The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Microsoft Word Tips
Brett Lockwood		  
 

Brett Lockwood provides some Tips and Tricks to help readers master the use of Microsoft Word and improve their productivity

Using Split Screen

● You can split the Word screen into two panes and work with two parts of a document simultaneously.
Choose the Split option off the Window menu, place the line on the screen where you want the split to be located, and single-click the mouse to drop the split line. You can reposition the line by picking it up with the mouse and dragging and dropping it. When you apply this feature you get a vertical scroll bar in both the top and bottom pane. You can remove the split line by going to the Window menu and choosing Remove Split. You can use the Split function in several ways. For example:

  1. If you are working with a table of contents (TOC) that is not automatically generated you can position the TOC in the top pane and check the headings in the "body text" using the bottom pane. This is a great way to use the Split function as a proofreading aid.

  2. You can set a large pane and a small pane, and then work in the large window whilst using the small window for moving around the document for text checking purposes and using Find and Replace. Remember that the pane you click the mouse into becomes the "active" pane.


  3. You can move or copy text between parts of a document. Display the text you want to move or copy in one pane and the destination for the text in the other pane, and then select and drag the text (or graphic) across the split bar and drop it by releasing the mouse button. If you hold down the Ctrl key whilst doing this you will copy the selection instead of moving it.


  4. If you are performing a lot of text searching using Find and Replace you can set the text in one pane to a high magnification such as 200% (using the Zoom button on the Standard toolbar) and your search results will be highly visible but will all still be positioned so you can see them, even if the document text runs off the right side of the screen.
NOTE: You cannot use the Document Map function (set via View|Document Map) and the Split function simultaneously.

The Paragraph Mark and Formatting Marks

● In Word a paragraph mark (¶) signifies the end of a paragraph or a hard return, yet it is important for other reasons too:
  1. The paragraph mark at the end of a paragraph (¶) is where the paragraph formatting is stored (indents, space before and space after the paragraph text, text justification etc.).

    2.  
  2. To preserve formatting when you move or copy a paragraph, include the paragraph mark when selecting, and copying or moving text.

  3. If you do not want to copy the paragraph formatting of a given block of text, select text without including the paragraph mark in the selection.

● It is very useful, and often important, to work with the document formatting marks (called "nonprinting characters" in some Word versions) turned on for viewing so you can see exactly what types of formatting (paragraph marks (hard returns), manual line breaks (soft returns), tab marks etc.) are in the document, and also where they are. For example, if you want (or do not want) to include a paragraph mark with a text selection, it is obviously easier to select correctly if the paragraph mark is visible.
  1. Formatting marks are turned on for viewing by clicking the Show/Hide button (¶) on the Standard toolbar. They are turned off by clicking this button again.

  2. The Show/Hide button (¶) implements the formatting mark (or nonprinting character) options
    accessed via Tools|Options and clicking the View tab. The formatting marks toggled on and off via the Show/Hide button can be varied using these View tab options.

  3. Working with formatting marks turned on may look messy at first but you will soon get used to it and see the advantages.
●  You can begin a new line without beginning a new paragraph by using Shift+Enter (this is equivalent to inserting a manual line break or soft return). A good example of where this formatting is useful is where you want to add a new line to a bulleted or numbered point without adding a new bullet/number. You should be careful using this formatting feature as it can appear that you have begun a new paragraph or indented text etc. when this is not the case. This is another reason to work with formatting marks turned on for viewing via the Show/Hide button. See Figure 1
 



Figure 1. Clicking the Show/Hide button displays nonprinting characters such as
tab marks, paragraph marks and manual line breaks.

● Formatting marks, if turned on, do not appear in Print Preview and do not print.

Selecting Text

● Remember that before you can change text, you must first select the text you want to modify. Selected text appears in "reverse video", in other words as white text on a black background.

● You can select a word by double-clicking it. You can select a sentence by holding down Ctrl and clicking the sentence. You can select an entire paragraph by triple-clicking anywhere in the paragraph.

● You can use the selection bar to select text. The selection bar is the space off to the left side of the text. When you move the cursor into the selection bar it changes to a right-pointing arrow. When the arrow appears:

  1. click once to select a line of text

  2. double-click to select a paragraph

  3. triple-click to select the entire document
  4. hold down the mouse button and drag up or down to select a block of text.
● You can select a rectangular block of text by holding down Alt while you drag. This is very useful in selecting columns of numbers etc. See Figure 2.

● You can select an entire document by using Ctrl+A.

● You can select text by holding down Shift and pressing an arrow key. You can also select text by pressing the F8 key and using the arrows to select the text, then using Copy or Delete etc. (use the Esc key to back out of the F8 text selection procedure if you need to: press Esc, then single-click the mouse in the text). The F8 selection method is a great way to select a large block of text and avoid the problem of the Word screen scrolling too fast.

● You can quickly select a large block of text. Single-click at the beginning of the text selection, press Shift, and then single-click at the end of the text selection.



Figure 2. Using the Alt key enables you to
select a rectangular block.

● You can select the text between the insertion point and the end of the document by using Ctrl+Shift+End.

● You can select the text between the insertion point and the beginning of the document by using Ctrl+Shift+Home.
 
Sorting Text

● You can sort dates, numbers, and other text, especially lists, in ascending or descending order:

  1. From the Table menu, choose Sort or Sort Text.

  2. If you have not already selected text, all text in the current document is selected.

  3. Choose the options you want to apply from the Sort Text and Sort Options dialog boxes. See Figure 3.

● Sorting information in a table or a list can be done quickly using the Database toolbar (set via View|Toolbars). You can edit, find, or sort information by clicking buttons on this toolbar.

Copying Text Formatting using Format Painter

● Select the text with the formatting that you want to copy and single-click the Format Painter icon (the paintbrush icon) on the Standard toolbar, and then drag the cursor over the text to where you want to copy the formatting.

● You can set the Format Painter icon to allow multiple copying of selected text:

  1. select the text with the formatting that you want to copy

  2. double-click the Format Painter icon (the paintbrush icon) on the Standard toolbar

  3. drag over the text you want to format

  4. repeat this action over other sections of text

  5. to turn off the Format Painter function, single-click the paintbrush icon again.
Printing Styles

● You can print out an alphabetically ordered listing of the styles for a document. This print will contain style names plus style descriptions for every style used in the document. These are the styles in the Style dialog box Styles in use list (Formatting in use list in Word 2002): accessed via Format| Style (Format|Styles and Formatting, in Word 2002). If you are working with styles this can be very useful:
  1. You can keep a hard copy of your document styles close by as a reference.

  2. You can quickly see the differences between particular styles. This overcomes the limitation of only being able to see one style description at a time in Word.
● To print styles, use File|Print, use the drop-down list next to the "Print what" box and select "Styles".

About The Author
Brett Lockwood brett@melbpc.org.au has been a freelance editor since 1981 and has worked with computers since 1976. He is president of the Society of Editors (Victoria) and teaches on-screen text editing (using MS Word) for the Australian Publishers Association.

Reprinted from the April 2004 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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