Some of the most frequently recycled text in legal documents is header and footer elements such as letter headers, Page X of Y page numbering schemes, continuation messages, etc. Don’t remake these every time! Make them once and save as a Quick Part so you can re-use with two clicks.
A reader emailed me with an example of how she was using AutoText to create form letters. While her template was a really ingenious use of AutoText (and clearly took a lot of work), I would say that a combination of Quick Parts and Content Controls would be a bit more user-friendly. Here’s how I put this together.
One of the most fun discoveries that new Microsoft Word users make is the self updating date. If you’ve already uncovered this, you 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 last 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.
Reader Sarah asked how she could cross reference a related interrogatory within a subsequent request for production. It’s easy: use a cross-reference field! In this tutorial, I show you two ways to set up your paragraphs to make cross-referencing easy (and this ISN’T just a litigation trick!).
Ever wanted to click on a link to take you to another point in your Microsoft Word document, then click another to take you back to where you were? Here’s how to create hyperlinks that are reciprocal.
Once you’ve gotten beyond the basics of Microsoft Word formatting, you’re ready for more advanced features. Here are two 17-second videos that prove Word can help you become a lot more productive.
Here’s a little Microsoft Word fields experiment with the SEQ field – incrementing paragraph numbers with the ability to reference the current and previous paragraph numbers, all combined with AutoText.
During a recent interview, legal technology expert Dennis Kennedy was aghast at the continuing resistance of lawyers to even basic document assembly. Here’s an excerpt of that interview, including his suggestions for where lawyers should start.
If you’ve been working with legal briefs lately, you’ve probably typed “id.” more times than you can count. Here, I show you a trick that one of your fellow readers told me about: having AutoCorrect turn “id.” into its underlined form automagically. Click the link below or the title above to see the full illustrated tutorial.
I’ll admit it: I am not a world-class typist. I can do about 85-90 on a good-to-average day, but years of working with word processors has made my error rate a little dodgy.
And I’ve noticed, over the years, that no matter how much typing practice I get, there are a few words I misspell (really, mistype — I actually do know how to spell them!) frequently. That annoys me. A lot.
But taking the advice of my fellow blogger Vivian Manning, I’m going to stop obsessing about typos and let the computer do more of the work for me. Because if the machines can do more work, why not let them? And because not many people know how to get Microsoft Word to correct their common typos, I’m going to show you how. (Because I want you to do less busywork, too!)
Click the link below to learn how.
Ever have the same phrase, sentence or even paragraph repeat over and over in a document you’re typing? Microsoft Word’s AutoText feature can help automate it!
Want to save that “Page X of Y” footer you like instead of having to rebuild it every time you use it? Here’s a little-known trick in Microsoft Word’s Quick Parts: how to save document components so they’re accessible in menus like Footer, Watermark, etc.
If your documents ever need a phrase like “the 15th day of August, 2012” and you don’t want to wait until the last minute to correct it in your document, here’s how you can embed a date that includes a self-updating ordinal date (that “15th” part) and a self-updating month and year. Click through for the demonstration.
If you’ve got several phrases that you’re typing over and over in a particular document, save time by learning to use the Clipboard to select and paste each one. Here’s a tutorial on how to display and manipulate the contents of the Clipboard.
In response to a prior post, one reader expressed one of her biggest frustrations with the Normal template: it’s hard to get changes to “stick” permanently. If you’re tired of continually resetting margins, fonts and paragraph spacing, here’s help.
If every document you draft starts with either a completely blank page or the last version of whatever you’re drafting, you’re missing out on the power of custom templates. Click the title above to see the essential elements of a custom pleading template, plus find out what digging in your sock drawer has in common with working in Microsoft Word.
If you’re anything like the typical lawyer, your document creation process could stand some improvements. Here’s an eye-opening experiment you can do with your smartphone to show you where your inefficiencies lie.
Want to do things faster in Microsoft Word? These four time-saving features are where you will get the most bang for your buck. Learning these will shave time off daily repetitive tasks, making you more efficient (and maybe even helping you get out of the office earlier!). Click the link below to find out more about how these features can make you more efficient.
If you find yourself stuck typing “Brief in Support of American Amalgamated Consolidated Widget Corporation’s Second Amended Motion for Leave of Court to Conduct On-site Inspection” for the umpteenth time, let me show you how to get out of all that repetitive typing. It’s a concept called “text expansion”, and you don’t even need extra software to do it. Click the link below to learn how to use this feature in Microsoft Word.
If you’ve ever had to type “#. Defendant denies the allegations of Paragraph # of Plaintiff’s Complaint” over and over again, you’ll appreciate this reader’s dilemma. Watch me demonstrate how an intelligent use of a little-known field in Microsoft Word can let you embed the current paragraph number within the actual paragraph text so you’re not stuck going back and fixing them as you add/delete paragraphs during the editing process. Click the link below to view the video.
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