Saving Time by Starting Word Automatically

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This first idea is a timesaving tip. If you start Word every time you start Microsoft Windows, why not have Windows start Word automatically? Follow these steps to add Word to your Startup folder so that it launches automatically when you start your system:

1. Click the Windows Start menu, and then point to All Programs.

2. From the Microsoft Office folder, select and drag the Microsoft Office Word 2003 icon to the Startup folder.

3. Hold the icon over the Startup folder until the folder's contents appear, and then place the icon in the list in the order you want it to be started, as shown below.

Word adds the shortcut icon to the Startup folder, and the next time you start Windows, Word will start automatically.

Inside Out: Enable drag-and-drop

If you drag the Word icon to the Startup menu and nothing appears to happen, check that the drag-and-drop feature is enabled on your system. Right-click Start, choose Properties, click the Start Menu tab, and then click Customize. Finally, in the Customize Start Menu dialog box, click the Advanced tab and make sure that Enable Dragging And Dropping is checked in the Start Menu Items list. (If it's not, click it to enable the feature.) Click OK twice to return to Word.

Customizing Startup by Adding Switches

If you regularly open Word documents and then attach the same template time after time, you may want to streamline things by adding a switch to the startup command. This causes Word to open a new document automatically with the template you want already attached.

To use a switch at startup, click Start, and then choose Run. In the Run dialog box, enter the path to Word (for example, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe) or click Browse to navigate to the folder and have Windows enter the path for you, and then press the Spacebar and type the letter t, followed by the template file name. For example, if the template is named Mspressnew.dot, to have Word automatically open a new document with this template attached, your command line would look like this:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe t Mspressnew.dot

Click OK to enter the command and start Word.

If you really like this technique, you can create a desktop shortcut that enables you to bypass using the Run command. Right-click the Windows desktop, select New, and then choose Shortcut. Enter the path to the template file (shown above) in the Type The Location Of The Item box, and then click Next. Type a name for the shortcut, and then click Finish. Now you'll be able to start Word the way you want it, right from your desktop.

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