Category Archives for "Featured"

2 Why your headings don’t match your Table of Contents

7 The 6 Best Reasons to Use Styles

2 Table of Authorities – The Ultimate Guide

19 Copying vertical columns of text in Word

If you've ever had information typed up like this:

... and only needed to copy the stuff out of one or two columns:

... then you'll love this tip.

Say, for example, you needed to just get the dollar amounts and the names and copy them someplace else.  If you've got a whole list of these, you might think you'll either have to type this up again, or copy-and-paste each piece of text separately.

Au contraire. Trust me, you'll love this trick!

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0 Formatting Autocorrect Entries

5 Make up for your bad typing with AutoCorrect

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!)

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2 Using Autotext to deal with repetitive text

31 Reader Question: How to automatically number your discovery requests … in 5 keystrokes

If your law firm does litigation work, you’ve probably prepared lots of discovery. And you may have wondered if there’s any way you can (a) avoid typing the phrase “Interrogatory No. X” in Microsoft Word over and over again and (b) get that X to be an automatically incrementing number.

If so, the answer is, yes, you can!

One of the reasons I love reader questions is that the best ones get me flipping through my reference books, scouring the Internet, and testing, testing, testing, trying to find a solution to a problem I’ve been wondering about myself (but never got around to examining).

Such was the case with this reader question:

I’ve been searching for the best way to create auto numbering for discovery requests: dare I say in WordPerfect I had the most amazing macros that used “counter” and creating a set of discovery was a snap. I’ve struggled to find something workable in Word. Some people use Discovery Request No. X – Interrogatory; others use Interrogatories No. X, Requests for Production No. X, Requests for Admission No. X throughout a set of discovery. There has to be a way to do this in Word, and I’ve tried several different approaches, none of which worked out that well. Would you please steer me in the right direction? Thanks very, very much.

I tossed back a rather glib answer about using the AutoNumLgl field code to number the discovery requests, and she threw in this little wrinkle: her attorneys like to play mix-and-match with their discovery. In other words, they may put in a couple of interrogatories, then throw in a related request for production, then another interrogatory, then a request for admission that’s related to that interrogatory.

Um. Okay. So they’re going to need three numbering sequences operating independently. Back to the drawing board.

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7 Building reuseable Microsoft Word footers

4 Want that “15th day of August, 2012” to self-update? Here’s how

If your documents are anything like the ones I’ve worked on over the years, there’s at least one section (the “Respectfully submitted” or the Certificate of Service in pleadings or the notary acknowledgement, for example) that has this in it:

 

Dated this the 15th day of August, 2012

 

If you start drafting the document on the 15th but don’t actually file (or sign or whatever) until, say, the 21st or the 30th or, heaven forbid, sometime next month or year, you’re either going to have to leave blanks for the day, month and/or year while you’re drafting or remember to update all those dates when you finalize the document.

But what if you didn’t have to do either one? What if your document was smart enough to do its own updating, based on the date you saved it last?

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3 The four dates you can embed in your Word documents

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.

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6 How To Add a Style to Quick Styles

Even those who have used Quick Styles frequently don’t know that there are lots more Styles available in Word. Getting one-click access to a Style, though, really requires that it be listed in the Quick Styles gallery (that list on the right-hand side of the Home tab).

If there’s a particular Style that you always want to be available within the Quick Styles gallery (especially one you just created for a particular purpose), here’s how to designate a Style as a Quick Style. Keep reading →

6 Creating new Styles in Microsoft Word

1 Using the Clipboard to Multi-Paste

When you’re drafting a pleading (particularly an answer to a complaint or discovery) you probably find yourself using a few of the same phrases over and over. Rather than going back and recopying those snippets repeatedly (or worse, retyping them), use the Microsoft Word Clipboard to quickly access and paste them again and again. Keep reading →

0 Table of Contents: Manually marking TOC entries

While I'm a big proponent of using Styles to create Tables of Contents (so easy!), that's not the only way to do it. You can mark individual headings (and even paragraph text) to include in your TOC, designating the TOC level for each.

There are two methods for doing this. Which one you choose will depend on what result you're after.

Method 1: Designating TOC Entries with Outline Levels

If your document isn't using Heading Styles to control headings, or the heading levels don't match the hierarchy you want in your Table of Contents, you can apply an outline level to each heading.

First, click your cursor into the heading you want to designate for your TOC (assuming that the heading is in its own paragraph) and right-click:

As you can see, you're going to the Paragraph dialog box, where you can set the outline level.

(If the heading is already using Heading Styles, the Outline Level field will have a pre-assigned value and will be greyed out.)

Repeat this maneuver for all of the headings you want to mark.

Speed tip: Mark the first heading of a particular level, then double-click the Format Painter button (looks like a paintbrush) in the Clipboard/Paste area of the Home tab. That makes Format Painter "persistent", meaning that every paragraph you click afterward will have the same settings applied to it, including your newly-chosen outline level. To turn Format Painter off, hit the Escape key in the upper left-hand corner of your keyboard. You can repeat this process for each level of heading you want to including in your TOC outline.

Method 2: Marking TOC entries with TOC codes

In situations where (a) the entries you want in your Table of Contents aren't in their own paragraphs (e.g., a few words boldfaced at the beginning of a paragraph) or (b) the text you want to point to isn't what you want the TOC entry to say (i.e., you want a shortened version of that text to appear in the TOC), then you're faced with marking each entry with a TOC code. Granted, this method does give you more flexibility, but with options comes a bit of complexity. It's a trade-off.

Let's go back to our sample contract and begin marking the first entry, by selecting the text with the mouse or keyboard like so:

Be sure that you're not picking up any extra codes (like the line break illustrated above). It's a good idea to turn on Show/Hide (click the paragraph symbol in the middle of the Home tab) to display all that hidden formatting and other codes during this step. You'll want to turn off Show/Hide when you generate your TOC, but for now it'll come in handy.

Once you've got your entry correctly marked, press ALT-SHIFT-O (hold down the ALT and SHIFT keys and press the letter "O") to bring up the Mark Table of Contents Entry dialog box.

Be sure to designate which level you want this entry to appear in (1-9); the Table Identifier should always be "C" for Table of Contents.

Repeat this maneuver for each entry you want to appear in your Table of Contents. Unfortunately, the Format Painter trick won't work here, since Word is embedding a unique code behind each entry that looks like this (assuming you have Show/Hide turned on — remember?).

Here's where you get all kinds of flexibility if you know how to break down this code. For example:

• If you want the entry in your TOC table to say something other than "Definitions", you can change the text within the quotation marks behind the code "TC".
• If you decide later that this entry needs to appear at another level, you can change the number that appears in quotes after the "/l" code.
• If you decide to remove this entry from your TOC altogether, you can simply delete this entire code.

Let's Review

Here's what we've covered in this tutorial:

• How to mark TOC entries using outline levels
• How to mark TOC entries using TOC codes
• Which situations call for each marking method

The next tutorial in this series will cover ...

No matter which method you've used to mark your TOC entries, it's time to insert your Table of Contents into your document. Click Next to get started!

10 Cutting and pasting from WordPerfect (or elsewhere)

We've all done it -- there's already a WordPerfect (or even Word) 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:

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2 Reader Question: How to double indent faster

1 The 4 Biggest Time-Saving Microsoft Word Features You’re Probably Not Using

Learning Microsoft Word can seem a daunting task. So many features! Where’s the best place to start?

If you want to boost your productivity in Microsoft Word fast, you really need to master these four features first. Learning how to leverage these can shave seconds or even minutes off repetitive daily tasks, which adds up to getting more work done daily (or even leaving the office at a decent hour!).

Here are the four best areas for you to spend a little self-education time, before you’re subjected to one of those legal technology audits you keep hearing about.

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5 7 Ways To Screw Up A Table of Authorities

When I first got my Roku box a few years back, I spent an embarrassing amount of time binge-watching the dizzying array of streaming video I suddenly had access to. One of my early obsessions was a video series on Chow.com’s Roku channel called “You’re Doing It All Wrong“. (I do love me some food porn.) Thanks to that series, I now know what’s wrong with most people’s mashed potatoes (not boiled long enough), how to pan fry bacon properly (look for the bubbles), and why sushi chefs laugh at me (only noobs dunk the entire roll in soy sauce and then cram it in their faces with chopsticks).

I’m pretty sure the owners of Chow.com have the phrase “You’re Doing It All Wrong” trademarked or something; otherwise, I’d steal that phrase for an article series. And I know just where I’d start: Tables of Authorities.

Microsoft Word’s Table of Authorities feature isn’t exactly known for its user-friendliness. Nobody’s ever said the word “automagically” about it. And more than one enterprising software vendor has found a lucrative niche making an easier-to-use interface for TOAs.

I’ve had to use this feature myself on several occasions recently, and I’ve rediscovered seven ways you can easily (and thoroughly) screw up a Table of Authorities. (Need a TOA refresher course? Click here to learn how to mark citations, then click here for instructions on building the TOA itself.)

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0 Reader Question: How to get footnote citations to show up in Table of Authorities

Julie contacted me recently with a real puzzler:

I am working in Microsoft Word 2010.  For some reason when I am marking a citation, it will not include the case from a footnote in the Table of Authorities.  It will pick up a statute or rule, but not [a case from] the footnote.  Any suggestions??

Ooooookaaaaay. Something’s really amiss here. And what made it more puzzling was, when I tried to replicate her problem on my own computer, mine worked just fine. (I actually kind of hate when that happens, because then I really feel stumped.)

Turns out, though, this a real problem that Microsoft knows about. Fortunately, it has a real solution.

Keep reading →