Getting a Bird’s-Eye View on Your Document

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium

Back in the days of editing on paper, I would sometimes spread manuscript pages out on my desk to get a bird's-eye view of the text I was working on. This could be useful for several reasons:

To see if long stretches of text needed to be broken down into subsections.
To compare points made over here with other points made over there.
To see if the overall organization of a chapter made sense.

On a computer screen, the default view is one page at a time, and most editors rarely deviate from that, even though it's possible (and sometimes useful) to do so. Here's how:

On Microsoft Word's ribbon, click the View tab.
Click the Zoom button.

Click the Many pages button and select 2 × 4 Pages, which is the maximum Word allows when setting the number through the ribbon.

Click the OK button.

Your document's pages should now be displayed four across, and if it has more than eight pages, they will automatically be displayed in more rows than the two you specified.

It's a bird's-eye view! After looking around, you can place your cursor anywhere on one of the pages and then click Zoom > One page to work on that page. Very convenient!

If you want to display more than four pages across, you can do so with a macro. This one will give you ten pages across:

Sub BirdsEyeView()    
    With ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Zoom
        .PageColumns = 10
        .PageRows = 2
    End With
End Sub

You can change the ".PageColumns = " number to anything you like, but 25 appears to be the maximum that Word will accommodate.

To return to Word's default view of one page, click Zoom > One page.

Here's how to use the BirdsEyeView macro and put in on Word's Quick Access Toolbar for easy use:

https://editorium.com/archive/how-to-add-a-macro-to-word-and-its-qat-quick-access-toolbar/

How about you? Do you have better ways of getting a bird's-eye view of your work? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

Converting Fields to Regular Text (and Why That Matters)

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium

Microsoft Word documents often include fields that authors use to insert text that isn't really text: dates, page references, author names, and much more. If you're editing a document that includes text copied and pasted from a web page (quite frequent these days), the text probably includes hyperlink fields, perhaps in a nice shade of blue or purple. Other kinds of fields may be indistinguishable from regular text, but that doesn't mean they'll translate correctly for publication. Usually, all of those fields first need to be converted to regular text. There are several ways to do that.

From the keyboard

Press CTRL + A to select all text.
Press CTRL + 6 to convert fields to text.

Using macros

This macro does the same thing as the keyboard procedure above:

Sub ConvertFieldsToText()
    selection.WholeStory
    selection.Fields.Unlink
End Sub

This macro converts hyperlinks only:

Sub RemoveHyperlinks()
    Dim oField As Field
    For Each oField In ActiveDocument.Fields
        If oField.Type = wdFieldHyperlink Then
            oField.Unlink
        End If
    Next
    Set oField = Nothing
End Sub

To use the macros, follow the instructions here.

The really interesting line in that last macro is this one, which identifies the type of field we want to unlink:

If oField.Type = wdFieldHyperlink Then

The reason that's interesting is that we can specify a different type of field using any of the options listed here. Go ahead, be choosy!

Using Editor's ToolKit Plus

Editor's ToolKit Plus makes the conversion easy. Just click the "Text" button and then click "Convert hyperlinks to regular text." (This actually converts all fields to regular text.)

Deleting (rather than just converting) fields

If you want to actually delete the fields (not just convert them to text), Allen Wyatt provides a good solution here.

Mucho Macros

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium

You're probably already familiar with Paul Beverley's editing macros, but there are plenty of other places to find Microsoft Word macros that you might find useful. Here are some of the best:

Allen Wyatt's macros, with clear explanations of how they work. Be sure to sign up for his free WordTips newsletter while you're there.
Graham Mayor's huge collection of useful macros and free add-ins. While you're there, support the man with a donation. He definitely deserves it.
Better Solutions provides a ton of useful information about how to work better with Microsoft Word, including macros galore.
Want to get more technical? Check out InfoExtract.
The Word MVP Site has macros along with thorough instructions about how to program in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), Word's macro language.
Shauna Kelly provides macros and tons of tips for using Word. (Sadly, Shauna is no longer with us. But her work lives on!)
DocTools has add-ins for sale, but they also offer lots of free macros and other helpful information.

Don't know how to use macros found online? See my article here.