Microsoft Special

MICROSOFT WORD Hints, Tips and Tricks

Formatting resets

You can reset all paragraph settings (i.e. anything under the Format Paragraph option) to the choices for the current style by pressing Control-Q.

In the same way you can reset character formatting (bold, italic, font, colour etc) by pressing Control-Space.

Finally, you can restore to the Normal style by pressing Control-Shift-N.

Incidentally, if you can't tell what formatting is on a particular letter, word or paragraph. Press Shift-F1 and the cursor turns to an arrow and question mark. Click on the offending text and a dialog box tells you what formatting is set.

Controlling line breaks

Fed up with names being broken across line breaks when they shouldn't, you know where it reads Simon
Walden of Centreline 2000....

You can enter a non-breaking space between the two words by pressing Control-Shift-Space in place of the regular space.

Changing Line Number styles

OK, you are using line numbering, great for legal documents and the like, but now you want to change the format of the line numbers - how? It is not under line number dialogs.

Simple, when you turn on line numbering a new style called "Line Number" is automatically created and copied from "Normal". You can edit this style in the usual way (select Format, Style)

AutoCorrect fixes the wrong capitals

Type in "C2000 Corp. does it right" and MS-Word will correct it to "C2000 Corp. Does it right". Not what's wanted.

MS-Word will autocapitalise any word after a full stop, unless the word appears in the exceptions list. "Ltd." does, but "Corp." doesn't for example.

To add additional exception words:
1) Click Tools, AutoCorrect
2) Click Exceptions
3) Select First Letter tab
4) Add your new words in the dialog box

On a similar note, there are now a number of products and company names that have two capital letters at the beginning of the name XWindows for example. Use the same sequence as above, but select INitial CAps tab instead.

Centreing text vertically

You know, you want to create a poster, or certificate and you want the text to appear in the centre of the page, both horizontally and vertically.

It can be done, but the setting isn't where you think it should be.

Select File, Page Setup, Layout.

Here you can select Top (the default), Centre or Justified.

Centre you can use for signs and notices, and gives blank space at top and bottom.

Justified stretches the line spacing so the text fills the whole page (quite nice for books and manuals).

Odd Grammar Check Warnings

Grammar check reports a warning with the old green squiggly lines, but when you do check you get the same two words suggested - no its not a bug...

Grammar check will also find two consecutive spaces between words and report it as an error, but this is often difficult to see what has happened. Just select OK and you'll see the text just pull together as the extra space is removed.

MICROSOFT BUG WARNING

Word can't save

If you get the error "Word cannot complete the save due to a file permission error" and it definitely isn't file permissions, then check Outlook.

If Outlook is running with the same folder open you can get this error. Simply reset Outlook to point to a different folder and you will be able to complete the save.

Printing unsaves a file!

Start Word and create a file with a short sentence in it and save as printbug.doc.

Now make some changes to printbug, but don't save the changes

Now, using Explorer, right click on the saved file and select Print.

You expect and get a printed copy of your current printbug.doc. BUT what gets saved is the old version and your new changes are lost! You have been warned!

Regclean - don't!

There is a utility called RegClean which has been widely touted recently. Regclean basically cleans up your Windows registry (back it up first folks!).

However, make sure you have version 4.1a or later, earlier versions had some pretty serious bugs in it causing significant damage to the registry.

http://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/REGCLN41.EXE

But read the README.TXT file first!

MICROSOFT DOWNLOADS Want some free stuff from Microsoft?

For a simple drawing program you could try Microsoft Draw 97. Its actually quite good and is around a 900KB download from:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/office/enhancements/draw97.asp

The MS Office Resource Kit is also available. The ORK covers a whole range of issues, in particular network installations but plenty of other stuff too, from:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/

Incidentally, the Microsoft sites are being re-organised over the next few weeks, our apologies if any URL's we give turn out to be out of date, but the MS sites are being completely restructured...

Outlook 98 is also available for free download until June. This is not a time-bombed version, but a real pucca fully licensed copy.

Need to read Word 97 files into Word 6? The converter is now available at:

http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Wrd97cnv.exe

WORCESTER FLOODING

Thanks to all of you who have enquired about the Worcester floods and whether our offices were still dry or actually just floating off down the Avon...

Actually we are half way up Bredon Hill (of A Shropshire Lad fame) and quite safe. On the other hand, trying to get anywhere has been tricky.

One of the two roads away from the office regularly floods involving a ten mile detour.

We are hoping to get some pictures of some of the towns effected up on the web site http://www.valenet.com shortly. Several major shopping and office centres have been seriously effected. (Guess we'll be out at the Flood Damage Sales this weekend...)