Here are a few tips to make you more productive with Word 2007.
Compare docs the smart way
You don’t need two windows to compare documents in Word 2007. Go to Review > Compare, and click Compare one more time. Enter two document names and you’ll see the difference.
Look for private data
Before sending a file, use the Inspect Document command (under the Office button, click Prepare). It’ll look for hidden text and other info that Word can strip out.
Add AutoText to Toolbar
You can make AutoText easy to find by adding it to the Quick Access Toolbar. Go to the Office button, Word Options > Customize, and under Choose commands from look for All Commands. Find AutoText and click Add. You’ll now have a drop-down.
Speed up paragraph movements
Move paragraphs with just the keys. Put the cursor a the front of a paragraph, hold Alt-Shift, then use the arrow keys to move the text up or down. Use Alt-Ctrl to select and entire paragraph.
Jump to previous work
When reopening a large Word document, hit Shift-F5 to jump directly to the last spot you were working on.
Make a table of contents
Creating a table of contents for a document is easy, as long as all the headlines and subheads use either Heading 1, Heading 2 or Heading 3 from the Styles section of the Home tab. Insert a T of C page from the References tab and it will fill itself in based on those styles.
Use subheads with style
Don’t make subheads that are mere bold. To make them fit a style, select a subhead, right-click, go to Styles, and then Select Text with Similar Formatting. Double check that the macro didn’t select text you don’t want, then apply a style like Heading 3 from the Home tab’s Styles section.
Change the default font
Microsoft Word 2007’s default font, Calibri is good, but you may not like it. To change it, hit Ctrl-D, select the font you want (along with the size and color) and click the Default button. This changes the default font in the template called Normal, which will be applied to all documents that use Normal.
Translate words, even sentences
Word 2007 will translate words or whole sentences into Arabic, French, or Spanish as you specify. Visit the Review tab and click Translation ScreenTip to set a language. Hover the cursor over a word to translate it or select a full block of text and click Translate.
Insert random text
Need sample text? Type =rand() on its own line and hit Enter. You’ll get fake Latin, repeated “quick brown fox,” or random instructions, depending on the version of Word. Numerals in the parentheses indicate number of paragraphs and sentences” =rand(5,10) inserts five paragraphs with ten sentences each.
Edit Image documents
Office comes with a program called Microsoft Document Imaging. You can use it to perform quick-and-dirty optical character recognition (OCR) on items you’ve scanned (save them as TIFF files). Click Send Text to Word and you can start editing immediately.
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