I Like Spike

Remember when editors wore green celluloid visors and impaled pieces of paper on a shiny steel spike? Word, too, has a spike, but it's buried so deep that most Word users have never even heard of it. The Spike is a *cumulative* cut and paste. It lets you cut as many blocks of text as you want (like sticking them on a spike) and then paste them all at once in your chosen location. The text is pasted in the order in which it was cut--first in, first out. If you're rearranging massive chunks of text,
you'll find the Spike exceedingly useful.

To use the Spike, do this:

1. Select the text you want to cut to the Spike.

2. Press CTRL+F3.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each item you want to add to the Spike.

4. Place your cursor at the spot where you want to insert the contents
of the Spike.

5. Press CTRL+SHIFT+F3.

The contents of the Spike will be inserted into your text, and the Spike will be empty once more. (Note: The Spike pastes each of its entries as a separate paragraph, so you probably won't want to unload it in the middle of a sentence somewhere.)

The Spike is actually an AutoText entry, which means you can see what's in it. To do so:

1. Click the Insert menu.

2. Click "AutoText."

3. In the list of AutoText names, click "spike."

You'll see the Spike's contents in the Preview box.

While you're there, you can insert the contents of the Spike into your document by clicking the Insert button. This will leave the contents of the Spike intact so you can use it again elsewhere if you need to. Or, you can accomplish the same thing like this:

1. Type the word "spike" into your document (remember, the Spike is an AutoText entry).

2. Press F3.

What if you want to *copy* rather than cut the text to add to the Spike? You can do it with a special Word macro that we'll discuss next week. In the meantime, I hope you like Spike!

Extending a Selection

In our last newsletter, I promised to tell you about Word's Extend Selection feature, which I've assigned to the Insert key in our Editor's ToolKit program. Extend Selection, a terrific tool, is often overlooked because it's not included on a menu or a toolbar. It's also not covered well in Word's documentation (so what else is new?). Nevertheless, if you're editing in Microsoft Word, you'll find this feature invaluable.

Here's how it works: You're editing along and decide to delete the rest of the sentence. You could do it this way:

1. Hold down SHIFT.

2. Use your cursor key to move and move and move and move to the end of the sentence.

3. Press DELETE.

Or, you could do it this way:

1. Press F8 to turn on Extend Selection (or double-click the EXT box in the status bar at the bottom of your Word window).

2. Press the period key (.) to instantly select to the end of the sentence.

3. Press DELETE.

The second way is much faster, and when deadlines are looming, fast is good.

Extend Selection automatically selects to any character you type. If you hit the spacebar, it moves to the next space (probably selecting a word). Hit it again to extend to the space after that. Neat! Hit ENTER to extend to the end of the paragraph. Hit a character key to move to the next occurrence of a specific character. Use Word's Find feature to extend the selection to something far, far away. Once you've got that text selected, you can cut it, copy it, italicize it, style it, change its case, type over the top of it, or do almost anything else to it. You can even stick it on the Spike--but we'll talk about that in our next issue.

In the meantime, you should know that hitting F8 several times in succession selects text all by itself. Here's the pattern:

Hit F8 once to turn on Extend Selection.

Hit it again to select the current word.

Hit it again to select the current sentence.

Hit it again to select the current paragraph.

Hit it again to select the whole document. Now that's a selection!

If you change your mind, you can cancel the selection by hitting ESCAPE and then pressing a cursor key.

The next time you need to select some text, don't reach for the SHIFT key. Instead, try Extend Selection.

Reassigning the Insert Key, Part 2

In our last newsletter, I complained about accidentally hitting the Insert key and thus turning on Overstrike by mistake. Microsoft Word lets you reassign the Insert key to paste the contents of the Clipboard, but that brings its own set of problems.

Subscriber Kathy Anderson suggested using the Insert key as an additional Delete key. Bruce (whi-@msn.com.au) from WinHelp IT Editing (http://winhelp.nu) suggested using it to insert a commonly used symbol, such as the copyright mark. For instructions on how to do this, see the May 2 Editorium Update:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700545039&sort=d&start=0

(If that address breaks in your email, you may need to put it back together.)

These still don?t solve my problem, however, which is my tendency to hit the key by mistake and then change the document without realizing it. If you, too, have that problem, here are some reassignments you might consider, with their "official" command names (which you?ll need later):

* OtherPane switches to and from another window pane, whether that be a notes pane, an annotations pane, or a split window--very handy if you do a lot of moving back and forth between one of those and your main document. Best of all, if no pane is open, it does nothing!

* ViewFootnotes opens and closes the notes pane at the bottom of your Word window. If you work with notes a lot, this would be a great feature to assign to the Insert key.

* ToolsWordCount displays the number of pages, words, characters, paragraphs, and lines in your document. See the June 27 Editorium Update for a way to use this feature:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1701177723&sort=d&start=0

* ToolsThesaurus looks up a selected word in Word?s built-in thesaurus, which I?d probably use a lot more if it were on a conveniently placed key rather than under the Tools menu.

* FormatChangeCase selects a word and lets you change its case.

* EndOfLineExtend extends the selection to the end of the line. After using this feature, you could press the delete key to delete to the end of the line.

There are many other candidates, too, which you can explore using a test document and the instructions below. I?ll discuss one of my favorites, ExtendSelection, in our next newsletter. In the meantime, here?s how to assign a different feature to the Insert key if you?re interested in doing so:

1. Click the Tools menu at the top of your Word window.

2. Click "Customize."

3. Click the Keyboard tab or button.

4. In the Categories list, find and click "All Commands."

5. In the Commands list, find and click the feature you want to assign to the Insert key (OtherPane, for example).

6. With your cursor in the Press New Shortcut Key box, press the Insert key on your keyboard.

7. Make sure the Save Changes In box shows Normal.dot.

8. Click the Assign button. (If you wanted to remove a reassignment, you'd click the Remove button.)

9. Click the Close button.

Reassigning the Insert Key

It happens all the time: I'm editing merrily along in Microsoft Word only to discover that I've accidentally hit the Insert key, turning on Overstrike. Now I've typed over the top of a whole sentence and who knows what else. Aarrgh! I wish I could rip that key right off my keyboard.

After I calm down, I look for a less drastic solution. Sure enough, it's possible to reassign the Insert key so that instead of turning on Overstrike, it pastes something I've copied (just like pressing CTRL + V or clicking "Paste" on the Edit menu).

If you'd like to do the same thing, here's the procedure:

1. Click the Tools menu.

2. Click "Options."

3. Click the Edit tab.

4. Check the box labeled "Use the INS key for Paste."

5. Click the OK button.

(If, for some unfathomable reason, you still need to turn on Overstrike, just double-click the OVR box in the status bar at the bottom of your Word window. To turn it off, double-click the OVR box again.)

Finally, the Insert key is good for something!

It's still not perfect, though. Here's what happens: I'm editing merrily along in Microsoft Word only to discover that I've accidentally hit the Insert key, pasting a whole bunch of unwanted text here and who knows where else. Aarrgh! I wish I could rip that key right off my keyboard.

After I calm down, I look for a less drastic solution. Sure enough, it's possible to reassign the Insert key to almost anything! The question is, what should it be? I'll give you some possible answers in next week's newsletter.