Blog - Page 5 of 8 - Legal Office Guru

Reader Question: Getting rid of hard line breaks in pasted text

Reader Benjamin e-mailed me recently from my Ask the Guru page with this request:

“I’ve got text (imported badly – I don’t have access to the original source) which is spaced badly in Microsoft Word 2010 — meaning I have to manually cursor + delete then space-bar to put it back together without the green wiggles. It’s time consuming and I would like to know if there is an automated alternative. I’m sure I’m one of millions who are suffering with this. Can you help us?”

Click through to read how we worked this problem out together.

How to keep two words together on a single line

Need to make sure two words appear together on the same line, regardless of line wrap? Here’s how to do that by inserting nonbreaking spaces and hyphens.

Reader Question: Cannot select single cell, row, or column

If you ever think your mouse has gone crazy in Microsoft Excel, don’t panic! Here are two reasons your text selection is wonky.

From the Comments: Cool TOA trick

Want your Table of Authorities entry to line-wrap at a specific point? A fellow Legal Office Guru reader shares her (fantastic) tip on how to accomplish that.

When a tab is not just a tab, part 3: Center tabs

If you’ve ever wanted to center text on a point somewhere other than dead center between the page margins, you need to learn how to use Center tabs. Click through to the full article for a quick video showing you how to set one up.

How to set tabs (without tearing your hair out)

Having trouble setting tabs in Microsoft Word? Here are two quick methods, plus a tip on how to set tabs for one section of your document without messing up the rest of your text.

Reader Question: Underlining trailing spaces

Ever wanted Microsoft Word to underline blank spaces … and it wouldn’t? Fixing that couldn’t be simpler. Click the “Read More” link to learn how.

Save those trees! Printing compressed copies of large documents

If you’re not anywhere close to having a paperless office, but you still want to save room in those bulging files of yours, here’s an option you might not have considered before: condensed printing. Think “travel transcript,” like those 4-up duplex printed deposition mini-transcripts you get. If some of your hard copies could just as easily be printed in “mini” form for your file, then click Read More to learn this trick in Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, your default Windows photo printer, and virtually any other application you have.

Reader Question: Incrementing numbers in headers

A reader wrote me recently with an interesting dilemma: She needed to be able to automatically increment numbers in a Microsoft Word footer. But she’d found that the otherwise trusty AutoNum field doesn’t work in headers or footers. So how was she going to put the correct “Exhibit [X]” at the bottom of her documents? Here’s the solution I came up with for her. Click the “Read More” link to see the demonstration video.

How to print an envelope in Microsoft Word

A WordPerfect Lover asked me to go “back to the basics” with some tutorials on essential Word functions, so I’m starting that effort with a tutorial on how to print envelopes in Microsoft Word. Click the “read more” link for a complete illustrated tutorial.

Reader Question: Calculate difference between two dates in Microsoft Excel

A reader asked me recently how to calculate the difference between two dates. My response? Well, it depends. Fortunately, there are only two scenarios to pick between, and I’ve illustrated them both in this post. Click through for complete tutorial on how to calculate in Microsoft Excel using dates.

The case of the shrunken comment balloon

Ever had one of your comment balloons in Microsoft Word suddenly shrink without warning and become unreadable? Admittedly, it’s a pretty obscure problem, but if it ever happens to you, you want to make note of this fix.

Document Cleanup Clinic: The Case of the Stretched-Out Line

If you’ve ever seen full-justified text in Microsoft Word that had a really stretched out last line in a paragraph, you don’t have to throw up your hands and convert it to left-justified text. There’s a quick and easy fix. Click through for the video demonstration.

Four ways to insert tables in Microsoft Word

If you ever want to insert a table in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010, there are four (count ’em, FOUR) ways to do it. Click the Read More link for detailed instructions, then pick your favorite!

Reader Question: Type Once, Repeat Many?

A Legal Office Guru reader wrote in, asking for help with some forms she’d been asked to create to . “Is there a way to autopopulate a field?” she asked. “I’d like it to work similar to Adobe [Acrobat], where if you give the fields the same name, the text in one will automatically fill up in all of the others. I’ve read something about making each field an REF field, but I don’t understand how to do it, and I’ve tried tons of Google search results. Can you help?”

To achieve that Adobe-like effect, I’d choose Word’s Bookmarks feature. Click the “Read More” link below for the full illustrated tutorial.

Don’t miss that important Microsoft Outlook email!

If you want special alerts for important emails – messages from a particular sender or with certain text in the subject, for example – then you’ll want to know how to set up Rules in Outlook. The Rules feature can examine your incoming mail and alert you to anything that you’ve told it is important, either with a special sound, a flag, or a pop-up box. Click through for the full illustrated tutorial.

When just the page number won’t do

When you have to have a page number formatted with text (like “C-1 of 3”), then you need a working knowledge of how to insert the various page number fields in Microsoft Word. Here’s a tutorial using a real-life situation: an appellate brief with a specially numbered “Certificate of Interested Parties” section.

Reader question: Page number macro misfire

A Legal Office Guru reader has an “insert page number” macro that works just fine … until he logs off. How I solved his dilemma.

How to modify a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word

If your automatically-generated Table of Contents in Microsoft Word isn’t to your liking, you can fix it. From changing fonts to adjusting spacing and indentation, it’s all about modifying the TOC Styles within your document. Click through to view the entire tutorial, complete with screen shots showing each step.

Summarizing Excel data with Pivot Tables

Got a large spreadsheet you need to make sense of? Don’t waste time trying to sort and manually manipulate those kabillion rows and columns. Create a pivot table to group and summarize your data with just a few mouse clicks.