Using Styles & Formatting

November 12th, 2009 § 0

Got a long brief or other document that has lots of headings, subheadings, etc.?  You need Styles, baby.

No, not style — Styles.

The Styles function in Word is a handy tool for, among other things, setting up headings for different sections of a document.  These styles serve a dual purpose: not only do they help keep document formatting consistent (i.e., all paragraph and subparagraph headings at a particular level, for example, will be consistent through the document), they can help later when you create a Table of Contents, since Word can use these styles to create the levels of your Table of Contents.

There are a couple of different ways to use Styles & Formatting (as the feature is formally known) in your document.

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Inserting tables

November 10th, 2009 § 0

Occasionally, you need to present information in a form other than paragraphs.  Whether it’s a set of numbers or other obviously tabular data, or if you’re just looking to get the alignment of something just right, tables can help.

As usual in Microsoft Word (and most software programs), there’s more than one way to insert a table into your document:

#1: The Table Menu

Click on Table on the menu bar and choose Insert, Table:

Insert_Table_1Insert_Table_2

At this point, you can tell Word how many columns and rows you need and click OK.

#2: Draw Table

Not my personal favorite, but this may appeal to those who like a more visual approach.

Insert_Table_3

The reason I’m not wild about this is it gives you one big cell (one column, one row), which you then have to subdivide into however many columns/rows you need.  But, to each his/her own.

#3: The Insert Table Button

Here’s a good option, with one-click access: the Insert Table button, found on the Standard toolbar. (But don’t confuse it with the button next to it — the Insert Spreadsheet button with the “X” for Excel in it.)

Insert_Table_5

Click the Insert Table button, and you get a visual grid like the one above.  You can hold down your left mouse button and drag your mouse down and across to choose how many rows/columns you want; let go of the mouse button, and your selection becomes a table.

Basic headers and footers

November 5th, 2009 § 0

Once you reach an intermediate level of facility with Microsoft Word, you’ll want to start using headers and footers to do more advanced formatting.  Sure, you can insert page numbers from the Insert menu, but what if you want to put the page number and the document name and the date/time stamp on the bottom of every page?

That’s where learning about headers and footers comes in handy.

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Using (and configuring) Bullets & Numbers

June 17th, 2009 § 0

If you’re anything like me, one of the things you really hate is having to move paragraphs around in a long pleading (like a set of discovery requests).  Fortunately, if you know your way around Microsoft Word’s Bullets & Numbers feature, at least you won’t have to renumber every paragraph by hand.

Using Bullets & Numbers’ pre-defined formats is very easy.  The easiest way is to use the buttons on the Formatting Toolbar:

bulletsandnumberstoolbarbuttons

This gives you the basic, standard format. But what if you want some other format?

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Adding a new button to a Word toolbar

May 28th, 2009 § 2

If you’ve got a feature you use in Word pretty often, you probably hate having to go through the menu system to get to it. You know the drill: click on Tools, scroll down to Letters and Mailings, mouse across to Envelopes and Labels …

Do that enough times a day, and you’re ready to tear your hair out, right?

One easier way to handle such common tasks is to add a button for that feature to your toolbar. Here’s how:

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Line justification (a.k.a. paragraph alignment)

May 17th, 2009 § 0

Super easy — here’s how you do left-justify, right-justify, center, and full-justify in Microsoft Word (either with your mouse or your keyboard).

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Converting WordPerfect docs to Word

May 16th, 2009 § 2

One question I get asked a lot is, “What’s the best way to convert an existing WordPerfect document into Word?”

There are a lot of ways of doing this — some better than others.  Here, I rate the choices from worst to best.

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Why your pages break in weird places, part two

May 16th, 2009 § 0

Here’s the video tutorial I promised showing exactly why Block Protect can mess up your pagination seemingly beyond repair:
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So, you miss Reveal Codes in WordPerfect?

May 16th, 2009 § 0

The most common complaint I hear from legal professionals who’ve started using Word is, “I miss Reveal Codes!”

Yes, that ALT-F3 command was genius.  No doubt about it.

But what most users don’t know is there’s something similar in Word.  In some ways, it’s better.  (Intrigued?)

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Generating “placeholder” text automatically in Word

May 16th, 2009 § 0

While this isn’t a common need in law offices, it’s such a cool trick, I just had to share.

Have you ever seen a sentence that started with “Lorem ipsum …”?  That’s placeholder text that web and print designers use to show how text will be formatted in a document.  And it’s easy to insert automatically in Word.

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