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Handy tips while working in MS Word
Published on November 2, 2004 By chott370 In Windows Software
hi all,

most of u will be using microsoft word for typing all ur documnets.the following tips will help u to accomplish ur work in a quick way.

Adding Horizontal Dividers in Word:

To add a variety of horizontal dividers in Word, type three characters and press enter.

Hyphens ( --- )
Underscores ( ___ )
Equal Signs ( === )
Hash Signs ( ### )
Asterisks ( *** )
Tildes ( ~~~ )

Type Out a Table in Word:

You can create tables in Microsoft Word by simply typing out a string of PLUS SIGNS (+) and MINUS SIGNS (-).
Start the row with a PLUS SIGN (+) and then type MINUS SIGN (-) until you have the column width you want. To add a new column type PLUS SIGN (+) again. When you're done type a final PLUS SIGN (+) and press ENTER. Word turns your text into a table. To add more rows to your table, move to the last cell in the table and press TAB.

Filling Word Documents with Pretend Text:

If you want to fill a page(s) with text to test something like printing, but don't want to spend time pasting the same phrase over and over,
Type in =rand(x,y) and press "enter" .
Where x and y are replaced by numbers.
X would be the number of paragraphs
Y would be the number of sentences in a paragraph.
The text that gets generated is ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’
Select a vertical block of text
Press Alt + drag
Quickly Replicate Text or Graphics in Word
Here's a quick way to make copies of text or graphics in Word:
1. Select the item or text you want to copy.
2. Press and hold down the CTRL key.
3. Then use the mouse to drag the item to the desired position.
A copy of the original item is made right where you want it. This is helpful when you're creating a document that will include a lot of repeated text or images.

Quickly Change Font Size in Office:

To quickly change the font size in your Office application (Word, Front Page, Publisher or PowerPoint):
1. Highlight the text you want to change
2. Press:
CTRL+SHIFT+> - To Increase the size
CTRL+SHIFT+< - To Decrease the size
Use your keyboard to quickly change the case of text in Microsoft Word
Select the text you want to change and press SHIFT+F3. Each time you press the F3 key, the text case switches between Title Case, UPPERCASE, and lowercase.

Insert Current Date and Time in Word:

You can insert the current date or time in a Word document using keyboard shortcuts. Here's how:
1. Position the cursor where you want to insert the date or time.
2. Do one of the following:
To insert the date, press ALT+SHIFT+D.
To insert the time, press ALT+SHIFT+T.

Close all word documents without closing Word:

Shift + click the File menu then select Close All

Shift + clicking on the File menu give one more option Save All

Return to the last place you were working:

Return to the last place you were working or the place before that or before that.
Press Shift + F5 repeatedly to return to last 5 cursor positions (even if one of those positions is in another open document).
This one’s even cleverer, when you first open a document, press shift + F5 to jump to the last place you or someone else edited before closing the document.

Cycle through all open documents :

To cycle through all open documents press Ctrl + F6 +F6 +F6….
It works for Photoshop and others applications as well.

Whether you’re saving a file or opening a file try these shortcuts:

Alt + 1 Go to previous folder
Alt + 2 Go up one folder level
Alt + 3 Search the web
Alt + 4 or Delete deletes selected file.
Alt + 5 Create a new folder
Alt + 6 repeatedly Cycle through all views.
Alt + 7 Display the Tools menu

Determining Formatting in Word:

To determine what formatting is applied to a particular paragraph in Word:
1. Go to Help / What's This?
2. When the cursor changes to a question mark, click on the paragraph.
3. Information such as font and size, alignment, indent, spacing and margins will show.

Reducing the File Size of Word Documents:

If you have make documents using MS Word and you make many formatting changes for the paragraph, fonts, page etc., you will see your file size gets bigger. Microsoft Word saves files by blocking, so any change you made for your document it will create a new block with the new formatting and disappear the old block without deleting it from the file.
You can solve this problem.
1. If you open your file and select File \ Save As and give your file a new name, it will save only the active blocks with out the old ones.
2. If you compare the two files you will see a difference in size
There is, however, a much easier way.
1. Choose Tools
2. Options...
3. Open the Save tab
4. Uncheck Allow Fast Saves
This makes Word rewrite the entire document file from scratch each time it is saved. The save command takes slightly longer, but your files can be drastically smaller (especially if you've done lots of formatting changes).

c ya later...

Comments
on Nov 02, 2004
I actually didn't know most of these...Thanks for the valuable info!
on Nov 02, 2004
wow.. I didn't realize Word could do this stuff without accessing menu options. Sweet!
on Nov 02, 2004
Nice! I'll have to try these out!

Anywho, I wish there was a way to customize the shortcuts on the Open/Save menu, as having shortbuts as huge icons and changing them to my whim would definitely help me out a bit.
on Nov 02, 2004
Good General Article