Carol Bratt

Creating a document is as easy as starting Word and typing text. If you choose, you can work with Word's default settings. However, many documents require different layouts. It's important to know how to change the settings so that you can change ... the way the text looks on the page. If you haven't changed the settings in your Normal template, you'll find the defaults (in the U.S. version of Word) to include top and bottom margins set to 1 inch, left and right margins at 1.25 inches, header and footer margins at .5 inches, gutter position left, paper size is 8.5X11 inches, portrait page ... (view more)

One of the biggest complaints I get from readers is that they can't use automatic numbering in word because once you get to double digits, the numbers don't line up correctly. Well I guess this is just going to make your day because I am going to ... tell you how to remedy that particular problem. The reason that the double digits change the indentation after the numbers is because the extra digit pushes the text to the next tab setting and it doesn't look pretty. To fix the spacing, move the first tab -- along with the hanging indent -- a bit to the right. Highlight all the numbered text and ... (view more)

Every new Word document contains an empty header and footer automatically. Headers are repeating text or graphics that appear at the top of every page of your printed document. The footers appear at the bottom of each page. Some folks put their ... company logo in the header. Many times, you put your letterhead information in the header. You can use the header and footer in various ways. Below is more pertinent information regarding the use of headers and footers in your documents: Typically hold such document elements as titles, chapter headings, page numbers, confidentiality notices, document ... (view more)

You can spare yourself a lot of grief by simply saving your document and saving it often. Before you make one keystroke -- save your document! There are a multiple ways to save your documents in Word: Click File | Save or Save As. Ctrl + S. Click ... the Save icon on your toolbar. Word's default folder for saving your documents is My Documents. However, you can change that location to any folder you like, such as Open Cases, Closed Cases or whatever is intuitive for you. Go to Tools | Options. lick on the File Locations tab. Highlight Documents. Click on the Modify button. You can then change the ... (view more)

It's very easy to confuse the three powerful "Autos" in Word. It is very helpful to be able to distinguish between these three distinct features. When you find yourself inserting the same text over and over again, you can create an AutoText entry. ... When you begin to type, Word suggests the completion. You can press Enter or F to accept the suggestion or just ignore it. Similar to AutoCorrect, where you can type an abbreviation which Word automatically expands, AutoText allows you to control whether the abbreviation expands. AutoText is one of Word's most powerful timesavers. AutoText entries ... (view more)

Most folks don't know the names of the toolbars in MS Word. Well, this tip will teach you about one of them. The Status Bar is at the very bottom of the screen in MS Word. You may have seen those four little boxes that reside on the Status bar but ... weren't aware of what they are or do. Think of them as status indicators that let you know if a certain feature is active or not. Below is a list that will explain what they mean and how they work. REC – Indicates the Macro Recorder is running. Double-click it to open the Record Macro dialog. TRK – Shows the status of the Track Changes feature. ... href="/news/1554/using-status-bar-indicator-boxes-ms-word" class="more-link">view more)

Many times I hear from people complaining that when they are trying to select a large block of text using Word, the text scrolls too quickly to accurately highlight the text. When you try to select a block of text that spans multiple pages in a ... large document, the pages start to fly by at a speed that makes your head spin! Stopping where you want to end your highlighting is next to impossible. If you go past and then try to go back, the pages scroll just as fast in the opposite direction. What to do? That's where Extend Selection Mode comes into play! There are a couple of ways to invoke ... (view more)

Your documents aren't much good to anyone if they aren't easily read and understood. Fortunately, MS Word has a built in feature that will give you a score, letting you know whether your document will be easily read and understood, and that is the ... Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score, which is one of the best known indicators measuring how easily an adult can read and understand a text. Readability statistics are good predictors of the level of difficulty of documents, particularly technical ones. To display the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Readability Score in Word, follow the steps below: On the ... (view more)

Have you ever received a meeting request that didn't coincide with your schedule? you may have had to deny the request, rearrange your schedule or call the other recipients of the request to try and find a more suitable time that was agreeable with ... everyone else. With Outlook 2002 and higher, you can automatically propose a new meeting time directly from the meeting request dialog box. You can even use the AutoPick feature to find the next best available time when all attendees are free. Follow the steps below: Open the meeting request. Click Propose New Time. In the Propose New Time dialog ... (view more)

There may be times when you want to display a chart with your data using MS Excel, but you don't want it to take up the space on the worksheet. One solution is to place the chart in a document. First, create your chart and cut and paste it to a ... drawing program such as Paint. Save the chart as a picture file and then go back and insert a comment in the worksheet. To add the chart to the comment, follow these steps: Double-click the comment. Select the Colors and Lines tab. In the Fill section, select Fill Effects from the Color drop-down list. Select the Picture tab and then click the Select ... (view more)