Ms Office Tune Up

Even if you’re using the macros earlier in the chapter to save your work frequently, you can still lose data if your hard drive crashes. So we’ve all learned from hard experience not only to save our work regularly, but also to make periodic backup copies. The macro I use most often in Word is one that does both in a single procedure! That is, the macro not only saves your work, but it also makes a backup copy on another drive, such as a removable disk, a second hard drive, or a network folder. Listing 1 shows the code.

Listing 1 A Procedure That Creates a Backup Copy of the Active Document on Another Drive

The backupFile and currFile variables are strings that store the full pathnames for the active document and the backup version of the document. Use the BACKUP_FOLDER constant to specify the folder in which you want the backup stored. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s occasionally convenient to close a document without saving your changes. For example, you might create a new document to use as a scratch pad or to test out a new feature. Similarly, you might open an existing document, make some temporary changes, and then close the document without saving those changes. In each case, when you choose Office, Close, Word asks if you want to save the document. This not only slows you down by requiring an extra step that you don’t need, but there’s also the real danger that you might click Yes by accident.

To work around these problems, I use a macro that automatically closes a document with­out saving any changes and without prompting to save changes. Listing 1 shows the macro.

Listing 1 A Macro That Closes a Document Without Saving Changes

As you can see, this is a simple procedure that runs only the ActiveDocument object’s Close method with the SaveChanges argument set to the constant value wdDoNotSaveChanges.

A more involved example is shown in Listing 2. Read the rest of this entry »

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Later in this chapter, you learn how to create workspaces-collections of Word documents that you open as a unit. Before you open a workspace, it’s a good idea to close all your open documents. You might also want to close all your open documents to get a fresh start with Word. In previous versions of Word, you can do this by holding down the Shift key, pulling down the File menu, and then selecting the Close All command. Unfortunately, that trick does not work in Word 2007. The other alternative is to shut down and restart Word, but that’s often time-consuming. A faster method is to use the macro in Listing 1.

TIP

The Close All command still exists in Word,but it’s not part of the Ribbon.To add it to the Quick Access Toolbar, pull down the Customize Quick Access toolbar list and click More Commands. In the Choose Commands From list, click All Commands, scroll down the list of commands, and click Close All. Click Add and then click OK.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Setting the AutoRecover interval to 1 minute, as described in the previous section, is prob­ably good enough for most people. However, a fast typist can easily write dozens of words in a minute, so you can still lose a fair amount of work even when using the shortest AutoRecover interval.

To get an even faster save interval, you can use VBA, specifically, Word’s OnTime method, which runs a procedure at a specified time. The OnTime method uses the following syntax:

Application.OnTime(When, Name [, Tolerance])
When The time (and date, if needed) you want the procedure to run.
Name The name of the procedure to run when the time given by When arrives.
Tolerance If Word isn’t ready to run the procedure at When, it will keep trying for the number of seconds specified by Tolerance. If you omit Tolerance, VBA waits until Word is ready.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

No one who has used Word for any length of time needs to be convinced of the importance of saving a document regularly. We’ve all experienced that moment of horror (sometimes called the ohnosecond) when we realize that Word has locked solid and we haven’t saved for awhile, so all our recent work is toast. Most of us have become friendly with the Ctrl+S shortcut for the Save command and use it as often as possible. However, it’s easy to forget to save when you’re busy and a deadline looms large. As a safety net, Word has an AutoRecover feature that automatically stores information about the changes you’ve made to your document since the last save. If Word goes down for the count, it can use the AutoRecover data to help you recover some or all of your work.

AutoRecover has saved me on a number of occasions, so I’m a big fan of this feature. If it has a downside, however, it’s that the default interval that Word uses to save the AutoRecover data is too long: 10 minutes. You can lose a lot of work in 10 minutes, so it’s a good idea to shorten the interval:

• If you work with only small- or medium-sized documents, shorten the interval to 1 minute.
• If you’re working with a large document (several dozen pages or more), the AutoRecover process can take quite awhile. Therefore, if you occasionally work with large documents, shorten the interval to 3 or 4 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

You can add visual interest to your documents by adding one or more drop caps. A drop cap refers to an initial letter in a paragraph that has been formatted with large font size. Word also places the letter inside its own frame, which enables the letter to display either in the top left corner of the paragraph or in the margin. Most documents that use a drop cap use it only in the first paragraph, although it’s not unusual to also see drop caps in the first paragraph of each section of a document.

Follow these steps to create a drop cap:

1. Click inside the paragraph where you want the drop cap to display.
2. Choose Insert, Drop Cap. Word displays a gallery of drop cap styles.
3. For a quick drop cap, click either Dropped or In Margin and skip the rest of these steps. Otherwise, click Drop Cap Options to open the Drop Cap dialog box.
4. Click Dropped or In Margin.

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You can add a great deal of visual pizzazz to a document by inserting an image. This can be a picture that illustrates a concept, a digital photo of a person, an event described in your text, a chart, your company logo, or simply a striking or fun bit of clip art. Whatever the image, it will look better and your document will read more smoothly if the text wraps around the image.

Unfortunately, Word’s default wrapping behavior doesn’t provide the best results for most images. The default wrapping is called In Line With Text, and it means that Word moves the image along with the text as you insert and delete text before the image. Unfortunately, the text lines up with the bottom edge of the image, so for all but the smallest images, this creates a huge and unsightly gap in the document. Follow these steps to fix this:

1. 1 Click the image.
2. 2 Click the Format tab.
3. 3 For a drawing or SmartArt graphic, click Arrange.
4. 4 To set the position of the image within the page, click Position, and then click one of the preset position options, shown in Figure 1. Note that the options in the With Text Wrapping section automatically apply Square text wrapping (see step 5 for the details). Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

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: 4% [?]

If you have data that you want to display in a row-and-column format within a Word docu­ment, the quickest way to set this up is to enter the data with a tab that separates each item in a row. You can then adjust your tab stops to ensure that all the columns line up neatly. This works great, except when you later decide that you need to format one of the columns. For example, if the items in the first column are headings, you might want to make them bold or a different color. Unfortunately, if you try any of Word’s regular text-selection techniques, you’ll find it impossible to select a single column because Word is set up to select only regular text horizontally.

One solution is to convert the text to a table, which enables you to select any column by clicking the top edge of the column. This works, but it may not be an ideal solution for you. For example, many page layout programs don’t understand Word’s tables, so in such a case you’d need to convert your table back to regular text.

You can avoid table conversion altogether by employing a useful trick that enables Word to select text vertically. Follow these steps:

1. Press and hold the Alt key. Read the rest of this entry »

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The quotation marks available via the keyboard-the single quote (‘) and the double quote (”)-are fine in most cases, but they’re decidedly plain. For more formal documents, you might prefer to use the curly quote variations where ‘ and ‘ replace the single quote and ” and ” replace the double quote. You can enter these quotation marks using your keyboard. Here are the codes:

In each case, be sure to use your keyboard’s numeric keypad to type the numbers.

You can also set up Word to convert straight quotes (’ and “) into “smart” quotes (such as ‘ and “) automatically. This is part of the AutoCorrect’s AutoFormat As You Type feature and is turned on by default in most Word installations. To make sure, choose Office, Word Options, click Proofing, click AutoCorrect Options, and then display the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Make sure the Straight Quotes with Smart Quotes check box is activated and then click OK in all open dialog boxes. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]