Chapter 3. Text Entry and Editing

Almost every document needs some textand Word offers many features for helping you create it quickly and accurately without wearing out your fingertips. This chapter explores how to eliminate annoyances you may encounter when entering and editing text.

Does Word irritate you by displaying your document in the wrong view, or automatically selecting more text than you want it to? This chapter will show you how to use Word's views effectively and how to hone Word's automatic-selection and smart-cut-and-paste features so they select what you want, not what Microsoft's focus group thinks you want. With the decks cleared, you'll be ready to turn AutoCorrect and its sister feature AutoFormat As You Type from hyperactive menaces into your potent but dutiful servants, use Find and Replace to effortlessly remove most of the annoyances your colleagues build into their documents, and choose among eight different means of navigating through your documents.

But that's not all. This chapter also covers a bumper pack of assorted editing annoyances, as well as a few tips for mastering fields. For example, you'll learn how to stop Word from searching the Web for help, how to get rid of that pesky Office Assistant for good, and how to enter the same text easily in multiple parts of a documentand keep it updated automatically.

VIEWS

Expand and Collapse Outline View Quickly

The Annoyance:

Outline view in Word 2003 and Word XP is annoying. I use it to move large sections of text easily, but by default, Word opens in Outline view with everything expanded, including the text. In Word 2000, there was an Outline toolbar with icons that made it easy to expand and contract the outline quickly. In Word 2003 and Word XP, you have to go through several mouse clicks to accomplish the same thing.

The Fix:

You can tackle these Outline view annoyances in several ways.

The worst annoyance is Word's habit of opening the outline fully expanded. To make Word open the outline expanded only to a specified level, create two short macros to replace the ViewOutlineMaster and ViewOutline commands that the Word interface uses when switching to Outline view. See "Make Outline View Open Expanded to a Specified Level" in Chapter 8 for instructions.

If you can't summon the energy to create the macros, you may find using keyboard shortcuts to quickly expand or collapse the outline satisfactory:

Alt+Shift+1 through Alt+Shift+9: Collapse or expand to the specified heading level (1 through 9).
Alt+Shift++: Expand the selected item by one heading level.
Alt+Shift+-: Collapse the selected item by one heading level.
Alt+Shift+A: Toggle the display of all heading levels.

The other annoyance is that Word 2003 and Word XP use the Show Level drop-down list on the Outlining toolbar instead of the individual level buttons that Word 2000 and earlier versions used. The drop-down list saves some space on the toolbar, but it makes changing levels with the mouse a click slower and demands greater accuracy.

To fix this annoyance, select Tools Customize, click the Commands tab, and verify that Normal.dot is selected in the "Save in" drop-down list. Click All Commands in the Categories listbox, scroll way down, and then drag as many of the ShowHeading1 through ShowHeading9 buttons to the Outlining toolbar (see Figure 3-1) as you want to be able to access instantly. Drag the Show Level drop-down list off the toolbar and drop it in the document area to get rid of it.

Click the Close button, Shift-click the File menu, click Save All, and click the Yes button when Word prompts you to save changes to Normal.dot .

Figure 3-1. If you find the Show Level drop-down list on the Outlining toolbar in Word 2003 and Word XP a menace , you can easily supplement or replace it with individual Show Level buttons.

Switch Quickly Among Views

The Annoyance:

So I'm working in my document, and I need to use several views. I choose View Outline...choose View Normal...choose View Print Layout...choose again.... It seems like Im addicted to the View menu. I'd like to get off it.

The Fix:

Easy enough. If you still have the horizontal scrollbar displayed, click the appropriate button at its left end to change views (see Figure 3-2). You can also press Ctrl+Alt+O for Outline view, Ctrl+Alt+N for Normal view, Ctrl+Alt+P for Print Layout view, or Ctrl+Alt+I for Print Preview.

Figure 3-2. The horizontal scrollbar provides buttons for changing views quickly. If you prefer to hide the horizontal scrollbar, you can use keyboard shortcuts instead to change the view.

Learn to Live with the Wavy Under-line

The Annoyance:

In Word 97, in Outline mode (View Outline), every collapsed heading has a wavy underline that starts about 0.5 inches to the left of the first word and extends approximately 1.5 inches (for short headings) to 4 inches (for longer ones) to the right. How can I get rid of the underlining? Its ugly and appears to serve no purpose.

The Fix:

Sorryno fix on this one. There is a purpose, though: the underlining is to indicate that there are paragraphs collapsed under the heading. Treat it as a visual aid to help you avoid deleting precious pages when you intend to delete only a heading.

Turn Off Formatting Display in Outline View

The Annoyance:

I use Outline view all the time for taking notes in classes and meetings. The problem is that the formatting constantly changes when I tab in or outif I tab in, I have to press Ctrl+I immediately to turn off italics. I just want the formatting to stay the same, but I can't find any way to make that happen.

The Fix:

When you're tabbing in and out, you're changing the heading level, right? So what's happening is that Word is applying the different built-in heading styles. In the default Normal.dot template, the Heading 2, Heading 5, and Heading 8 styles use italic, so when you hit one of those levels, you'll get italics.

The easiest fix is to ignore the problem. Click the Show Formatting button on the Outlining toolbar to turn off the display of formatting. All your text will now appear in your default font, without any italics (unless your default font is italic).

If you don't want to lose all the font formatting in Outline view, change the Heading styles from italic to regular font. (See "Modify an Existing Style" in the Annoyance "Get Started with Styles" in Chapter 4 for details.) Bear in mind, though, that this change carries through in all views.

Change the Font Used for Outline View

The Annoyance:

I've learned to click the Show Formatting button on the Outlining toolbar to turn off the display of formatting in Outline view, but I'd like to use a different font for working in this view.

The Fix:

You just need to change the default font for the template attached to the document. Choose Format Font, select the desired font details, click the Default button, and click the Yes button in the confirmation dialog box.

Be warned that this change will also affect other views if your styles use the default font. If you want to use this particular font only when using Outline view, create a new template with this font as the default. Attach the new template to the document when you want to work in Outline view, and reattach the document's previous template when you switch to a different view. (This solution is practical only for protracted sessions in Outline view. If you want to flip back and forth between Outline view and other views, it won't do you much good.)

Tip: If, when you switch views, the current selection disappears from the screen, press the left arrow key and then the right arrow key to bring it back into view.

Print from Outline View

The Annoyance:

I want to print documents in Outline format, but I can't.

The Fix:

You can, you know. If you're looking for an "Outline" option in the Print dialog box, don't worryit's simpler than that. Switch to Outline view, expand or collapse the outline so that it shows only the levels you want to print, and then choose File Print as usual.

Stop Print Layout View from Shortening Pages

The Annoyance:

I'm using Print Layout view in Word 2003, and the page dimensions have gotten all weird. It's like someone lopped three- quarters of an inch off the top and bottom of the page.

The Fix:

Word hides unoccupied whitespace to help you see the rest of your document more clearly. To restore all the whitespace, choose Tools Options, click the View tab, and check the "White space between pages (Print view only)" box.

Edit in Print Preview

The Annoyance:

Why can't I edit in Print Preview, so that I can see the effects of my edits?

The Fix:

You can. Just click the Magnifier button on the Print Preview toolbar, and you're in business.

If you like editing in Print Preview, you'll probably want to make Print Preview automatically open in editing mode. You can do this, but only by using a macro. See "Make Print Preview Open in Editing Mode" in Chapter 8 for instructions.