Okay, The Guru has a confession to make: I used to be afraid of hanging indents.
This, of course, is silly. Of all the things in the world there are to be afraid of — snakes, heights, public speaking, thermonuclear war, global economic meltdowns — hanging indents are pretty innocuous. But I did, until fairly recently, go through a period where I avoided doing hanging indents because I kept getting confused by them. (More on that later.)
Some of you are asking, “What is a hanging indent?” It’s a style of paragraph indentation that has the first line flush with the left margin but indents all of the subsequent lines in the paragraph, like so:
(If you had to write term papers in APA Style in college, you recognize the format.)
Now you’re asking, “So what’s so scary about a hanging indent?” and “Why should I care about ‘em?” Let me explain.
Click to continue…
Recently, I’ve gotten several questions from users who love the paragraph autonumbering technique illustrated at my post “How to automatically number your discovery requests … in 5 keystrokes,” but they need to start the numbering sequence above “1″.
So, I’ve updated my original post at the bottom to show everyone how to use the “/r” switch to start the numbering sequence at 2, 3, or whatever number you need.
Click here, then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post to check out this new trick!
Last week, my guest post at Lawyerist gathered together some of the news coverage surrounding Microsoft’s release of Office 2013 (a.k.a. Office 15), including Bloomberg Businessweek’s interview with Steve Ballmer in which he responded, “I’m not going to talk about that” when asked when Microsoft would add an iPad app to Office.
The response was staggering — over 100 comments (so far), with what could politely be referred to as a diversity of opinion. Within a couple of hours of publication, the editor at Lawyerist reported that traffic to the site (and to my post) was going through the roof.
Click here to read the article and see what the excitement’s about.
This week, I depart a bit from my usual Microsoft Office focus to review the mobile broadband service I’ve started using to connect my new tablet (thank you, Santa!) to the internet while I’m away from home.
Here’s the short version: It’s great, but it does have its limitations. Click here (after 11:00 a.m. CT today) to read the full review.
If you’ve tried to use Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature without someone to show you the ins and outs, you probably had a pretty frustrating experience. But what you might not know is that Track Changes can even be a bit dangerous in the wrong hands.
To keep from tripping over Track Change’s stumbling blocks, head over to Lawyerist (after 11 am CT) and check out Don’t Let Track Changes Trip You Up, where I show you what settings you need to be aware of to keep your document safe.
Click here for the full illustrated article.
In reviewing the WordPerfect Lover’s Guide to Word course, I decided that the course wasn’t really complete without lessons on how to print labels and envelopes. So I’ve added those two lessons as bonuses, bringing the total number of lessons to ten.
What does the WordPerfect Lover’s course teach?
- Understanding the Microsoft Word Ribbon interface
- Navigation and Views
- Creating and saving documents
- Opening and editing existing documents
- Character formatting
- Paragraph formatting
- Page and document formatting
- Printing and finishing your document (including metadata cleanup)
- NEW! Printing envelopes
- NEW! Formatting and printing labels
All current and future course enrollees who complete the first eight lessons have access to the two new lessons at no extra charge! Just my way of doing some continual improvement of the offerings here at Legal Office Guru.
For more information about the course, click here. If you’re already enrolled for the course, go to your Account page (click here) and log in to see your new lessons.
(image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/floeschie/4345518893/)
One of the most fun discoveries new Microsoft Word users make is the self-updating date. You may already know exactly what I’m talking about: you click a couple of times, and suddenly you’ve got today’s date embedded in your document, and it will update itself every time you open the document.
But what if what you want isn’t necessarily today’s date? What if you need the document to reflect the date it was saved, or printed, or created?
The good news is, you can get any of those with a couple more mouse clicks and a little know-how.
Next: how to put in Today’s Date (click here to continue) ->
One of the biggest email-related time-sucks is the whole follow-up business. You can’t just send an email out and just mark that task “done.” Oh, no. You have to make sure your recipient actually gets your email, you have to get a response (and the right one at that), you have to do the next task in line, etc.
And even though I covered the whole “flagging emails for follow-up” in excruciating detail here on Legal Office Guru, I’m giving an overview of that and three other related Microsoft Outlook features you’ll want to consider using before hitting that Send button next time.
Click here to read the full article (after 11:11 a.m. CT, which is when the post goes live).
Hands-down, the number one complaint I get from former WordPerfect users is, “But Word doesn’t have Reveal Codes!” And, to a point, that’s true.
But as my ongoing (really, never-ending) research in the wonderful world of Microsoft Office plug-ins (a.k.a. add-ins or extensions) has shown me, it’s often a case of “seek and ye shall find.” Because there are a lot of enterprising programmers out there adding heretofore unavailable features to Microsoft Office.
Specifically, for Reveal Codes, there’s CrossEyes. And if you want to get a gander at what this plug-in can do, click here to read my review on Lawyerist.
If you’ve ever been frustrated when attempting to search for an email you just know you received (or all the calendar items or tasks that have a particular party’s name in them, etc.), you may appreciate my latest guest post at Lawyerist. It’s a review of Lookeen (version 8), a popular search plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that not only searches Outlook .pst files (a.k.a. where all your Outlook data is stored), but can also be configured to search selected folders on your computer.
Click here to see the full review.
Hate the Ribbon? You’re not alone. Lots of folks screamed in agony when Microsoft replaced Office’s familiar 2003 menu system with the Ribbon, effective with version 2007. So many people screamed, in fact, that someone even created a plug-in to switch it back.
But not many users know you can actually modify the Ribbon (at least in version 2010 – Ribbon modification in 2007 requires mucho programming). Click here to learn how.
Ever hit a wrong button or moved your mouse the wrong way in Microsoft Outlook, only to see something essential disappear? Apparently, it’s a common problem, since I get quite a few distress calls from co-workers saying, “Help! My [fill in the blank] disappeared from my screen!”
In my latest guest post at Lawyerist, I cover some of the most common oopsies I see and how to restore your Outlook to look the way you had it before you did that one-two-switcheroo.
Click here to read the full illustrated article.
Sooner or later, every Microsoft Word user finds him/herself wondering if some setting or function could be changed. (Take, for example, the way line justification is calculated. Didn’t know that could be re-set, did you?)
The challenge is finding where that darn setting is!
So I was really pleased to learn that the encyclopedically knowledgeable and frighteningly prolific Vivian Manning over at Small City Law Firm Tech has compiled her famous Trouble and Solutions Start Here – Word 2010 Options posts into one easy-to-use pdf book. Yay!!!
Click here to access this free (and incredibly valuable) resource.
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