How can you save a lot of time and boring repetition when it comes to formatting in Word?
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Rich-featured software often leads to headaches
Solving one problem in a writing program like Word can lead to others.
Read MoreFurther thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Frames
Further thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Text Boxes
Back in April 2014 I penned a few lines on using Word as a desktop publishing tool. On the whole it works, but, as I noted then, it does have serious limitations.
I mentioned in that article that it was impossible to use automated cross-referencing between text boxes. Since then I have discovered something even worse.
Using Word for desktop publishing
Combining different versions of a document
If you and your colleague have been using Microsoft Word, then you don’t have a problem. All you need to do is use the Combine Documents feature.
Blogging from Word
A really good blog editor is hard to find. But if you create your day-to-day documents in Word, why not use that as a blog editor too?
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Repeating Yourself
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Sorting
One nice feature of Word is the Sort feature. If you have a list, and you’d like to sort it into alphabetical order, this is what you do:
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Erase Formatting
*!@#^ #~*&%! Blast! If that sounds like you when you can’t seem to change what a piece of text looks like, don’t fret: there is a solution.
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Properties
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: AutoCorrect
Here’s a feature which you may have noticed, perhaps without thinking about it. Type a smiley face in “text speak”, ie :-), and you will notice that it immediately converts into a smiley face.
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: AutoSave
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Commenting
Making changes to a document, albeit provisionally, is something you can easily do in Review mode, which has been covered in a separate article. But that can easily become unwieldy, especially when more than a couple of people are involved: we all know the old saw about too many cooks.
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Reviewing
Here’s the wrong way of reviewing a document: make the changes you think necessary, and save the document with a different name. Sounds sensible enough, doesn’t it?
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Comparing Documents
It’s enough to make a grown man cry. You receive a second version of a document from a colleague, with no indication in the covering email about what’s changed. So what do you do? Print out both documents and pore over them till you’re cross-eyed?
No need:
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Table of Contents
When does a document need a table of contents? I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule about this, but let’s think about it from the other end: the reader. Is your document going to be challenging to navigate? Are there sections in it which people are likely to want to refer to or likely to wish to return to, and which they can’t see at a quick glance? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, I’d say that a table of contents is imperative, even if the document is only two or three pages long.
13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Outlining
Do you ever get to the point, when writing a long document, where you can’t see the wood for the trees? I know I do. Should I put that section right at the start? What would it look like if I made it the second section rather than the first? Would the whole document still flow, would the structure be wrong?
13 Things You Didn't Know About Word: Paragraph Styles
Some people really make a lot of work for themselves when it comes to headings. It seems straightforward enough: just select the text you want to use for the heading