Word Advanced Techniques

Word Advanced Techniques eBook
Web Edition

Author: Dian D. Chapman
MouseTrax Computing Solutions
Lesson One: Organizing

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Lesson One: Organizing
When you're organized, you can work more efficiently. To become better organized, you need to know the program you're using and know it well, so you can take advantage of features that will help you do your job better. In this lesson, I'll show you how to get the most out of the Tables and Outline features in Word so you can use them to get yourself more organized.

Table Options
Word tables are a great way to keep yourself organized! It's said, that you use the tools you know. And since I don't know Excel too well, I generally resort to using the table feature in Word to solve most of my problems. I do know Access, and creating a database is an easy thing to do. But sometimes I just don't want to bother. Or other times, I want to know I have the freedom to do anything I want with the information I compile in a table. And because Word is the application I know best, I generally turn to Word to deal with organizing my files and/or data, because I know I can do a lot with the information through Word.

In this lesson, I'll teach you a lot of tricks to help you learn to quickly create and use Tables, so you'll feel comfortable about using it as a quick fix, too.

Getting Tricky
We'll start at the beginning. Open a blank page in Word and let's start messing around with tables. We'll experiment with ways to set them up and later we'll talk about ways to use them.

There are three basic ways to add a table to a page in Word. You can add one through the Table menu. You can draw one out using the Table Drawing Tool from the Table Toolbar, or you can drag out the cells you need by using the Table Grid from the Standard Toolbar or the Forms Toolbar. But there's also a tricky way to add one, by using the Auto feature. So we'll play with that way first, then we'll investigate the standard routes.

Click Tools/AutoCorrect to bring up the auto features dialog box. Click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab and be sure you have the Table option checked. See the image below for details and note where my trusty assistant, Rocky, is pointing.

Click OK to back out of this dialog box. Return to your page and type the following on the page: (Note that the vertical character is called a Pipe and you'll find it on your keyboard with the backslash key. Hit Shift to get that symbol. It will look like two vertical dashes on the key, but displays a single pipe character when typed. The other characters are simple hyphens. Type any length you want.)

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Keep your cursor positioned on that line when finished typing and hit the Enter key. If all is well, you should suddenly have a two cell table on your page as shown in the image below.

Pretty cool, eh? If you're in a hurry and need a couple quick table cells placed on the page, this is a pretty neat little auto feature. This also comes in handy when you want to nest tables, by putting one table inside of another one. Yes, this trick will work inside of another table, too. But, as always, you must have the auto feature option for tables turned on for it to work.

Tables (and Borders) Toolbar
Ok, time to get serious and look at the standard ways to create tables. Let's look at the Table And Borders Toolbar. You can turn on the Tables and Borders Toolbar by clicking View/Toolbars and clicking on the Tables and Borders listing to toggle that toolbar on. Note that if you happen to have your View/Toolbars/Forms Toolbar turned on, you'll also notice an icon that looks like a line drawn by a pencil. That's also the Tables and Border Toolbar toggle icon. So you can just click that icon to access the Tables and Border Toolbar, too.

Let's take a closer look at this toolbar.

And if you want, you can easily modify the toolbar by clicking the Add/Remove Button drop down arrow.

When you click the tiny, black down arrow, a popup appears letting you quickly toggle off any button or reset the toolbar. You can also click Customize to put the toolbar into a mode that will allow you to drop in or drag off any command you want.

Let's look at each of these items a little closer.

Draw Table
This is pretty straight forward. Click the icon and drag out a table onto your page. Once it's drawn, move your cursor inside the table and you can quickly draw out whatever cells you need. It's a great tool if you need to design an unusual table. For your standard table, it's generally easier to use the Insert/Table option.

And as you can see from the image below, you can even, quickly, get into a little Frank Lloyd Wright mode if you want!<smile>

Note! You can also quickly slam a table on a page by using the Insert Table (Grid) tool, which can be found on the Standard Toolbar or on the Forms Toolbar. When you click it, a table grid will be displayed. You can click and drag out to highlight the rows/columns you want. Release, and the table with that configuration will be inserted.
Eraser
And if you make a mistake or decide you want to modify the cell configuration, and thereby need to remove a line, you can click to select the Eraser and just erase the unwanted line by clicking on it.
Line Styles
Click the Line Style icon before you start drawing out your table and/or cells and the default line style will be drawn out in the style you've selected.
Line Weight
This is the same as the Line Style, except that it affects the weight of the line. So if you want a thicker line, click this icon to adjust the thickness of the line you'll be drawing to create your table and/or cell.
Border Color
And this one, too, does the same, it changes the color of the border you'll be using.
Outside Border
This icon allows you to modify any or all of the borders, individually. Click it to drop down the full display, then click on the icon for the border you want to adjust or remove. You can also use this in combination with any of the others above. If you want to change the border color, weight or style, change that first, then click on the border you want to modify.

Cool Trick!
And here's a cool trick that relates to this, and many, toolbars in Word. You can literally snap off several of the toolbars so you can have them handy when you need to use a particular menu a lot while creating your masterpiece. Notice the gray bar on the drop down menu that appears in the image above. If you click on that gray bar, you can grab the bar and drag it off onto your page. This way it'll be displayed all the time while you're making adjustments, so you don't have to continually click the drop down to get this mini toolbar to show!

Anytime you see a drop down menu that has a gray bar across the top in Word, or any Office application, know that you can snap off that mini toolbar to make your life easier. And there is no need to snap it back on the original toolbar. It's still there, so you can snap it off again and again when needed.
Shading Color
This icon changes the background color of any of the cells. I created by Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece above by simply clicking in one cell, click the color shading to select a color. Then I clicked in another cell and hit the F4 (repeat) key to add the same color to another cell. By quickly selecting color, clicking in a cell and hitting F4, I created that table in about 30 seconds!
Insert Table
If you don't want to bother drawing out a table and just want to slap a quick #x# table on the page, click this icon, enter your configuration and hit enter. Done.
Align
Although this shows as Align Top Left on the menu display at the top, this is another snap menu. So the current display is top left, but you can click to change the alignment default, or snap off the menu to have all the views available.
Distribute Rows Evenly
Click this icon to have all the rows in the current table set the same.
Distribute Columns Evenly
This icon sets the columns so they are evenly adjusted.
Table AutoFormat
Word provides you with many table format designs from which you can choose to quickly format your table the way you want. Click this icon to display the detailed formatting dialog box. Make your selections and click OK to have your table professionally formatted in seconds. If there's any element you don't like, after you format the majority of the table with a predesigned format, you can always select the table and make any necessary adjustments from that point.

Note! If you want to choose a favorite style and have it as your default table format for all tables, you can click Insert/Table. On that dialog, you'll note the AutoFormat option button. You can choose your favorite style, then back out of that dialog back to the Insert/Table. Set any other adjustments and click the Set as default for new tables option. From that point forward, you can just click Insert/Table, hit Enter and that same table configuration/format and style will be quickly dropped on your page. Give it a try. See the image below for details.
Change Text Direction
You can change the text orientation to three different formats. You can have the text go up or down in a vertical position or regular format. The only direction you can't set is upside down. However, if you did need upside down text, you can use the WordArt feature to rotate text upside down. That feature is on the Drawing Toolbar. (We'll look at the Drawing Toolbar in detail, later in the course.)
Sort Ascending
Click in any column and click this icon to quickly sort the table by that column in ascending order.
Sort Descending
This does the same as the icon above, but reverses the order.
AutoSum
If you need to total the cells from above, you can click in a cell, click this icon and quickly add the columns above and have the total entered into the present cell. However, note that the cells will only be added up to an empty cell. So if you have an empty cell in a row, only the amounts below that empty cell will be added!

Working with Tables
Let's put a table on the page and mess with it! Add a table to the page any way you want, either by drawing it on the page or by using the Insert/Table icon on the toolbar or the menu. Give the table 5 columns and 10 rows so we have something to work with.

Selecting Parts of a Table
First we'll experiment with how easy it is to select various parts of a table.

If you need to select a row in a table, move your mouse to the left of the row, outside the border until the cursor turns into a backward arrow. Click and you'll select the entire row.

If you need to only select a cell, move the cursor just inside the cell you need to select until the cursor turns into a solid, black arrow, click and you'll select just the cell.

If you have to select several cells in a row or across a column, click to select one cell, then continue to hold down the mouse button and drag to extend the selection in whichever direction you need. Release the button when you've selected what you need. You can also hold down the Shift key and click in another cell to select all cells between.

To select a column, move the cursor to the top of the table until the cursor turns into the solid black, selection arrow. Click to select the entire column. Again, you can drag the arrow to continue across to select several columns. Give it a shot!

There are three quick ways to select an entire table. 1) When your cursor is within the bounds of a table, you'll notice a cross-hair marker in the upper, left corner of the table. This is the Move handle. But you can click it to select the entire table. However, if you also need to move the table, while you've captured that handle, continue to hold the mouse key down and drag the entire table to a new location! 2) You can hold down the Alt key and hit the 5 key on your keypad. Make sure you have the NumLock control turned off for the keypad. 3) Click Table/Select/Table.

Tip! If you get frustrated waiting for Word's menus to display the entire menu, you can either turn off this feature by clicking Tools/Customize/Options and setting your choices. Or a simpler way (which is how I do it) is just get into the habit of double clicking the top menu and the full menu will instantly be displayed!

If you decide you need to change the size of the table, you can easily adjust its look and size by using the Resize handle. Again, when you hover over a table, you'll notice a tiny square that appears at the bottom, right of the table. Click it and drag the table outline to whatever new shape you need.

By moving the Resize handle, I can change my table from the full page table I've been using so far, to a smaller table, as you can see below. Try it!

You can also easily select any section of a table by clicking in a cell, holding down the Shift key and using the arrow keys to move the direction of your selection. Or click three times in any cell to select it. Then again, you can hold down the mouse button and drag your selection in whichever direction you need. Release when finished selecting.

Formatting a Table
Ok, now you know how to quickly select any part of a table you need. So what do we do with it once it's selected? Well, you can do just about anything you want!

There are tons of ways to format a table. You can select any portion of a table, as I showed you above, and then you can set background shading, line color, line styles, line thickness and also set the default font size, type, color and alignment for any area. So I won't go into too much detail, because the choices are as big as your imagination. But I will show you a couple of cool formatting tricks of which you may not be aware.

First, know that you can easily merge or split cells by selecting the area you want and using the Split Cell or Merge Cell options on the Table menu. Just be aware that you will have trouble sorting a table if you've merged cells. So it's sometimes better to just add cells or reconfigure the table if you'll be doing sorting!

You can make tables look quite cool, by adding a few formatting tricks.

Open a blank page in Word by hitting Ctrl/N. Hit Ctrl/S to save this sample page. This page will be your practice page for this lesson. Follow along with me to quickly create the above table on your sample document.

Click Insert/Table and toss a table on the page with 3 columns and 5 rows.
Grab the Resize handle (lower/right of table) and resize the table from a full page to about 1/3 the page width and about 2-3 inches high.
Click the table Move handle to select the table and hit Ctrl/0 (zero) to add space before the text.
Select the top row by moving your cursor outside the left border and clicking the row.
Click the Merge Cells icon to merge the top cells into one.
Clicked the Shading Color icon on the Tables And Borders Toolbar and set the shading to a dark gray color.
While still selected, hit Ctrl/E to set the text alignment to center.
Click Format/Font and set the Font Color to white.
Hold down Ctrl/Shift and hit the > key 4-6 times to increase the font size.
Type in some table title name. Feel free to use the same as I did if you can't come up with something creative.<g>
Select the second row and set the background shading to a lighter color.
Hit Ctrl/E to center the text.
Use the Ctrl/Shift/> shortcut to increase the font size.
Type something in each cell.
Select the 3 cells left in the first column and hit Ctrl/R to right align the text in those cells.
Type something in each of the information cells.
Select the table.
Click Table/Table Properties/Table/Options.
Notice the option to Add spacing between cells.
Select that option and set the value to 0.1 and hit OK.
Click OK again on the Property dialog and check out your table.
Save your sample document.

Pretty cool looking table, eh?

Note! If you are using Word 2002 (from Office XP), Microsoft has added Table Styles!

You can do something similar by creating a table and setting large cell border lines. Then change the border line color to white. This will give the effect of separated cells.

Toss another table on your sample page. Make this one 5 columns and 10 rows. Select the table and hit Ctrl/0 (zero) to add spacing so we have more room to work with our cells. Select the first row. Click Format/BordersAndShading and choose the Borders tab. Scroll down the border Style list, nearly to the end and select the style that looks like a 3-D bar. This is a great border for making your cells look like buttons.

Note! When you add formatting to a full row, an annoyance is that the formatting can attach to the top of the next row. So it's a smart move to then select the next row and remove any formatting above. This will help to ensure that when you sort the table rows, one row doesn't end up with goofy formatting.

Now add a little light gray shading to the background of the cells in this top row. Hit Ctrl/Shift/> to increase the font size a little. Click Ctrl/E to center the text. Hit Ctrl/B to make it bold.

The boss comes along and tells you s/he's changed his/her mind and you only need 3 columns. So select the last two columns and hit Ctrl/X to remove them.

But now your table is short of the page and you want it to fit the size of the page. Position your cursor inside the table and click the Insert/Table icon's drop down arrow (next to the icon) and select AutoFit to Window from the popup menu. Or you can choose this same option from the Table menu.

You also now realize that you need 10 rows in the table for data. You originally set the table to 10, but you used one for the heading row. So position your cursor on the far right end of the last row, outside of the table and hit Enter. A new row will be added. Now you have 10 rows for data and 1 for the heading.

Now we need to fill up the table with some data to sort. Type in a couple numbers into each cell down the first column. Highlight those columns with the numbers and hit Ctrl/C to copy. Now go highlight all the empty cells in the two remaining columns and hit Ctrl/V and the data from the first column will be added into the other two columns, too!

Copying the same data from one column to all the others may not be very practical. But I wanted you to see how you can quickly copy information and how it'll fit into the same cells. If you were filling out a table that needed the same item for all the columns, you could easily duplicate the information by using copy/paste. Or if you realize information in some cells/rows/columns should be moved, you can highlight the text, hit Ctrl/X to cut it from that area, then move to the new area, highlight and hit Ctrl/V to paste. This is much easier than retyping!

Note! If you highlight an area in a table and hit Delete, you will only delete the information from inside that area—the data. If, however, you needed to delete the actual column/rows from the table structure, versus just deleting the data, you need to highlight the area and then hit Ctrl/X. This move will actually cut that portion of the table out, versus just removing the data from within.

The boss is back!<g> And now s/he has decided you will be needing one extra column because you'll need to have auto numbering in that first column. So highlight the first column and click Table/Insert/Column To Left to add a new column at the left of the table.

Click in the first cell in that new column. Click Insert/Field/AutoNum. The number 1. should now be in that cell. This is a field. You can see that it is a field by selecting just that number (not the cell) and hitting Shift/F9 to convert the results back to the field. Hit Shift/F9 again, or F9 to update, to revert it back to a number. While still selected (or select it again if you unselected it), hit Ctrl/C to copy this field. Highlight the remaining cells down this column and hit Ctrl/V to paste a copy of this field into each cell. All the cells should now be numbered. Neat, huh?

Quick Sort Macro
But we're not finished. This table will have to be sorted on a regular basis. And although you can constantly select a column, click Table/Sort and sort the columns, that just seems like too much work! So let's make the job easier.

First, select the top, heading column and click Table/HeadingRowsRepeat. This will ensure that Word knows this row is a heading and won't attempt to sort it.

Click in the second column heading (the first one with data) and click Tools/Macro/RecordMacro (or click the REC button in the middle/bottom of your Word screen). Name the macro and call it SortTable. (Note! Do not add any spaces in the name, type it exactly as I did.) Once you hit OK, the macro recorder will be recording your keystrokes! So pay attention and hit the keys just as I tell you to so you won't have a mess to clean up.

Click Table/Select/Table.
Click Table/Sort. Make sure the sort item is Column 2 and that it's in Ascending order.
Hit OK.
Click Tools/Macro/Stop Recording (or hit the Square button on the little Recorder Toolbar that popped up.)

If you've been following along correctly, you should not have any text yet entered into the heading columns. We're going to add a MacroButton into the Heading cell. The button will cause this macro to run when clicked. So you won't have to click Table/Sort/OK anymore. You'll just double click the heading and the table will automatically be sorted by that column! But we still have work to do to get it working right.

Position your cursor in the Heading cell of the second column. Click Insert/Field. Be sure the (All) item is selected in the left column. Then scroll down the right until you find MacroButton (or click in that list and hit M to jump down to the Ms.) Select the MacroButton field and click the Options button at the bottom of this dialog. In the next dialog, scroll down the Macro Name list to find the macro you just recorded, named SortTable. Select it and have that name added into the field input box. Then, within the input box at the bottom, type the text you want displayed in this column. My column will be called Column One. You can type the same or something different. The dialog should look like the image below.

Click OK. You should now see the name you typed into the input box for the field in the column. Save your document! You can now double click the title in that column and your table will be sorted by that column. Note that since all the data we copied is the same, it might be difficult to notice it sorted anything. So feel free to change some of the data to some other numbers, maybe 111 or 999, so you can see that it's resorted in that column.

Modifying a Macro!
We're now going to venture briefly into the VB (Visual Basic) Editor to save us a little time from recording the next two column sorting macros. Don't worry! Just follow along closely!

Click Tools/Macro/Macro. Highlight the SortTable macro and click Edit. This will drop you into the editor, right at the macro you need. You'll highlight the macro code you just recorded, copy it and change the column number, as well as the name. See the image below for details. Note that you can also just hit Alt/F11 to enter the VB Editor. But if you have a lot of macro code in there, you'll have to search a bit to find the right one. By entering through the macro dialog box, you can find the one you need, first, before you enter the maze of code.

You will highlight all the code for the SortTable macro. Hit Ctrl/C to copy. Move your cursor to the end of the macro you just copied and hit Ctrl/V to paste a second copy of it. You need to change the name. So add 03 to the SortTable name. Then look within the code for the Column 2 notation (note where Rocky is pointing in the above image) and change it to Column 3. Do this one more time, but this time call the new macro SortTable04 and change the sort column to 4. Hit Ctrl/S to save this revised code. Close the VB Editor and return to your table.

Highlight the Macro Button field code you inserted into Column 2. Hit Ctrl/C to copy it. Move to the heading in Column 3 and hit Ctrl/V to paste a copy of this field in that heading. Now you just need to adjust the code in the field.

Highlight the field code in Column 3 and hit Shift/F9 to revert the field to the field code. Change the name of the macro from SortTable to SortTable03 (or whatever you named the one you set to sort Column 3). Also change the display text so this column will be named something else. Go to the next heading and do the same, but revise the name for that column. See the image below for details of how your table headings should now look (using the names you used, of course).

Once you're finished adjusting the field code, you can hit Ctrl/A to select all of the document. Then hit F9 to update the field. The fields will all revert to the text by hiding the code. Hit Ctrl/S to save your document! Now you can double click on any of the 3 headers to quickly sort the table by this column!

This may seem like a lot of work. But if you had a table that you constantly needed to sort to display the list by different columns so you could find the information you needed, you'd learn to appreciate this quick click to sort, rather than constantly dealing with the table dialog box! And once you learn to do this, you can copy this code to a tip document and save it. Then you can quickly add it to any table you need, just by changing the sort column number and display text.

Organizing Files
Now I'll show you a great way to use tables to organize yourself. Let's say you have a bunch of files on your computer that you'd like to have easy access to, often. Maybe you have a bunch of music files? Maybe a bunch of family photos? Maybe some project files? You can create a table and link the documents. Then you can use your trusty MacroButton sort code to add a quick sort feature.

If it's a bunch of music files, you can create columns for Artist, Song Name and File. Maybe add your AutoNum field so you'll be able to quickly see how many files you have. Then use Hyperlinks to add a file link. You can quickly add a Hyperlink by hitting Ctrl/K. Enter the file path or browse to add it from a directory. You can change the display text so it doesn't give the path, but some name like Picture Link.

As you can see in the image above, I have this table created to easily sort my photos. I've added macro buttons, so I can click to sort by whichever category I need to find the picture I want. Then I can click the Hyperlink to the picture to quickly have it displayed! (Realize that the Macro Buttons are displayed in code here just so you'll see how it works. Obviously, for your master table, you'll want to convert the field to the display text. So you'd select the field and hit F9 or Shift F9 to hide the code I've displayed above.)

And now that I've taught you all this, I'll also tell you that I have a freeware utility that you can download from my web site that will create a sort table, like the one above, for you automatically! It'll add the macro buttons, too! But don't feel you did this all for nothing. Because now you know how to use that MacroButton field and you can use it for all sorts of things. Anytime you want to automatically run a macro, you can have that on your document and it'll run right from your document. And if you know VBA or take my Word AutoForm/Beginning VBA eBook course, you'll know how to write lots of useful macros that you can use with this feature.

To read another, detailed article I wrote on this subject, click this link. At the bottom of the article, you'll find the link to the free utility you can download. Enjoy! Link: http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=149.

Converting To/From a Table
Another great way to use Tables is to use the Convert To Table or Convert To Text features. If you have data, you can easily convert it to a table.

Say you had a document with some data. If the datum is separated by any character, including a space, you can easily convert it to a table.

Above you can see this very complex data I have!<grin> I can easily convert this to a table. I just select the data and click Table/Convert To Table. I make my selections and bingo, a table.

Because I had an extra comma after Beth's name, I ended up with an extra, empty column. But I can easily select it and hit Ctrl/X to cut it from my table. If I then needed to stretch the table to refit on the page, I could again select the AutoFit to Window option.

If I had a pile of data that was a little more complex, like a mailing list, I could still convert it.

If I had a list like the one above, I could just hit Ctrl/A to select it all. Then I'd use the same convert feature, but choose the Other option. I would enter the < character as my separator. Then I would end up with a table that listed the names and emails. If need be, I could then select the column(s) of information I didn't need and delete that data.

Then I could quickly convert the table back to data. If I needed that information to send emails, I could convert it back to text, search and replace the final > marker with a semicolon and remove the line returns so the text would then be ready to copy and dump into an email.

If you did this sort of thing often, you could record a macro. Sure, I suppose you can also do this in Excel or Access. But because I know Word and can make it dance for me, I usually just convert what I need, quickly, by taking advantage of the table feature to compile, sort, extract and organize my data. The above conversion took me about 20 seconds! Even faster if I ran the macro I have that does this all for me!

Table Tips
A few extra table tips and we'll move onto Outlines.

Using a Grid
If you need to draw out a very precise table, try using Word's snap Grid. Click View/Toolbars and turn on the Drawing Toolbar. Click Draw/Grid. Set the Grid to the value you need and be sure to set it to snap to the grid and also set the grid to display on your screen. Then you can bring out your trusty Table Drawing Tool and start drawing out the table you need.
Split Tables
You can split tables horizontally by clicking in the row you want to split and clicking Table/Split Table. You'll then have two tables from the one.
Joining Tables
To join tables you simply need to remove the paragraph marker between them and the lower table will hop up to join up with the table above.

Note! If you were to use the MouseTrax File Cataloger I mentioned as a free download above, you could sort your files and save your master table. If you wanted to add files from another directory, you could run it again on the new directory to collect the file links. Then you could select and copy the new table, open your master, paste the table to the end, remove any line breaks and have the new files added to your master table. Now you can sort all these new files from Directory02 along with all the ones you originally collected.

This is how I organize my files. This way, whenever I need to find something, I can quickly open the desktop shortcut containing my master table, double click to sort by the column I need, such as subject or data, locate the file I need and click the hyperlink. Wherever that document resides on my PC, it'll be open and ready to go in seconds! No more hunting for important documents!
Side X Side Tables
You can easily put two tables on the same line in a Word doc. Just add a table to your page. Add another below it. Then select it and move it up next to the other.
Quickly Move Rows
You can quickly move rows around your table by using the Alt/Shift/(Up or Down Arrow) shortcut. Just click in the row you need to move. Hold down Alt/Shift and tap the Up or Down Arrow keys to move the row to its new location.
Erasing and Deleting
If you have a table and need to erase the data from it, select the cells you need to clear and hit the Delete key. This will remove the text from within the cells. But if you want to delete a column(s) or row(s), select it and hit Ctrl/X to cut it from the table.
Adding Rows
You can quickly add more rows to your table by selecting a couple empty rows, hitting Ctrl/C to copy them, then hit Ctrl/V and the new rows will be added to the table. If you've run out of empty rows, you can move your cursor to the outside end of the last row, hit Tab and a new row will be added. Then you can select and copy it and quickly paste in as many new rows as you need.

Outline View
Actually, this is going to be a fairly short portion of this lesson. Folks seem to be mystified by the Outline mode and don't seem to want to venture in there. But it's actually quite straight forward. Sure, there are a lot of buttons that go with this view, but you don't need to use many of them. You can use the Tab and Shift/Tab keystrokes to promote or demote levels in your outline.

If you need to write a document, you'd be wise to start with the Outline View. You can quickly organize your thoughts into an Outline. Just type your thoughts and hit enter to move to a new line to add a new thought.

If the new thought will be a sub heading to the previous thought, just hit the Tab key to move the level of that heading. When you need to go back to a previous level, use the Shift/Tab key to move the text backward in the levels.

If you need to move information around in your outline, click to select the item and drag it to where it needs to be.

You can quickly Expand or Collapse any level from view by hitting Ctrl/A to select all the text, then Tab out the levels to change by hitting either the Expand button (+) or the Collapse button (-). Or just double click on the + - signs next to the level you want to open or close.

Although you can create sub documents through this Outline view, I don't suggest you do. The Master Document feature in Word uses this Outline view to sort sub documents like chapters in a book, to separate files. However, the feature has never worked well and often times will corrupt and trash your project just when it gets large enough to nearly be done! If you have to put together a book, I'd suggest you read an article I wrote on the subject or you can purchase my Advanced Document Design eBook course. In that course, I'll teach you how to deal with the potential headaches of creating large documents in Word, so the job will be less frustrating. Here's the article if you want to read it: http://www.mousetrax.com/mastdoc.html.

Sorting
If you need to sort your outline, you can double click to collapse the top level and easily sort by heading. However, you don't even need to collapse it. You can just click Ctrl/A to select it and click Table/Sort to set your sort priorities.

Printing
If you need to print your Outline, be sure to stay in Outline View. If you click on one of the other Word views, the Outline layout will not show. All the text will be left aligned. And if you attempt to print from any view other than Outline, the printout will be all left aligned. You need to print from Outline View to keep your hierarchy levels displayed and printed.

Styles
If you don't like the style formatting Word has created for each level of your Outline, you can easily change it. Click the level you need to adjust. Click Format/Style. If you don't see the heading styles, click Style List dropdown in this dialog and select Styles In Use. Be sure the correct style is selected and click Modify. Make the changes and back out of the dialogs.

That's about it for Outlines. They're really quite simple to use and they are a great aid to helping you organize your thoughts when you need to put together a quick outline. Once you have your outline together, you can more easily build individual documents from each outline section.

Note! If you need to create a formal outline that includes special numbering, then you'd better stick with a regular document view and click Format/Bullets And Numbering and attempt to make sense out of Word's numbering flaws. Ahem, I mean feature! Sadly, numbering doesn't always work too well. If you need to use Word's numbering, I'd suggest you read this document from the Word MVP FAQ site:

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm

And that's it for this lesson. I hope you learned something! In the next lesson, we'll discuss some of the time saving features in Word, such as Styles, Fields and auto features.

Until next lesson...