|
BOOT CAMP 415 (14/03/06)
TOP 10 WORD TIPS, part 2
After last week’s
industrial-strength tweaks for Microsoft Word here’s some quick and simple tips
that can help to make this popular and amazingly powerful application
friendlier and easier to use.
Typing foreign accents
in Word can seem difficult but there’s a trick to it. All you have to do is
remember a few simple keyboard shortcuts. For example, to put an acute accent
on a, d, e, I, o or u press Ctrl + single quote (‘) then the letter. Ctrl + ` (the key to the left of ‘1’) puts a
grave accent on a, e, I, o, u and y. For an umlaut on a, e, i, o, u and y press
Ctrl + : (colon) then the letter. Tildes on a, n and o are made by pressing
Ctrl + ~ (shift #). The shortcut for cedillas is Ctrl + , (comma) and circumflexes are Crtl + ^ (shift 6).
This next tip is the
first one I implement on any new PC that I’m going to use for any length of
time. I find Word and other applications with a bright white desktop quite
tiring on the eyes. Fiddling with screen brightness and contrast sometimes help
but you’ll be constantly readjusting them for other applications. The solution
is to add a touch of grey to the white desktop colour scheme. Simply go to
Display in Control Panel, select the Appearance tab then click the Advanced
button. Next, click into the white ‘ Window Text’ box then click the ‘Color’
box and select ‘Other’. Move the Luminance slider (to the right of the colour
palette) down a couple of notches, click OK, check Word and readjust as
necessary.
Here’s a quick one. I’m
sure you know all about highlighting horizontal blocks of text but did you know
you can also highlight vertical blocks? It’s easy. Just hold down the Alt key
then click and drag the mouse. It’s the same as horizontal highlighting, just
right-click on the block for a list of options.
And another quickie, if
you have a ‘wheel’ type mouse hold down the Ctrl key, spin the wheel back and
forth and watch the page zoom between 10 and 500 percent
This next tip is really
useful if you use a lot of bold, italic and underline text effects in your
documents. Highlighting a word calls for a steady hand and it’s easy to wander
too far, or miss a letter, all of which can be very frustrating, but there is
an easier way. Simply click into the word you want to emphasise and click the
appropriate bold, italic or underline icon on the toolbar, or use a keyboard
shortcuts, which are Ctrl + B, Ctrl + I and Ctrl + U for bold, italic and
underline respectively. Incidentally, if this trick doesn’t work go to Tools
> Options > Edit and check that ‘When selecting, automatically select
entire word’ is ticked.
Have you ever had to
search for something in a document, but can’t remember which one it’s in? We’ve
all been there and usually the only thing you can do is keep opening documents
until you find it. Alternatively you can use an obscure facility in Word that
lets you preview the contents of a file from the Open dialogue box. Click the
Open icon or Open on the File menu (or press Ctrl + O) then click the little
drop-down arrow next to the Views icon and select Preview. If you now select a
document file its contents will be displayed in the right-hand window.
This last trick can be
used to impress (or annoy) your boss, colleagues or tutors by inserting audio
files into your documents. First create your sound file and the easiest way to
do that is use the Windows Sound Recorder to record a .wav file or use
something else you have to hand and it can be an MP3 or any other common type
of audio file . Now all you have to do is copy and paste the sound file icon
into your document. At this stage it doesn’t look very interesting so
right-click on it and select Package Object > Edit Package > Insert icon
and you can choose from a election of Windows default icons. Close the Package
Object window and now if anyone clicks on the icon it will open your default
media player and start playing.
NEXT WEEK - Ten Top
Outlook Express Tips
TOP TIP
Here is a sure fire way
to make sure that your documents, however long and tedious they might be, will
get noticed. Word has a number of animated text effects that can make your
words really stand out on the screen. Try this, open a new document and type a
word or two, highlight it and make it really big, 36 point say, (and don’t
forget Word lets you size text and characters up to 999.5 points – in 0.5 pt
increments – simply by typing the number into the size box next to the font
name). With the words still highlighted go to Font on the Format menu and
select the Text Effects tab, now take your pick from the list, which includes
‘shimmer’, ‘Las Vegas’, ‘Blinking Background’ and ‘Marching Red Ants’. Warning!
Use sparingly, otherwise it can get very annoying…
---end---
© R. Maybury 2006, 0803
|
|
|
