AUTOCORRECT AND AUTOTEXT
Hone Word's Automatic Selection
The Annoyance:
When I'm selecting with the mouse, Word suddenly grabs more text than I'm trying to get. Arrgh!
The Fix:
It sounds like you're running afoul of Word's smart-selection features. Choose Tools 
Options, click the Edit tab (see Figure 3-3), and see whether the "When selecting, automatically select entire word and "Use smart paragraph selection" boxes are checked. If so, try unchecking them, and see if you prefer the resulting selection behavior.
Figure 3-3. Many of the options on the Edit tab of the Options dialog box annoy nearly as many people as they help.
If you check the first box ("When selecting, automatically..."), when you drag from the beginning of a selection to another word, the selection is automatically extended to encompass both wordseven if you deliberately dragged from the middle of the first word. As you extend the selection from two words to three, Word selects a word at a time, rather than partial words.
If you check the "Use smart paragraph selection" box and carefully try to select an entire paragraph minus the paragraph mark, Word will grab the paragraph mark anyway. As usual, Word is trying to be helpful, but many people find this kind of help annoying. (If you want to see your paragraph marks, click the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar or choose Tools Options, click the View tab, and check the "Paragraph marks box.)
Tip: Word 2000 offers neither smart paragraph selection nor most of the smart-cut-and-paste settings.
Control Smart-Cut-and-Paste Settings
The Annoyance:
I used Word 2 for ages and got pretty darn good at selecting exactly what I needed to cut and paste. But now I've "upgraded" to Word XP, and it's driving me nuts. I cut just what I want to cut, and it knocks out a couple of extra spaces. I paste the text back in, and it jiggers the spaces around it. Tell me this is progress!
The Fix:
You seem to disagree with the "smart cut and paste" feature's judgment. Choose Tools Options and click the Edit tab. You can then either simply uncheck the "Smart cut and paste box to turn off the feature altogether, or click the Settings button and use the options in the Settings dialog box (see Figure 3-4) to produce more acceptable behavior.
Figure 3-4. The Settings dialog box lets you set smart-cut-and-paste behavior to correspond to a particular version of Word, or choose custom settings that suit you.
Select Indented Text Accurately
The Annoyance:
I often have problems when selecting text in a List style (e.g., a paragraph in a bulleted or numbered list). If I want to select the last element in the list so I can move it elsewhere in the document, Word not only selects the line I want, but also the first few characters of the line below the list (to the level at which the list is indented). I have to move the mouse back a few characters to deselect them, or, when using the keyboard like I usually do, use the left arrow to go back a few characters . And if I go back one too many characters, even though the complete list line is selected, Word leaves an empty line in the List style, so I have to undo the cut and try again or take an extra step to delete the blank line Word left behind.
The Fix:
The "Use smart paragraph selection" feature (on the Edit tab of the Options dialog box) might actually help you with this one. The problem you're having with a blank line in the List style being left behind is because you've accidentally deselected the paragraph marker at the end of the list item you cut. Experiment with it and see.
To avoid extra characters being selected, try some of these selection techniques:
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- Keyboard
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Extend Selection mode is a feature for extending the selection without pressing Shift or dragging with the mouse. To turn Extend Selection mode on, double-click the EXT indicator on the status bar or press F8. Click at the point where you want to extend the selection, or use the arrow keys to extend the selection. Press Esc or double-click the EXT indicator again to turn off Extend Selection mode.
Tip: While Extend Selection mode is on, you can press F8 a second time to select the current word, a third time to select the current paragraph, and a fourth time to select the whole document. Selecting a word or paragraph tends to be the most useful function of Extend Selection mode. To select a whole document more quickly than by using Extend Selection mode, press Ctrl+A or Ctrl-click in the left margin. To select a whole paragraph, double-click in the left margin next to the paragraph.
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- Mouse
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Drag in the left margin (where the mouse pointer changes to an arrow pointing north-northeast) rather than dragging through the text itself.
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- Keyboard and mouse
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Click to place the insertion point at the beginning of the text you want to select, scroll to the desired end point, hold down Shift, and click to select from the insertion point to where you click.
Turn Off "Click and Type"
The Annoyance:
When I double-click in an empty line in a Word document, Word inserts a bunch of tab characters and paragraph marks. Did I ask for that? This happens quite often when I'm clicking on the document to bring it to the front so that I can work with it again.
The Fix:
As an aside, there's much to be said for pressing Alt+Tab to "coolswitch" from application to application (or from one Word window to another). But the specific problem here is that Word's "Click and Type" feature is switched on. This feature lets you click in a hitherto-unused area of a document and start typing in it. Click and Type adds any blank paragraphs and tabs needed to bring the insertion point to where you click.
To switch it off, choose Tools Options, click the Edit tab, and uncheck the "Enable click and type box.
Tip: If you like to use Click and Type, use the "Default paragraph style" drop-down list on the Edit tab of the Options dialog box to set the paragraph style Word should use for the paragraphs it creates. The default style is Normal.
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 91