Tips and Tricks
January 1, 2010
Heading styles are powerful additions to any Word document. They help documents comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements and make them easier to use on the Web. But first, you might be wondering, “What is a style?”
A style is a collection of formatting commands that can be easily created, saved, accessed, and applied to a block of text with a single click. Create one or more styles—once—use them over and over! The “Normal” style is automatically assigned to text in Word, but you can easily assign a style of your choice by first selecting the text and then following these steps:
In Word 2007:
- In the “Styles” group on the “Home” tab, click a style to apply it to the selected text (to view all available styles, click the “More” button).
In Word 2003:
- Under the “Format” menu, select “Styles and Formatting.”
- In the “Styles and Formatting” pane, select “All styles” from the “Show” drop-down menu to display all styles.
- Click a style to apply it to the selected text.
Some styles, such as “Heading” styles, are designed for titles and headings, while others can be applied to any selected text. For instance, you can assign the style “Intense Emphasis” to phrases within a paragraph or scattered throughout a document. Modifying the appearance of the “Intense Emphasis” style (e.g., color, size, spacing, font, etc.) will change the appearance of all text that has been assigned that style. By clicking the “Change Styles” button in the “Styles” group and selecting a different style set, color scheme, or font, you can automatically change the appearance of all styles in the document.
Heading styles are useful for several reasons:
- When a document is saved as a Web page, heading styles are automatically converted to HTML headings (H1, H2, etc.).
- When a document is saved in Adobe PDF format, headings become “bookmarks.”
- Screen readers (text to speech) can usually “browse” through a document by skipping from header to header.
- Word can use headers to automatically create a table of contents.
A table of contents created from headers of various levels can be particularly useful when posting documents to the Web. After saving a Word document in Web format (by selecting “Single File Web Page,” “Web Page,” or “Web Page, Filtered” under “Save as type” in the “Save As” dialog box), each item in the table of contents will automatically link to a heading within the document! Try it out:
In Word 2007:
- Under the “References” tab, select “Table of Contents” > “Insert Table of Contents” to access all of the options.
In Word 2003:
- Under the “Insert” menu, select References > Index and Tables, and click on the “Table of Contents” tab.
- When creating a table of contents for the Web, uncheck the “Show page numbers” box.
If you need to print multiple Word documents over a short period, you don’t have to open Word. If the documents are located in the same folder on your computer, you can simply follow these steps:
- Locate the documents in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
- Select them by using your mouse and the “Shift” key (for adjacent documents) or the “Ctrl” key (for nonadjacent documents).
- Finally, right-click on a selected document and choose “Print” from the shortcut menu. (If you do not see a “Print” option when you right-click, look for a “Print” button in the toolbar at the top of the screen.)
Word cycles through the documents one at a time, prints them, and closes down.
Before you print your document, preview it. If the last page contains no more than a few lines of text, consider shrinking your document to eliminate the nearly empty page.
To shrink your document:
In Word 2003:
- Go to File > Print Preview (or click the “Print Preview” button on the “Standard” toolbar) and click the “Shrink to Fit” icon on the “Print Preview” toolbar.
In Word 2007:
- Click the Office Button and select Print > Print Preview, or click the “Print Preview” button in the Quick Access Toolbar. Click the “Shrink One Page” button in the “Preview” group.
Word will decrease the size of every font in the document just enough to make it fit on one less page.
An interesting page border is nearly guaranteed to attract attention to your document. Follow these steps to create one:
In Word 2003:
- Select “Borders and Shading” from the “Format” menu.
- Click the “Page Border” tab.
- In the “Art” drop-down menu, select an attractive border from the list.
- Click “Options.”
- In the “Measure from” drop-down menu, select “Text.”
- Click “OK,” then “OK” again.
In Word 2007:
- Click the “Page Layout” tab on the Ribbon.
- In the “Page Background” grouping, click the “Page Borders” button.
- In the “Art” drop-down menu, select an attractive border from the list.
- Click “Options.”
- In the “Measure from” drop-down menu, select “Text.”
- Click “OK,” then “OK” again.
Sometimes, when you are typing a bulleted list, one of your list items is so detailed that it requires two (or more) paragraphs to do it justice. If you press “Enter” after typing the first paragraph, a bullet will automatically be created. However, you want to continue the first bulleted list item in a new paragraph instead. So how do you start a new paragraph without creating a new list item?
Press the “Shift” and “Enter” keys simultaneously, rather than just the “Enter” key, to start a new paragraph without creating a new list item. Type your text. If you need to create additional paragraphs, press “Shift+Enter” again. When you are ready to create the next bulleted item, just press “Enter.”
If, after resizing a picture, you are not satisfied with the result, you can reset your picture to its original size and proportions. Here’s how:
- Select the picture.
- On the “Format” tab under “Picture Tools,” in the Adjust group, click “Reset Picture.”
Your picture will return to its original size and proportions.
The "active area" of an Excel worksheet is the part that contains any cells you have used. To select the active area, click the top left cell in that area, press and hold the “Shift” key, and then press the “Ctrl” and “End” keys simultaneously. (If Excel selects extra cells below and to the right of your work, save the workbook and try the keystroke again.)
In Excel, a region is any block of data cells surrounded by empty columns and rows.
To select a region, click any cell in the region and press the “Ctrl” and “*” (asterisk) keys simultaneously.
You can select—and perform operations on—nonadjacent columns (Columns A and C, for example), nonadjacent rows (Rows 1 and 3), or columns and rows (such as Column A and Row 3). Here's how:
- Click the heading for the first column or row you want to select.
- Hold down the “Ctrl” key and select any other rows or columns you want.
The “Ctrl” key also selects nonadjacent files in the Windows Explorer interface (for instance, in your Documents or My Documents folder).