Video Tutorials

From the Comments: Cool TOA trick

by The Guru · 0 comments

One of the things I love most about doing this blog is what I learn from readers. People often chime in on the comments to suggest solutions to problems others are having or better ways of doing things.

One recent comment especially deserves its own spotlight. Debbie Leonard Lovejoy stepped forward to help fellow commenter Ariel with a tricky formatting problem in a Table of Authorities. Specifically, this is what Ariel wanted:

I’ve searched high and low for a way to automatically format the cases in the TOA so the case name up to the comma is on a line by itself and then the reporter information and year and the page number are on a second, indented line, but no luck. I know I can manually do this just before printing by editing the table but I lose that formatting when the table updates and would like a more permanent solution if one exists. Strangest thing is that on the “Table of Authorities” dialog box, the example table in the Print Preview box has it formatted the way I’d like (though I imagine that is more a result of limited space in that box than some taunting and unavailable formatting option). Any idea? Thanks!

I had nothing. The only thing I could suggest was to “edit the right indent of the paragraphs to make them wrap a lot sooner than they would otherwise (in other words, not so close to the page number on the right margin).” Close (sort of), but no cigar.

Here’s Debbie’s much better solution:

Click here to learn this cool tip!

How to set tabs (without tearing your hair out)

by The Guru · 2 comments

It ought to be pretty simple, really. Even though Microsoft Word, by default, sets left tabs every half inch (at least in the U.S. version – elsewhere may vary), sometimes you need something different. Even if only for a particular part of your document. So, how on earth do you set tabs in Microsoft Word?

Click to continue…

Reader Question: Incrementing numbers in headers

by The Guru · 2 comments

I received an interesting email from a reader last week, and it was a variation on a theme I’d covered on this blog quite a while back: how to use autonumbering for court exhibits.

I say “variation” because, unlike my original post, this reader wanted to embed the automatic exhibit number in a footer rather than in the main document:

I am able to enter sequential exhibit numbers on the main parts of each page of my document by inserting the AutoNum category in Field codes. Is there a way to do the same in a footer/header?

If you’ve never actually tried to use certain field codes like AutoNum in a header or footer, you’ve probably never found out (the hard way) that not all of field codes work in the header/footer. Certain field codes will throw an error if you try to use them in headers and footers:

Oops.

So, if you can’t use the automatically incrementing AutoNum field, what can you use?

Click to continue…

Four ways to insert tables in Microsoft Word

by The Guru · 0 comments

At some point, you’ll find that you need to display information in Microsoft Word in a way that gives you more control than simply using tabs or columns. In those situations, you need to know how to insert and format Tables.

This will be post #1 in a series on inserting and formatting Tables, so we’re going to start slow!

Click to continue…

How to do a Table of Authorities, Part 2: Defining, Formatting and Inserting the TOA

by The Guru · 14 comments

In our last discussion about Microsoft Word’s Table of Authorities feature, I showed you the first step: how to mark citations for inclusion in a Table of Authorities. Now we’ll go over how to define and format a Table of Authorities and pull your marked citations into the TOA in your brief.

Click to continue…

When just the page number won’t do

by The Guru · 0 comments

A friend of mine is working on an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (U.S.) brief, and she’s run up on an interesting problem, one not already addressed in my post about sections in appellate briefs.

One of the requirements is that the Certificate of Interested Persons section should have page footers like this:

So, the number immediately after the “C-” is the current page number, and the number on the right-hand side is the total number of pages that section has.

Now, if you’re not familiar with how to put sections into a brief to control pagination, then I’m going to refer you here for the complete video tutorial. (My friend’s already seen this one, so she’s got this down pat.)

The part she’s having trouble with, though, is inserting the “C-1″, “of” and the last number.

So here’s how to do that:

Reader question: Page number macro misfire

by The Guru · 4 comments

One reader recently took up my challenge to not run screaming from macros … and was a little disappointed in the results.

I defined a macro successfully [to insert "Page" and the page number], with a button on the Quick Access Tool Bar. It works until I log off. After re-entering and trying the macro, I get an error message “Run Time error 5941 The requested member of the collection does not exist.” Any suggestions?

A macro that only runs until you log off. Well, that’s a puzzler.

As I told him in our email exchange, I’ve noticed that in Word 2010, macros are sometimes spotty in picking up settings from actions you take in the Ribbon. (It used to work fine — not sure what’s changed.) I myself had a similar problem with a macro I tried to do for a watermark.

I suspected he was attempting to embed the page number command using Word’s Insert Page Number command from the Header/Footer Tools contextual ribbon menu:

The problem there is the contextual part. I think the macro was freaking out because it didn’t find the Header/Footer Tools menu from which to draw the Insert Page Number command, so it scrambled. (The whole “macro disappears when I log out” thing? I got no clue.)

So I suggested he program the “Insert Page Number” thing into his macro from the Quick Parts menu instead:

For you code jockeys out there, here’s how that works out:

Sub test() ' ' test Macro ' ' Selection.TypeText Text:="Page " Selection.Fields.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Type:=wdFieldEmpty, Text:= _ "PAGE \* Arabic ", PreserveFormatting:=True End Sub

Reader’s response?

Worked perfectly. Thanks again for your help.

Just what I like to hear!

Got a question of your own? Ask it via my Ask the Guru page!

Summarizing Excel data with Pivot Tables

by VideoTutor · 1 comment

If you’ve ever been presented with an Excel spreadsheet with a gosh-awful number of rows and/or columns in it and assigned the task of making sense of all those numbers (grouping, summarizing, or making other calculations), you need to learn about Pivot Tables.

Okay, people, I hear yawning out there! Seriously, this is a good skill to have in your back pocket, even if you only work with Excel occasionally, because it saves so much time. So to motivate you properly, here’s a fun little YouTube introduction to the whys behind Pivot Tables:

Basically, a Pivot Table is a way to summarize columns and rows in a meaningful way. Instead of your having to manipulate rows and rows of data by hand (which, depending on the size of the spreadsheet, could take hours), you can select the data to be summarized, go to the Insert tab, click Pivot Table, and tell Excel how you want those rows summarized.

For example, say your client is involved in an employment discrimination suit. The employer has produced a very large spreadsheet showing all the time entries recorded, including this information:

Timekeeper initials
Date worked
Hours worked
Work code
Description of work performed

If you’re being asked to figure out how many hours timekeeper CAL (the plaintiff) clocked in Word Code 01 during the month of June, you don’t want to have to manually add those hours. Sure, you could sort the rows and put in a summary row, but even that’s not necessary with Pivot Tables.

A pivot table allows you to take a spreadsheet that looks like this (times several hundred or thousand rows);

And turn it into a summary table that looks like this:

And it just takes a few mouse clicks. Let Excel do all the work for you!

Here’s a video demonstration:

[To view this full-screen, click the button in the lower right-hand corner]

Where could you put this trick to use? Let me know in the comments below.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

by VideoTutor · 7 comments

Want one-click access to the commands you use most in Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010? Then you need to be taking full advantage of the Quick Access Toolbar!

The Quick Access Toolbar really lives up to its name: it provides one-click access to virtually any command you want. All you have to do is customize it.

And one of the great things about the Quick Access Toolbar (or QAT) is that it’s virtually the same throughout Microsoft Office. Sure, the commands vary according to the application, but the way you update it is the same across the Office Suite.

Here are two ways to add your favorite commands to the QAT:

What commands would you want on your QAT? Let me know in the comments below!

Instantly access boilerplate text with Quick Parts

Dialog box for creating Quick Part in Microsoft Word

by VideoTutor · 3 comments

Admit it: you repeat yourself. A lot.

Oh, you don’t think you do. But if you work in a law office, you’re probably constantly going back to old documents, picking up bits and pieces of text to drop into your latest magnum opus.

Stop doing that!

For one thing, it’s just so inefficient. Even worse, you’re constantly in danger of forgetting to edit something client-specific when you do all that cutting-and-pasting. (Do you really want to repeat that time you forgot to change “he” to “she” in the Notary Acknowledgement and your client had to correct you before she signed her name?)

Here’s a better solution: Quick Parts. Click to continue…