If you use Microsoft Word, you may notice that at the end of a letter, if you start typing ‘Sin’, a little yellow box flashes up with ‘Sincerely’ in it. Likewise, if you start a letter with ‘To whom’, the box flashes at you with ‘To whom it may concern’.
These little yellow boxes are part of Word’s Auto-Complete and Auto Format functions. Microsoft Word tries to guess what you are going to type next and flashes suggestions to you. If the suggestion is correct and you press Enter on your keyboard, Word quickly enters the word or phrase in your document.You also notice it when you mistype the as hte and Word corrects it for you.
If you use Microsoft Word to create any kind of document that includes pictures, wrapping text around a picture can be frustrating. Today's tip will give you some easy to follow steps that will have you wrapping text like a pro. A bonus of using this tip is that you can also move your pictures around your document to almost any position.
As is my cardinal rule of word processing, type all your text in first then add pictures after your text is finished. To insert a photo or other image into Word:
Position the cursor where you want the picture to appear
Click Insert –> Picture –> From File (note that you can also scan pictures directly in at this point also)
In Part I of my "Creating Tables" tip, I discussed what a table was, how to create them, and some basics on how to customize them. In Part II of the tip, I discuss how to use reverse text, cell coloring, sorting, formulas and create a form all with tables. The video takes a few minutes to load (may be too slow for dial-up), but the wait is worth the knowledge.
Since many of us in the post-35 year old set learned how to type and create documents with a typewriter, we tend to try and use computer word processors like a typewriter. The two technologies couldn’t be further apart from each other and other than touch typing, we need to throw out almost all our knowledge of document creation from those days.Read More »Creating Tables in Microsoft Word – Part I – Video Tip
I created these notes for a client today who visits many sites with text that prints small. She knows how to make the screen text larger, and I referred to the tips (below) about printing from the web, but sometimes good ol’ copy and paste is necessary to truly get the look you want on paper. Learn how to use… Read More »How to print stuff from the web the way YOU want it – Notes
This tip falls in the category of “wow, that’s easy to do, I wish I would have known about it long ago!”
When you are on a particularly long web page and need to find a term or phrase, click on Edit from your menus, then Find (or Find in page on some browsers). The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + F. You will be presented with a small window that allows you to enter a word or phrase and then the computer will look for that word on the page and bring you right to it.
As with many other features, Mozilla Firefox’s implementation of this feature is superior to all other browsers, as it gives you helpful extras like find the next or previous occurrence of the word or phrase you are looking for and even has an option to highlight all the occurrences on the page. (See the accompanying picture).
This tip is especially helpful for genealogy researchers. Sometimes your eyes can become crossed looking for a surname in a sea of text. Use the find function instead and cut your work and eye strain in half!
If you need to look for the same term again on the same page, you will notice that the function gives you the option to find again without retyping.
This type of search works best with single words, but you can experiment with phrases as well.
You can also use the Find function in Word Processing documents, email, spreadsheets, and PDF files as well.
Watch the short video below to see this tip in action in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Many times a computer user may need the ability to print what they see on the screen, but can’t access a Print command. Using the underutilized Print Screen button on the keyboard can rectify this situation.
The Print Screen button is usually located just to the right of your F keys and above the Insert, Home, Delete key section.
I learned Microsoft Word in 1995 and still prefer Word 97 or 2000 over their newer editions, but unfortunately, those older versions no longer function well or at all with Windows 7 and 8.1. Furthermore, the upgraded editions of Word don’t always make things easier. An example is this tip on how to shrink a document that is a little too… Read More »Shrink Microsoft Word document to one page – Video Tip
For some unknown reason (to me), Microsoft has decided to make paragraph spacing in Word 2007, 2010 and Start Edition double-space by default. In all previous version of Word, you need to press the Enter key twice to double-space. When formatting street addresses, for example, a user typically wants them to be single spaced, but that doesn’t happen in the… Read More »Making Single Space the Default in Microsoft Word 2007 & 2010
My daughter needed to know how to start automatic page numbering in Microsoft Word 2007 with a number other than one for a school publication. She and her classmates couldn’t figure it out, so she asked me. I put together a quick video to demonstrate the technique for her, and decided to share it with you as well. Enjoy.
