Tag Archives for " shortcut keys "

3 The 4 Fastest Formatting Fixes I Know

Hands down, the biggest complaint I get is that Microsoft Word seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to formatting. People swear they did nothing more than breathe on their document, and things went completely wonky!

Of course, without actually standing over their shoulder and watching them work, it’s really impossible for me to know exactly what happened. A lot of times, there’s a pretty easy File > Options tweak that could prevent similar snafus from happening again. (And don’t even get me started about why you need to learn to use Styles.)

But in my experience, most people aren’t particularly interested in trying to figure out how it happened. They just want to fix it and move on.

So for that crowd, I’ve put together a two-minute video on the four fastest ways I know to basically nuke your formatting so you can start over. You can basically choose among these:

Keep reading →

Keeping Word Commands at Your Fingertips

When Microsoft Word 2007 came out, users lamented the introduction of the Ribbon. Replacing the familiar menu system of Word 2003 with a newfangled, visually-oriented system of buttons and drop-downs went over like the proverbial lead balloon. It all came down to one thing: “How am I ever going to find anything on here?”

Nobody wants to waste time scrolling through a menu system looking for commands or functions they use frequently. Here, I’ll show you three methods for keeping your most common commands within easy reach so you can create documents faster and with less frustration.

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2 Guest Post @ Lawyerist: 5 Microsoft Office Hacks to Finish Tasks Faster

Want to move things from your inbox to your outbox a lot faster? It’s time you upgrade your skills in Microsoft Office to find faster ways of doing common tasks, like:

  • Speed-formatting your text with Styles (it’s a one-click operation!)
  • Using shortcut keys for speed typing
  • Employing templates to speed document creation for common forms
  • Accessing boilerplate text instantly with Quick Parts and AutoText
  • Getting one-click access to commonly used commands with the Quick Access Toolbar

Click here to get your learning on over at Lawyerist.

Guest Post @ Lawyerist: Fix Formatting Fast – Five Microsoft Word Tricks

When one of the comments to your guest post is, “I think I love you,” you know you’ve struck a nerve. That’s just part of the response I’ve gotten to my list of five little-known tricks for fixing misbehaving formatting in Microsoft Word.

Click here to find out how you, too, can alleviate your frustration even when you don’t have time to diagnose the problem.

Weekly Roundup: More shortcut keys, faster Word page setup, Quick Print

From this week’s Roundup of the reading file: some more shortcut keys you need to know about (particularly if you’re an avid Outlook user), a faster way to reach the Page Setup dialog in Microsoft Word, and how to add a Quick Print button to enable one-click printing from Word.

Keep reading →

1 Weekly Roundup: Finding ‘Find’, 5 formatting shortcuts, and tricked-out TOCs

More tips from this week’s RSS feeds:

Finding where Microsoft Word 2010 buried Find — You know, I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t stumble across this first, but thankfully friend-of-this-blog Vivian Manning’s enlightened us all. You see, Microsoft couldn’t leave well enough alone and put the Find function (you know, this familiar dialog box below) …

… where it’s always been. They had to hijack my (and possibly your) beloved CTRL-F shortcut key to take us all to some Navigation Pane we’ve never seen before.

Vivian’s found our trusty Find box once again (it’s buried in the menu system, as she details in her post), but as you’ll see when you click through to the comments at the bottom of her post, that wasn’t good enough for me. I switched it back on my own Word 2010, and I left you illustrated instructions on how to do it yourself.

Five tips for lightning-fast formatting in Word — If you’re as big a shortcut key fan as I am, then you’ll love Susan Harkins’ assembly of the best formatting shortcut keys to memorize. Copy these down, post them near your desk, and use them often!

How to create one Table of Contents from multiple documents — I have to confess, I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m dying to. I didn’t know this was possible, and I’ll bet you didn’t either. Susan Harkins from TechRepublic (again!) gives us the skinny on using the RD function to drive this. She does admit that the master page numbering does take some fiddling, so try it on a dummy document before attempting it on a client project.

And for my U.S. readers, Happy Labor Day!

1 Weekly Roundup: Signature lines, Out of Office, shortcut keys

Going through my RSS feeds every day, it occurs to me that there is SO much good stuff out there on Microsoft Office that it’s a shame for me not to highlight it here. So, to make sure you’ve seen (and benefited from) these, I’ve linked to the best posts I’ve run across in the past week:

That’s No Table – That’s my Signing Line — Vivian Manning (whose staggering output as a blogger in the midst of a law firm merger is really starting to shame me into posting more often) shows us the right way to put a signature line on a document, particularly if you use e-filing (with the requisite e-signatures). One of the advantages to this method I’ve found is, if you’re pressed for space, you can put two or more signature blocks in the vertical space you’d usually use up for just one. Click the blog post title above to see her method in action.

Out of Office in Outlook 2010 — Where’s it gone? — If you’ve recently upgraded to Office 2010 and wondered where the Out of Office feature ran off to, never fear — Jason at No Option for Law Firm found it hiding under the shrubbery. Actually, he found it disguised as Automatic Replies, and he also tells us about handy some new Out of Office capabilities in Exchange 2010. Click the link above to sample the goodness.

Shortcut Key of the Week — Tech4Law has recently started a series called “Shortcut Key of the Week.” I hope they continue. I personally love shortcut keys because they keep my hands on the keyboard rather than flitting back and forth to the mouse. Click the link above for the third post in the series; the second post is here, and the first (including a link to their handy shortcut key guide) is here.

Well, that was a truly international edition of Weekly Roundup — from Canada to the U.K. to South Africa! If there’s a Microsoft Office blog you think I should be following regularly, tell me about it in the comments below.

1 Guest Post @ Lawyerist – Quick Access to Microsoft Word Commands

One of the biggest problems Word users experience in upgrading from version 2003 to versions 2007 and 2010 is in finding frequently-used commands. Once you’ve searched through the new ribb0n-based menu system and found a command you use a lot, you don’t ever want to lose track of it!

Fortunately, there’s a way to keep the commands you use most close at hand: the Quick Access Toolbar. And, if you’re a speed typist who wants to minimize mouse usage, there are the ever-popular shortcut keys (which can be customized).

Over at Lawyerist, I’ve shown you how to save your favorite commands to the Quick Access Toolbar as well as how to make your own shortcut keys. Click here to read the full post.

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/3796822070/)