Fixing Stubborn Formatting

Fifosys News Desk — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:29:19 +0000

Ever try to fix formatting that refuses to change? You can start with a clean slate by removing all formatting from the selection—select the block of text and press Ctrl-Shift-N.

Alternatively, you can use Word’s Reveal Formatting task pane to modify the formatting. In Word 2003 & 2007, just hit Shift-F1; in Word 2002, select Reveal Formatting from the Format menu. When you click on an underlined link, an options dialog will display settings that you can modify. By checking the Distinguish style source option, you can view whether formatting was applied directly or via a style

Line Breaks without Bullets

Fifosys News Desk — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:35:26 +0000

When you’re creating a bulleted or numbered list in Word or PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear on the list without a bullet. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing Shift-Enter. The next time you press the Enter key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list. Another useful trick: In Excel, you can press Alt-Enter to start a new line within a cell.