CONTENTS OF BEND WORD TO YOUR WILL
PREFACE
Using hyperlinks in this document
A note: Work-arounds for F9, now that it’s 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?
Standard toolbar
Formatting toolbar
Buttons, adding to toolbars from the Tools » Commands lists
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?
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
Transferring toolbars and macros via the Organizer
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 document
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
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
“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)
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
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