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.
Frustrated by how Word is laid out? Can’t find your most frequently-used commands when you need them? Features not working how you’d like? Chances are, if you know where to look, you can change it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t keep copying commonly-used blocks of text from old documents – that cut-and-paste routine will inevitably get you into trouble when you forget to edit out client-specific info. Instead, use Quick Parts to store generic text blocks like Certificates of Service, Signature Blocks, etc. Here’s a video to show you how.
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