MouseTrax - WordTips102

If you need to convert the case of text, rather than selecting a character or word, deleting it, and then retyping it in the correct case, once it's selected, just hit Shift/F3 to swap the case.

Holding down Shift and tapping on the F3 key will convert text from TitleCase, to UpperCase, to LowerCase.

Say you notice that you accidentally typed a whole paragraph with the cap lock turned on. Triple click to select the paragraph. Then hit Shift/F3 once to switch it all to lowercase. A second Shift/F3 on the selected text will turn it to TitleCase, thereby changing all the first letters in each sentence to capitals. Saving you time from retyping.

Let's say you've opened a bunch of documents and have been making some modifications to several of them. Now it's time to save all the changed documents and close them. You could just hit the X to close Word and you'll be prompted to save all the documents that have been changed, but that would mean hitting Yes several times.

If you know you want to save all the changes and then just close all the docs, you can hold down the Shift key when you click the File menu. Doing so will cause two new hidden menu options to appear, Close All and Save All. Now you can click Save All to automatically save all changed documents and Close All to make them all closed.

If you just click Close All, you will be prompted to save any changes to individual docs that have been modified. This way you can say No if there are some docs you don't want updated with your current changes. If you haven't made any changes to the open docs, they'll all just quickly close.

This command also works in Excel.

Have you ever formatted a sentence or paragraph and then wished you could easily format another chunk of text the same way?

Well, of course, this is just what Styles are great at doing. But sometimes you just want to bypass a Style. Or maybe you didn't bother setting a character style and now want to copy some special formatting around a doc.

You don't have to go through all that clicking to apply all the specific formatting again. On your Formatting toolbar, you'll notice an icon that looks like a paint brush. This is the Format Painter tool. To copy all the formatting from one item to another, select the first item, click the Format Painter tool. This action copies all the formatting from the selected text to the tool. Now select the second item and all the formatting from the first item will be applied to the second item.

Note! If you need to apply this same formatting to more than one item, you can double click the Format Painter when you copy the format the first time and the Painter will remain active, allowing you to apply this same formatting to several pieces of text. Just click the Format Painter again to turn it off.

Temporarily Stop Snap Grid

When you move text boxes or frames around your document, you'll notice that they move in increments. That's because there's an invisible grid in the document and the graphics snap to these increments.

Although you can make adjustments to the grid by accessing its options from the Draw menu option on the Drawing Toolbar, occasionally you might just want to temporarily and quickly stop the grid so you can nudge something exactly where you want it.

To temporarily stop the grid from snapping graphics into position, just hold down the Alt key as you move your graphic.

Note! This will not work if your graphic is designated as an inline graphic.

If you use the AutoFormatting as You Type feature (Tools/AutoCorrect), you can quickly create a table in your document by just typing a plus sign ( + ) and then some hyphens ( ------ ). Continue adding pluses and hyphens for the size and number of cells you need. When you hit the Enter key, your symbols will turn into a quick table row!

From this,

To this,

Note! If this doesn't work for you, click Tools/AutoCorrect and make sure you have the AutoFormat as You Type Table option selected.

Say you're working on a document and you notice some text in another location in the doc that you need to modify before you forget. You click in the new location and make the necessary changes. Now you need to jump back to the location where you were working before you moved.

Rather than hunting to find the right spot, just hit Shift/F5 and your cursor will jump back to the location where you were before you moved to where you are now!

If you need to move back further, keep hitting Shift/F5 to continue to relocate.

To quickly change a font size, just select the text (or set the font before you begin typing) and hold down the Ctrl key with the Shift key and tap on either the greater than or less then keys ( > or < ) to set the font size larger or smaller! Each tap will increase/decrease the font size by a percentage.

If you prefer a little more precise change, you can hold down the Ctrl key and tap out on the left or right bracket ( [ or ] ) keys to increase/decrease the font size by one point.

Note! For sanity sake, it might prove easier to choose to use one of these font change tips and remember that one for use when you need a quick change. Unless you have a very good memory, or use lots of post-it reminder notes around your monitor, it'll be easy to confuse these two and make yourself crazy!<g>

Sometimes you need to keep certain words together. For instance, it's typographically incorrect to have a person's middle initial break before it. In other words, this is wrong,

So how do you make sure that a name breaks at the correct spot, or not at all, if that's what you prefer (which is actually the more correct format)? Use a non-breaking space.

Hold down the Ctrl + Shift keys together and hit the Spacebar to create a non-breaking space. In the sample above, you would place the non-breaking space between John and M. This would ensure that if the name needs to break within your margin spacing, it will hold together John and the M initial and only allow Smith to roll down to the next line. If you prefer that the whole name stick together, also add a non-breaking space between the period and Smith.

You can verify that you do have a non-breaking space by clicking on your Show/Hide button to see all the hidden formatting and you'll notice a tiny, superscript circle which represents your non-breaking space (looks like a degree symbol).

Although you can double click to select a word and then quickly hit Shift/F7 to access the Thesaurus to view a list of synonyms, a faster way is to click the cursor inside any word and right click. That will bring up a mini-menu. At the bottom you'll notice the option for Synonyms. Move your mouse highlight to that option and you'll see a quick list of alternate words. Click the one you want and it'll replace the current word, or click Thesaurus (at the bottom of the list) to go to the full dialog for more options.

You may already know that you can quickly change your margin settings by positioning your mouse over the margin positions in your document ruler, where the darker color meets the lighter color (at the margin limits), until your mouse pointer turns to a double arrow. Then you can click and drag your margin down the ruler to readjust your margins without having to click File/PageLayout/Margins.

But, did you also know that you can make this adjustment even more precise by also holding down the Alt key while you drag the double arrow mouse down your margin? Give it a try and you'll notice that you can now see the exact measurements for your margin! Once you're satisfied with the setting, release.

Before you print a document, you may be in the habit of clicking the Print Preview feature so you can see just how your document will look when printed on a particular printer. As you're previewing your document, you may notice a typo in the text. So you click Close to go back to your previous view, make the quick correction and click Print Preview again, right?

Did you know that you can make text edits while in Print Preview mode? Yup! Just click on the magnifying glass button and that'll toggle (turn on/off) the magnifier (zoom viewer) cursor and your I-Bean (typing) cursor. Then you can make the text changes you need and click the magnifier again if you need to further zoom in/out.

There are some formatting limitations while in this mode, but there are also many adjustments you can make here without wasting time having to change views.

Have you ever been typing out some computer user instructions and need to type a few paragraphs of sample text so you can demonstrate various formatting techniques, or needed some text on a page to test a macro you wrote?

Rather than taking time to type text on your page or pulling up a real document which you may accidentally save, reformatted, you can use a little Word trick to dump as much sample text on the page as needed.

Just type =rand(4,5) and hit the Enter key.

This move will dump several paragraphs of text on your page, ready for demonstration use. And you can change the numbers in the parentheses to alter the number of paragraphs and number of sentences in each paragraph. The first number I typed, 4, will give me 4 paragraphs of text. The second number I typed, 5, means each paragraph will consist of 5 sentences.

And if you're smart enough to remember to hit Ctrl/0 (zero) before you type the sample text command above, you'll have adjusted the paragraph formatting to ensure each paragraph is properly spaced. (Ctrl/0 is the "add space before" shortcut toggle key.) Try typing the command on a blank doc, and then hit Ctrl/0 (zero) before you type the command and you'll see what I mean. While the cursor is in a paragraph, hit Ctrl/0 again and you'll see the spacing disappear for that paragraph.

Okay, so many of you already know that you can hit Tools/Customize/Options and check the options for Show Recently Used Commands First. This option is the default and it means that your menus will appear shorter than full menus and will show those commands you've most recently used. Once you use a menu command, it'll move into the main portion of your menu and items you rarely use will hide. This helps you find those commands you use most often, quicker. You won't have to scroll down a long list of options to find the one you just used.

But some people don't like this feature and prefer to see all the menu options all the time, so they uncheck this option and return to the way Word used to be before this feature was added.

And then there are the people, like me. I like having those items I use most often quickly shown on a short menu. But then there are times when I need to use a command I know I haven't used in a long time, and I'm too impatient to sit on the menu waiting for it to appear as a full menu.

So what's the cure? I just double click the top menu item when I want the full menu. Word will display the full menu this time without having to change the customization settings and without having to WAIT!