CONTENTS OF BEND WORD TO YOUR WILL

Welcome to my notes!

Please read this section before going further

Fonts used in this document

Displaying this document

Why some headings in these notes are coloured

The Command key

If you’re using a Windows version of Word

Menus or keyboard shortcuts?

Using hyperlinks in this document

A note: Work-arounds for F9, now that it has been used by Exposé in OS 10.3 onwards

Sources of information on Word

The working preferences and tasks that influenced these notes

Configuring your Mac to minimise problems in Word

The notes

Recommended modifications to Word’s initial set‑up

First step:  Back up the settings files immediately after installing Word

Increasing Word’s memory allocation (pre-OS X only)

To control Word, first dumb it down, then smarten it up

Modify these settings to get Word to behave the way you want (well, partly)

On the Word or Edit menu

On the View menu

On the Insert menu

On the Format menu

On the Tools menu

On the Help menu

If you have Adobe Acrobat, you should get rid of the toolbar it inserts in Word

Further modifications

Language, default

Buttons, transferring between toolbars

Why is it best not to alter the default toolbars?

A new Standard toolbar

A new Formatting toolbar

Buttons, adding to toolbars from the Tools » Commands lists

Do this in each case

Adding to personal Standard toolbar

Adding to personal Formatting toolbar

Positions of toolbars

Scrollbar, horizontal, and status bar, removing from view

Menu item, adding to menu

Backing up the Normal template, other templates, and settings files

Which files to back up

More about backing up

What the Normal template and settings files contain

What to do if you have a damaged Normal template

Testing the template

Transferring customisations from a damaged Normal template

Modifications later on (in alphabetical order by main keyword)

AutoCorrect

Date and time, changing format of in headers etc

Document map

Headers and footers

To set up headers and footers

Page numbers in headers and footers

To continue page numbering shown in the header or footer, or to re-start at 1

To put a portrait-position page number on a landscape page

Hyperlinks: de-activating hyperlinks of web URLs and e-mail addresses

Hyperlinks: removing the blue underlined formatting from web URLs and e‑mail addresses

Keyboard shortcut for strikethrough, restoring as in Word 5.1a

Macros

Ordinals, removing the superscripted 8-point font (1st)

Page numbers

Page numbers, re-establishing them when they don’t show during scrolling

Section properties

Style menu, alternative to formatted pop-down menu

Styles

Tables

Table of contents, compiling

Table of contents, formatting of

Table of contents, index or other table — updating

Table of figures, compiling

Track changes, turning off

Track changes, important settings for

Track changes, using — if you really can’t use “compare documents”

Always remember this if you are tracking changes

Work menu, documents and commands on

Standard keyboard shortcuts in Word

Changing keyboard shortcuts

Assigning a keyboard shortcut to a button

My most often used default keyboard shortcuts

Examples of keyboard shortcuts I’ve assigned

AutoCorrect — a great time-saver

Examples of AutoCorrect items I’ve assigned

Using AutoCorrect to prevent Word from nominating text as wrongly spelled

Styles and templates — the keys to consistency and saving time

What are styles?

Do I need to bother with styles?

The three sets of styles in Word

Some advantages of using styles

How styles are applied

When to use styles and when to format directly

The minimum you need to know about styles

Use heading styles in long documents; don’t embolden Normal text

Use a body text style, not Normal, in long documents

Specifications for style “bt” and other styles used in this document

A few more ways to format documents better

Good articles on styles

Paragraph styles and character styles — what’s the difference?

Managing styles

Modifying the styles only in the document you are working on

Templates — convenient places to store styles and other formatting

What is a template?

Why create a template?

A template for this document

Creating a template

Attaching a template to a document

Finding / changing the template on which a document is based

Some advantages of attaching a document to a template other than Normal

Basing a style on styles in an existing document

Transferring styles

Transferring a style from another document — the quickest way

Transferring styles with Format Painter — within or between documents

Transferring styles from one document or template to another via the Organizer

Changing styles in a document then changing the document’s template

Modifying styles quickly

Restoring paragraph style

Restoring character format

A note: Work-around for Control-spacebar, now that it’s used by Spotlight in OS 10.4 onwards

And a work-around for the F12 key — snatched by OS 10.4 to open Dashboard (widgets)

Modifying via Style Area

Creating buttons on toolbars to apply selected styles and formatting

Creating the toolbar

Creating the button

Editing the button

Transferring a “non-Normal” toolbar to another template or document

Applying a style via keyboard shortcuts

Stopping Word from changing your definitions of styles

Checking whether a style has been manually modified or not

Removing manually applied formatting from a style

Removing styles from copied text to be pasted in

Stopping other people’s styles over-riding yours when they receive your document

The setting that over-rides your specifications

Three alternatives to prevent over-riding

Nowadays I don’t apply Normal style to any paragraph

Attaching a small styles toolbar to a document is helpful to my colleagues

Avoiding broken numbering sequences

Displaying style names in the style area of the document window

Printing specifications of styles

Revealing automatic and manually applied formatting of a paragraph

Miscellaneous tips and reminders (in alphabetical order by main keyword)

AutoText (formerly Glossary)

Example — creating and inserting a pre-formatted table via AutoText

Bookmarks in cross-referencing

Borders

Comment, deleting

“Comment” feature, a simple substitute for

Conversion of text from other formats when converters don’t work

“Recover Text from Any File” is a dangerous “sticky” setting

Corruption of documents, removing

Crop marks

Cross-references

Custom dictionary

Document formatting, best ways of

Document from someone else — checking and fixing formatting of

Document map — be careful before you use it

Dragging text from one document to another

Fast Saves — avoid this “setting from hell”

Field, converting to plain text

Field, showing the scripting in

Fields, updating

“Find” command — useful keyboard shortcuts

File size, keeping it small

Font size changes when you move the border of the document window

Fonts that retain the same pagination on Macs and PCs

Fractions, formatting of

Function keys, if they don’t work in Word

Graphics, source of advice on

Graphics, reducing file size caused by

Graphics, speeding up document containing

Header that shows the electronic title of the document

Header that shows the wording of the chapter heading

Header that displays the edition details, or other details, from the front page

Hyperlink to another document, creating

Hyphens, optional and non-breaking

Index, creating

Language, default — applying to text that has a different version of English

Leading (blank space above and/or below a paragraph)

Linked object’s setting — change to automatic or manual updating

Manually imposed (colour) highlights

Master documents — best avoided

“Minimum maintenance” formatting

Normal view, why it’s best used when working on a long document

Numbered headings; outline numbering

Numbering, automatic

Outline view

Page breaks, avoiding

Paragraph spacing — Word uses greater of two values for leading

PCs and Macs, main differences in Word interfaces

Print preview, advantage of

“Read-only recommended” protection

Recovering badly damaged documents

Re-formatting text obtained from the Web or other sources

“Replace” pane — useful keyboard shortcuts

Saving documents, strategies for

Screenshots, pasting directly into Word

Space, non-breaking

Symbols and accented letters, inserting

Track changes / reviewing

Transferring documents to/from other computers, especially PCs

Versioning — best avoided

Web toolbar, to stop it appearing when clicking on TOC or other hyperlinks

Windows of the same document — opening two or more

Some retrograde features of Word 2001 and later — and some work‑arounds

“Automatically update” tickbox in “Modify style” window is dangerous

Bullets

Case format limitations

Corruption in some Word 5 documents opened in later versions of Word

Dates — common variants are not easy to invoke

De-splitting the document — controlling which half disappears

“Disc full — cannot save” (the “60 saves” bug)

This template may help

Find / Replace problems in Word 2001

Font colour — quickly changing a selection

Footnotes

Spaces inserted or deleted by “smart cut and paste”

Margins — changing the size of

Print Preview — losing the place on coming out of

Scrolling is too fast

Spelling — ignoring one instance of mis-spelling

Totalling columns and other series of numbers

Appendix A: The main “minimum maintenance” features of my documents

To avoid having to manually alter your formatting before printing or e‑mailing

To minimise problems on other people’s computers (Mac or PC)

To minimise document corruption

Appendix B: Specifications for some of my styles — especially to reduce the chances of changed appearance on other computers

The advantages of including leading (blank space above or below) in styles

Leading above, or below, paragraphs?

Appendix C: Making a toolbar with buttons for a variety of date formats

Dates in “updating” format

Dates in fixed format

Dates in fixed non-standard format

Appendix D: Making buttons for formatting shortcuts

Making a new toolbar, button and macro

Making your own toolbar icons

Useful buttons and macros

View the document at 125 per cent

Paste unformatted text / plain text

“No proofing” button

Hide Web toolbar

Apply a preferred language to selected text

Add or subtract two points of paragraph leading

Prevent cells (rows) from breaking across the page

Font colour buttons

Change the font of the Normal (or another) style

Delete unwanted OLE_LINK bookmarks

For frequently used commands, a keyboard shortcut alone may suffice

A keyboard shortcut to go to the table of contents from anywhere in the document

A keyboard shortcut to reduce the leading under headings 3, 4 and 5

Appendix E: Checks before printing

Appendix F: Formatting of fractions using AutoCorrect

Appendix G: Automating standard comments via AutoText items on a toolbar