One of the most basic functions in Microsoft Word is printing envelopes and labels. You’d think that such a basic function would be pretty intuitive. It’s not. One of the most frequent questions I get from longtime WordPerfect users is, “Where on earth are the envelopes (or labels) in Word?”
But even for those who worked in Microsoft Word for years, this feature can be a little hard to find. Some of the problem stems from Microsoft’s habit of moving this feature around between versions of Word. (I think I even remember it being under the Format menu in one long-ago version. It’s moved twice since then!) So we’re going to look at the process in both the Ribbon-based version and the “classic” menu-based versions.
Along the way, I’m going to show you not only the “textbook” way of doing envelopes, but my own preferred method, which I think makes creating an on-the-fly envelope (on pre-printed letterhead) a lot easier (but that’s for you to judge).
Click to continue…
I love nice, neat, fully-justified text in documents (really, who doesn’t?). It’s one of the great advantages word processing has over the ancient typewriter. But it can introduce some problems into your documents when the spacing between words (or even within words) isn’t quite right. Calculating that extra spacing is apparently still a real challenge for Microsoft Word. Sometimes, however, we as users unwittingly introduce problems that make it even more of a challenge.
For instance, if you’ve been known to copy text from your old documents into your new ones, you’ve probably seen this happen:
What on earth is going on with that last line? You know there aren’t really a bunch of extra spaces between the words. What else could be causing this, though?
Before you resign yourself to setting all your paragraphs to be left-justified, let me show you a little tip that’ll save you the trouble.
Click to continue…
A friend of mine was about to tear her (expensively and enviably coiffed) hair out the other day — she’d copied over some text from an old Wordperfect document into Word to start a new document, but for some reason couldn’t get rid of the DRAFT watermark.
It’s not like she didn’t know how to delete watermarks in Word; all you have to do (in Word 2007, which is what she’s working with) is go to the Page Layout tab, click on the Watermark button, and choose Remove Watermark at the bottom of the menu.
But she did that … and there was STILL this big ol’ word DRAFT stuck behind the text! Like so:
If you’ve either retrieved or copied your old WordPerfect documents into Word as a conversion method (something I suggested in an earlier post), you may have run across a similar situation. Here’s why it’s so messed up.
Click to continue…
One of the tactics I regularly recommend to users when transferring content from an old WordPerfect document is to use Paste, Special, Unformatted Text instead of just the plain Paste or CNTRL-V commands:
The advantage here is that Paste Special clears out all of the formatting so the newly-pasted text doesn’t mess up your nice Microsoft Word document.
The disadvantage? Well … it clears out all the formatting. And this can be a pain to re-do, particularly if you’ve got a long document with lots of case citations, etc.
What to do? Here are three tricks to keep in your Microsoft Word skills arsenal.
Click to continue…
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.
Click to continue…
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?)
Click to continue…
We’ve all done it — there’s already a WordPerfect document that you need some text out of (a letter addressee, a section out of a brief, whatever), so you decide to cut-and-paste from WordPerfect into your current Word document.
And the formatting in your Word document goes totally … WAAAAAAHHHH!
Here’s how to avoid that:
Click to continue…
Connect with The Guru!