Notes from the Help Desk…

If you often work with several docs open in Word, you’ll love this tip!

Hold down the SHIFT key when you click on the File menu. Close and Save will appear as Close All and Save All, allowing you to close or save all open files with one click!

(Note: If you select Close All, Word will still prompt you to save changes for each unsaved file.)

Word lets you add a Work menu to your Menu Bar that you can use to access frequently used documents. Although few people know about this Word feature, it can be quite useful.

To add the Work menu to the menu bar:

1. Select Tools | Customize, and click the Commands tab.
2. In the list of Categories , select Built-in Menus.
3. Select Work in the Commands box and drag it to the menu bar.



4. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box.

After you add the Work menu, you can easily add any open Word document to it.

To add the current document to the Work menu:

1. Select Work | Add to Work Menu.

To open a document on the Work menu:

1. Select the the document on the Work menu.

To remove a document from the Work menu:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+- (dash key).
2. Your cursor will look like a large, bold underscore.
3. On the Work menu, click the document you want to remove.

By default, Word and Excel list the last four files you opened at the bottom of the File menu. You can increase the number of files on this list to nine by changing a program setting.

Here’s how:

1. Select Tools | Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. Change the number in the Recently used file list to 9 entries.
4. Click OK.

Word 2002/2003 lets you select multiple noncontiguous items in a document.

Although this feature has been available in Excel for some time, it was not introduced in Word until ver. 2002, and is still available in ver. 2003.

For example, you can select the headings of two or more sections in a document, without selecting the text in between.

Here’s how:

1. Select the first item (word, sentence, heading, paragraph, etc.)
2. Hold down CTRL.
3. Select any additional items you want.

Do you need to add a Table of Contents (hereafter referrred to as TOC) to a document? It’s much easier than you think. And there’s certainly no need to type it out the long way.

However, there is something you must do before you create the TOC: Use heading styles throughout your document. To format text as a heading style, just select the text and then select the heading style (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) from the Style drop-down list (located to the left of the Font drop-down list–it probably says “Normal”).

After you have formatted everything in the document that you want to appear in the TOC as a heading style, move the insertion point to the top of the document (since this is probably where you want to put the TOC). Then select Insert | Reference | Index and Tables… The following dialog box will appear:

Make sure you have the Table of Contents tab selected. Add checks to the appropriate checkboxes if you want to show page numbers in the TOC (which you do–otherwise, what is the point of a TOC?), and if you want to right align the page numbers. Select the type of tab leader you want to connect the heading and the page number (usually a dotted line). Then select the format you want. Finally, tell Word how many heading style you want to include in the TOC. For example, you may have used Headings 1-5 in the document, but you may only want Headings 1-3 to show up in the TOC.

When you click OK, a TOC will be inserted at the insertion point.

Updating a Table of Contents

Great, you say, now that I have a spiffy TOC, what happens if I edit the document, add and delete text, and move sections to different pages?

No problem. Simply click into the TOC, and press the F9 function key on the top row of the keyboard. Word will display the following prompt:

Select the option you want. If you have inserted and/or deleted sections, select Update entire table; otherwise, you can just update page numbers. Word will regenerate the TOC, with the correct headings and page numbers.

First, you are probably asking yourself, “What does he mean by selecting text vertically?’

Answer: Selecting text vertically allows you to select the first character in every line of a document (or the first two characters, three, etc.) See the example below.

Now that you know what selecting text vertically is, you are probably asking yourself, “Why would I ever want to do this?”

Answer: While it’s possible that you may never have a need for this unique Word feature, if you ever do need it, you’ll be glad you know how.

I find it useful in two situations:

1. I sometimes receive long back-and-forth emails from people containing several replies and replies to replies, and I need to delete the prefix character (usually a >) in front of several lines of text.
2. I receive a text document that contains leading spaces on every line.

In these situations, I could write a Word macro or do a Find and Replace, but ALT-dragging is much easier (and much cooler).

Here’s how:

1. If you are working with an email message, copy it into Word.
2. Hold down the ALT key, hold down the left mouse button, and simply drag vertically.
3. Here’s an example:

Now you know how to ALT-drag!

Excel provides a Special number format for zipcodes which allows those of us in New England to display our zipcodes properly. However, when you do a mail merge in Word 2002 and 2003, this formatting will not come through. A zipcode of 01040 will display as 1040. You can fix this in Excel by converting the number back to text, but if your list is extensive, you won’t want to do this. This tip will show you how to display 5-digit zipcodes properly in a Word mail merge without having to reformat your data.

After you create the merge document and attach your Excel workbook containing the addresses:

1. Insert the merge field for your zip code where you want it.

2. Press ALT+F9 to display the field codes. The Zip code field will look something like this (the text in quotes will be the name of your zip code field). Ignore any shading that might appear.

{ MERGEFIELD “Zip_code” }

3. Change the field to include a number format, as shown below. Make sure to place it inside the curly braces and include the spaces, etc. Make sure to use a backslash \ and not a forward slash /. Note that the number format is enclosed in quotes (”):

{ MERGEFIELD “Zip_code” \# “00000″ }

4. Press ALT+F9 again and preview the merge.

5. You may have to update the field by selecting it and pressing F9 in order to see the results of your change.