Notes from the Help Desk…

Track Changes is an indispensable tool in Word that lets a group of people edit a document, while Word keeps track of what changes were made to the document and who made them. However, a persistent problem in earlier versions of Word has been the difficulty in removing all tracked changes and comments from the final version of a document.

When you accept or reject changes in a final document, Word is supposed to remove all traces of tracked changes and comments. However, many users have discovered that this information is difficult to remove permanently without using a third-party program.

This task is much easier and more effective in Word 2007. To remove tracked changes and comments from a Word 2007 document:

1. Click the Office button.
2. Click Prepare and select Inspect Document.
3. The Document Inspector dialog box will appear.
4. Check the Comments, Revisions, Versions and Annotations checkbox.
5. View the inspection results.
6. Click the Remove All button next to Comments, Revisions, Versions, and Annotations.
7. Click the Close button.
8. Save your document.

Your document is now free of all of the comments and tracked changes info.

Microsoft Word 2007 lets you create blog postings and publish them directly from Word. (Actually, I’m doing it right now!) Using Word is generally easier than most blogging software, which requires users to edit HTML code.

To create a blog posting from Word:

1. Click the Office button.
2. Select New, select New blog post, and then click the Create button (lower right corner).
3. Click the Register Now button in the dialog, and then select your Blog provider from the drop-down list.
4. Enter the appropriate information into the New Blogger Account dialog box.
5. Click the Picture Options button if you want to select a picture provider from the drop-down list.
   (If you don’t use a picture provider, select None-Don’t Upload Pictures.)
6. Type your blog posting, and click the Publish button on the Ribbon to publish it to the blog. (When you publish, Word will prompt you for your Username and Password.)

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.

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.