Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Show/Hide Formatting Marks

Showing Formatting Marks (also called “non-printing characters”) in Word is a valuable tool in determining the method required to modify formatting or to diagnose document problems. For example, can you tell whether the text below was formatted using tabs or a table to position the text?

How would you go about correcting what appears to be irregular alignment of centered text?

While seeing formatting marks is important, I don’t like to view them all the time. It makes reading the document for content difficult, and in some cases can change how the document appears to be paginated.

When I encounter a place in my document that looks unusual and I want to check it out, I just toggle formatting marks by pressing Ctrl + * (Shift + 8), see what’s up, then toggle them back off. (Please note when using this shortcut, the asterisk on the number pad does not work.)

So Happy Together – Part II

Avoiding Awkward Page Breaks with Keep Lines Together

The concepts in this article apply to both Word 2003 and 2007, however the steps listed are for 2007 only.

Welcome to avoiding awkward page breaks, part deux. (I love saying “part deux.” It makes me think of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I’m not sure why, but just play along.)

In last week’s post, I described how to prevent paragraphs from being broken badly using Widow/Orphan control. This week I’ll explain how the paragraph format Keep Lines Together can also be used to manage text breaking across pages, and why it doesn’t work as you might think, and sometimes not at all.

The Basics

Keep Lines Together works well with quotes or long section headings that need to be kept together on a page. For example, in the broken heading below, Widow/Orphan control won’t save you because there are enough lines in the heading to break without leaving a single line alone on a page. Keep Lines Together to the rescue!


To apply Keep Lines Together, follow these steps:

1. Begin by selecting the paragraph(s) you want to prevent from being split.
   
2. Next, open the Paragraph dialog box by clicking the dialog box launcher in the Paragraph group in Home ribbon.
   
   


3. If necessary, select the Line and Page Breaks tab.


4. Then, check the Keep Lines Together box.


5. Click OK.

When it Doesn't Work

Now that you’re hip to Keep Lines Together, you might think you’re a smarty-pants and try to use it to prevent paragraphs in a table from being split between pages, as in the image below.

The joke’s on you because Word ignores this setting¹ in a table! Instead, disable the table format “Allow row to break across pages” to keep the text together.

When it Doesn't Work the Way You Expect

It Ain’t Block Protect

If you’re a former WordPerfect user, I bet you’re acquainted with the Block Protect feature. By selecting a block of text and applying Block Protect in WordPerfect, you can prevent the entire defined block from being split across a page break. If you try to use Word’s Keep Lines Together feature in the same fashion, however, you’re sure to be disappointed. Read on to learn why.

In the screen shot below a signature block in a pleading is being split. Note that each line of the signature block is a separate paragraph.

In this scenario, selecting the text that should be kept together and applying Keep Lines Together has no effect! (Seriously, try it.) That’s because the Keep Lines Together works only within a paragraph, not between paragraphs. I think Microsoft should rename the Keep Lines Together feature “Keep Lines in a Paragraph Together” because that’s really what it does.

So, how do you avoid the above problem? You could use manual line breaks, but that’s messy and takes too long. Check back next week for the smartest way.

Don’t you hate cliffhangers? It’s like my blog has become a bad martial arts action flick.


¹ Widow/Orphan control is also ignored in tables.

Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Single and Double Line Spacing

Lucky you, it’s a bonus week with two keyboard shortcuts for the price of one. They go together so nicely, I couldn’t bear to split them up. This week’s shortcuts are also two of the easiest to remember because the keys closely match the function!

While there are five kinds of line spacing in Word (single, 1.5, double, at least, exactly and multiple), I most often use single and double, and like a fast way to switch back and forth between them.

To quickly apply single spacing, press Ctrl + 1. For double spacing, press Ctrl + 2. So simple. So useful.

So Happy Together - Part I

Cue the mood music

Avoiding Awkward Page Breaks with Widow/Orphan Control

I consider a page break awkward when the lines of a paragraph are not neatly split, such as when a single line of a paragraph is left alone, or a heading is separated from the following paragraph. There are three simple ways to automatically control how paragraphs are broken across pages; the first is Widow/Orphan control. Widow lines occur when the first line of a paragraph is separated from the rest.

Orphan lines occur when the last line of a paragraph is separated from the rest.

To prevent widow and orphan lines in a document, follow these steps:

1. Begin by selecting the paragraph(s) you want to prevent from being split.
2. Next, open the Paragraph dialog box by clicking the dialog box launcher in the Paragraph group in Home ribbon.
   
   
3. If necessary, select the Line and Page Breaks tab.
4. Then, check the Widow/Orphan control box.

Make it Stick

There are very few instances where it is appropriate to leave a widow or orphan line – in fact, I can’t think of any! I believe this setting should be used for every paragraph in virtually every document, so I recommend adding it to the normal template. That way it’s always applied when creating new documents. Of course, if you find a situation where you need to allow widow and orphan lines, you can always turn off the feature.

Here’s how to enable widow/orphan control for new documents:

1. Begin by opening a new blank document.
2. Follow steps 2-4 above.
3. Click the Default button at the bottom of the Paragraph dialog box. A message will appear warning that you are about to change default paragraph formatting and asking if you want this change to affect all new documents based on the normal template.
   
   

4. Click Yes.

If you use other templates and would like to enable widow/orphan control by default in them, begin by opening the template to update, then follow the procedure above.

Check back for part two of this article next week.

Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Extend Selection - F8

Selecting text with the mouse can be frustrating, especially when you’re grabbing a large block of text that spans pages. Certain Word features can sometimes make selecting text with the mouse even more annoying. For example, the option “When selecting, automatically select entire word,” causes the selection to jump to the end of words, making it difficult to capture just a portion of a word. Word’s “Use smart paragraph selection” feature, which automatically captures the paragraph mark at the end of paragraphs, can also get in the way. The feature is helpful when your intention is to copy a paragraph’s formatting along with its text, but if all you want are the words, you’ll have cleanup to do after pasting or applying formatting to the selection.

“Keyboard freaks” like me and former WordPerfect users will appreciate the Extend Selection feature. By activating Extend Selection with F8, you can select text by using standard navigation techniques such as the arrow keys on your keyboard^[1] or more complicated maneuvers such as Ctrl + Home to select from your cursor to the beginning of the document, or Ctrl + Page Down to select from the cursor to the top of the next page or next occurrence of whatever is defined by the Browse Object. When you’re finished selecting, press ESC to cancel Extend Selection (your text will remain selected).

Even more useful is the opportunity to extend the selection to a particular character. For example, say you want to select the citation in the text below to mark it for a table of authorities. If you’ve tried this using the mouse, you’ve probably found it difficult to capture just the citation and not the punctuation that follows it. Begin by positioning the insertion point at the beginning of the citation, press F8 to turn on Extend Selection, then type a right parenthesis. The selection will quickly jump to the right parenthesis at the end of the citation.

Pressing F8 twice selects the current word. Press F8 again to select the current sentence, once more to select the current paragraph, and once again to select the current section. One more time selects the entire document. If you’ve gone too far with this, just press Shift + F8 to step back a level (i.e. from selecting the paragraph to selecting the current sentence.)

^[1] For this to work as expected, be sure “Smart Cursoring” is disabled.

Trouble with Table of Authorities Categories

This one’s for my friends in legal and applies to both Word 2003 and 2007. If you are not already familiar with the table of authorities feature in Word, you can find basic tutorials here: Word 2003, Word 2007.

When creating a table of authorities in Word, watch out for changing category headings. Because of the way Word stores the names of table of authorities categories (Cases, Statutes, Rules, etc.), the category names may be different if the brief is printed from another computer.

Marking Citations

As you mark citations in a brief for inclusion in a table of authorities, you select the category for each citation. For example, if you’re marking a case, you would select “Cases” from the Category drop-down list.

In the background, Word has assigned numbers to the categories, using the order in which they appear in the Category list. For example, in the example above, Cases is category 1, Statutes is category 2 and Other Authorities is category 3.

You can see this in action when you look at the {TA} field that is inserted into the document when you mark a citation. At the end of the {TA} field in the sample below, “\c 1” indicates the citation is marked for category number 1.

Changing Category Names

The names associated with each category name can be changed (for example, from “Statutes” to “Rules and Statutes”). To change a category name, open the Mark Citation dialog box, then click the Category button to open the Edit Category dialog box (see image below). Select the category to be renamed, then type its new name in the Replace with field. Click OK.

Inserting the Table of Authorities

When {TOA} fields are added to the document (there will be one field for each category), the completed table of authorities is displayed with the category headings appearing automatically and the marked citations organized under the appropriate headings.

The Problem

When table of authorities category names are changed, those changes are saved to the local computer and do not travel with the document. This means that if a legal assistant creating a table of authorities renames category 2 from “Statutes” to “Statutes and Rules,” the attorney he/she supports will not see this change in the final document when opening the document on a different computer. Explain that one to a lawyer up against a filing deadline!

The Fix

If you aren’t certain you will be the only person to print a final brief with a table of authorities, you can avoid the problem of changing category names by preventing Word’s automatic addition of category headings and typing the category headings yourself.

After the {TOA} fields are added to the document, display the properties of the fields either by right-clicking on the table of authorities and choosing Toggle Field Codes or by pressing Alt + F9. You will see a set of fields (one for each category) that looks similar to this:

The “\h” switch in each of the {TOA} fields above is what causes the category heading to be displayed automatically. Remove this switch from each {TOA} field and type the desired category headings. (Be sure to do this outside the field braces.) The above example should now look something like this:

Next, toggle field codes again to display the results of the fields rather than the fields themselves (Alt + F9). At this point, you’ll see both the heading you typed as well as the heading Word has added automatically. You’ll need to update the fields (F9) to see the change.

Now, because the category heading are hard-coded, it’s impossible for them to change automatically when the document is printed on another computer.

Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Go To Previous Revision - Shift + F5

One of my favorite keyboard shortcuts is Shift + F5, Go To Previous Revision. This feature toggles among the last three revisions made.

I use this shortcut most often when I accidentally press the Page Down key when I’m going for the Delete key – a constant problem for me because I use different keyboards and they aren’t laid out the same. Rather than scrolling back through the document to find my place, I just press Shift + F5 and the insertion point jumps back to its last position. Pressing Shift + F5 again takes me to the revision I made before that one, and, using the function a third time takes me back to the revision before that.

This shortcut also works between open documents. So, even if your last edit was in another open document, the insertion point will jump right to it. I find this especially helpful when I’m copying text from one document to paste into another.

For those of you who remember this shortcut from previous version of Word, you’ll notice in Word 2007, the history of past revisions is not saved with the document as it was in Word 97. Let’s hope they bring this functionality back in the next release!

A More Helpful Merge Helper

Do you miss the old Mail Merge Helper from Word 97-2000? It was so simple! It only had three steps: create the main document, select the data source and merge them.

Starting with Word 2002 and continuing through Word 2007, it seems Microsoft decided we needed more handholding through the process, and created the Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard. They probably wanted to show off their new user interface gadget, task panes.

The new wizard has six steps instead of three. The mail merge process didn’t really change; it was just broken down a bit further, making it feel longer and more complicated.

For example, using the old Mail Merge Helper, the first step is to identify the main document by choosing the type of document, such as form letter, mailing labels, envelopes, etc. The document on the screen is assumed the main document. Using the new wizard, the first step is to choose the type of document. Step two is to choose whether to use the current document or start a new document from a template or existing document. For experienced Word users, the added detail of the wizard doesn’t feel like much of an improvement.

Now, you know I wouldn’t bring this up if I didn’t have a fix, right?

If you’re like me and would like to return to the simpler Mail Merge Helper from past versions, you can add a button to access it to the Word 2003 toolbar or Word 2007 Quick Access toolbar and forget the new wizard!

To add the Mail Merge Helper to any Word 2003 Toolbar:

1. Right-click on any toolbar and choose Customize from the menu.
2. If necessary, select the Commands tab. Then choose All Commands from the Categories list.
3. Locate MailMergeHelper in the Commands list and drag it to the desired place on the toolbar. (See image below.)
4. Click Close.

To add the Mail Merge Helper to the Word 2007 Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Right-click anywhere on the Quick Access Toolbar and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the menu.
2. Using the Choose commands from drop-down list, choose All Commands.
3. Locate and select the Mail Merge Helper command from the Commands list. (See image below.)
4. Click the Add button to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar.
5. If necessary, adjust the position of the button on the toolbar, and then click OK.
   

Ahhhh… Like a pair of old, maybe not stylish, but comfortable jeans. Is new always better? In the case of both the Mail Merge Helper and my favorite jeans, my answer is no.

What’s your opinion?

Please send your Word questions to me at wordtrainingandtips@gmail.com.