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Smarter Navigation

Fifosys News Desk — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:15:35 +0000

Many Word users know that the up-and-down double arrows at the foot of the vertical scroll bar will page up and down through an open document. Fewer, however, know that the little dot icon between those arrows, called the Select Browse Object button, lets you change the function of the double-arrow buttons and of the Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn key combinations. You can, for example, choose to browse by heading, so the buttons will automatically jump you up or down to the next heading. Other choices let you browse by footnote, endnote, comment, graphic, or table.

Open the Last Opened Document

Fifosys News Desk — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:42:02 +0000

You can create an icon on your desktop that will launch Word and automatically open the document you last opened. Either locate the file Winword .exe in Windows Explorer (for Office 2003, this is typically in C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE11) or find it with the Search item on the Start menu (in the Search tool, you’ll probably need to turn on More advanced options, then add checkmarks next to Search system folders and Search subfolders).

Once you find Winword .exe, right-click on the file icon and drag it to your desktop, and then select Create Shortcuts Here. Right-click on the new shortcut icon, choose Properties, and go to the Shortcut tab. In the Target field, after the existing file path, add a space and then /mFile1. You can also assign a shortcut key if you want to launch the file with a keystroke combination. When you’re done, click on Apply. In the General tab, give the shortcut a descriptive name and click on OK.

Sorting by multiple columns in Outlook

Fifosys News Desk — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:30:29 +0000

OK, you might already know this one, but if not, it can be handy to filter emails by sorting on more than one column. Say you not only want to find those emails sent by a particular person, but also to group those that have attachments. Click on the From column heading to sort ascending (you can also click on the column heading again to reverse the sort direction). Then hold shift, and click on the attachment column (paperclip icon) to add it to the sort. You’re now grouping those emails that have attachments and that are sent by the same person, which should make it easier to find that elusive email.

As a bonus (reminder) tip, remember that when you’re viewing an email folder, typing a letter or two will highlight an email based on the field by which you’re currently sorting your emails. The same also works when viewing Contacts, where Outlook will highlight the first entry that matches what you type.

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.

Using Special Characters

Fifosys News Desk — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:20:32 +0000

Click on start then run and type ‘charmap’. This will start an application that has a selection of characters and alphabet that you will not find on your keyboard. You can then copy the text you have selected and paste it into Emails and word documents.

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.

Erase Private Information

Fifosys News Desk — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:05:45 +0000

Word documents contain hidden information that can provide clues to your identity and the identity of people to whom you e-mailed a file using Outlook. Word 97 goes so far as to retain logs of the last ten people who revised your document, often with easily extractable e-mail addresses. Unrevised versions of your text may also be hidden in your files. Microsoft has posted a Remove Hidden Data tool on its Web site, but this is cumbersome to use and doesn’t remove all identity information. Before making a Word file public, you can thoroughly clean it by opening it in WordPad (located in Start | All Programs | Accessories) and saving the file in Rich Text Format. (Word can save to RTF but doesn’t discard all the hidden information.) After you’ve saved the file, you can change its file extension from .rtf to .doc.

Fast Formatting

Fifosys News Desk — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:33:30 +0000

One of our favorite hidden gems is the Format Painter. This Paintbrush icon should appear by default on the standard toolbar. In is located on the Home menu in the Clipboard section.

When you click on this icon, Format Painter copies the text formatting of the area where the cursor is located. If you select an entire paragraph or cell and then click on the icon, Format Painter will also copy the paragraph or cell formatting. You can then “paint” the copied formatting into other parts of the document by simply highlighting text.

By double-clicking on the Format Painter icon, you can apply the copied formatting repeatedly until you press Esc.