Ms Office Tune Up

One of the hallmarks of professional Word documents is that they are formatted in a con­sistent manner. For example, a professional document applies bold formatting either by applying the Strong style or by applying the formatting directly with the Bold command, but it never mixes the two methods. (In fact, most professional documents always use char­acter styles instead of direct formatting because you can automatically make changes to character styles, and Word updates every instance.) Similarly, any two adjacent paragraphs of regular text will use the same paragraph formatting.

Of course, wanting your document formatting to be consistent and actually making sure of this are two different things. You can get Word to help you by asking it to look for format­ting inconsistencies. Follow these steps to turn on this feature:

1. Choose Office, Word Options to open the Word Options dialog box.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Activate the Mark Formatting Inconsistencies check box. (If this check box is disabled, activate the Keep Track of Formatting check box.)
4. Click OK.

When Word spots a formatting inconsistency, it displays a wavy blue line under the offend­ing text. Right-click the text to see Word’s suggested solution. In Figure 1, for example, Word has found adjacent paragraphs with inconsistent formatting. Click the suggestion to implement it. You can also click Ignore Once to skip this instance, or Ignore Rule to tell Word to stop flagging this particular inconsistency.

Figure 1 Activate the Mark Formatting Inconsistencies setting to have Word look for inconsistent formatting in your documents.

Technorati Tags: document formatting, consistent formatting, word 2007

Popularity: 3% [?]