Editors are often afraid to work on big documents in Microsoft Word. I routinely work on documents larger than 300 pages, so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. I do believe in having plenty of RAM (random access memory) on a computer (at least 256 megabytes), so that helps. Also, most of my documents don't include graphics, which I know can bog things down in Word.

If you need to work on big documents with lots of graphics and find that Word often runs slowly or locks up, you may appreciate a tip from Word guru Woody Leonhard:

http://www.wopr.com

On page 270 of his book "Word 97 Annoyances," Woody explains how to change Word's memory allocation. Here are the basic instructions:

1. Run Regedit (Start > Run > Regedit).

2. Find HKEY_CURRENT-USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice8.0WordOptions. [You might have a different version number, such as 9.0.]

3. Double-click on the key and back it up by clicking Registry > Export Registry File. If something goes wrong, this will let you restore the existing settings later.

4. Click Edit > New > String Value. Type in the name "CacheSize" and hit Enter twice. Type in 2048 and hit Enter.

5. Click Edit > New > String Value. Type in the name "BitMapMemory" and hit Enter twice. Type in 2048 and hit Enter.

6. Click File > Exit to leave the registry and save your changes.

What this does is tell Word to reserve 2048 KB of memory (instead of the meager default of 64) for documents (CacheSize) and graphics (BitMapMemory).

You don't have to use 2048, either; you can use lesser amounts, such as 1024. It's up to you. But the more you use, the less memory will be available for other programs that are running.

Don't mess with anything else in the registry. Doing so can cause all kinds of problems. And even for these settings, you change them at your own risk.

Macintosh users should simply be able to change the memory allocation for Microsoft Word.

Interested in learning more about Woody Leonhard's classic book "Word 97 Annoyances"? You can check it out here:

http://www.woodyswatch.com/l.asp?1565923081

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READERS WRITE

After reading the article "Show Me the Menu," Michael C. Coleman wrote:

Another trick for viewing the full menu is to double-click the menu headings.

Terri Svilar wrote:

My question has to do with publishing a document created in Word that contains color. Is there a way to separate the color from the text? I work at a small community college, and every semester we publish a course schedule. Most of the text is not highlighted, but there are certain entries that are highlighted with a light yellow so that students can easily find them.

It takes the person who gets this ready to be sent to the publisher a considerable amount of time to convert from Word to a format the printers can use. What takes her the most time is the highlighting, and then sometimes the highlighting doesn't match the printed words.

I responded:

The best way to approach this, in my opinion, is to use character styles to format the words that need to be in color. If you don't know about character styles, Word's Help file will tell you about them. You could create a character style named something like "Highlight" and apply it to the words in question. Then, when the file goes to the printer, it can be imported into QuarkXPress (or some other typesetting program), and the character styles can be formatted in color as needed in the typesetting program.

If your files currently use Word's built-in highlighting rather than character styles, you can use Word's Find and Replace feature to find highlighting and replace it with your character style.

Many thanks to Michael and Terri for their messages.

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RESOURCES

A few weeks ago this newsletter included a notice for a presentation by expert word whacker Hilary Powers to the Bay Area Editors' Forum. The notes and tipsheet for the presentation, "Electronic Editing: With Your Computer, Not Just On It," are now available online here:

http://www.editorsforum.org

Click "Forum Index" (on the right) and "Work Support & Tools (on the left)," and you'll see the titles in the alphabetical list (in the middle).

Don't miss this incredible resource! Hilary really knows her stuff, and the notes and tipsheet include tons of truly useful information that can save you hours of work and frustration.

While you're there, check out the other resources and articles available from the Bay Area Editors' Forum.

In the 1996 film Jerry McGuire, Tom Cruise shouts "Show me the money!" I know the feeling, but right now I want Microsoft Word to show me the *menu*--all of it! In Word's default state, many menu items are hidden until you click the little arrows at the bottom of a menu. For example, if I click the Format menu, only five items show up. If I click the little arrows down south, I get about four times that many. I'm really tired of having Microsoft decide what I can and can't see. If you are too, here's how to remedy the situation:

1. Click Tools > Customize. (If you can't see "Customize," try clicking the little arrows at the bottom of the menu. Heh.)

2. Click the Options tab.

3. See that check in the checkbox labeled "Menus show recently used commands first"? Get rid of it.

4. Click the OK button.

Now when you click on a menu at the top of your Word window, you'll see all of the menu items it contains.

Of course, Microsoft Word includes many more commands that aren't on *any* menu. You can learn more about that here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707791786

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READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article on inserting boilerplate text, Mary L. Tod wrote:

How is the use of a boilerplate file with bookmarks different from or better than using Word's built-in AutoText feature?

I responded:

Good question. It's different in that the entries aren't stored in a template but in a specific document. But is that an advantage over AutoText? Probably not. Is it better than AutoText? Probably not, since with AutoText you can pick and choose the entries you want to insert. However, it is one more item to include in your bag of tricks, and sometime it may come in handy, which is why I thought it might be worth mentioning in the newsletter.

David King also wrote to suggest using AutoText:

The boilerplate article is a nice trick to get text inserted. What I use often is the auto insert feature which when attached to the normal template is always available. Or you can select a template to store it. I do not know how much text it can hold, but the nice feature is you have the option of storing formatting information by including the paragraph mark.

Brad Hurley wrote:

I use AutoText to insert boilerplate, it's very fast and efficient.

First I type the boilerplate in a Word document and select the text.

Then, with the text selected, I go to Insert > AutoText > New

I give the entry an easy-to-remember and descriptive name, like "disclaimer."

From then on, whenever I start to type the word "disclaimer" in a document, Auto-Text pops up and suggests the boilerplate text; to insert the whole shebang all I have to do is hit the Enter key.

If I have a lot of different boilerplates for different purposes and can't remember all their names, I can quickly find and select the right one by going to Insert > AutoText and reviewing the entries in the menu. It stores any entries you've created according to the style of the original text. So if you were using Normal style when you created the boilerplate text, you'll find your AutoText entry in the Insert > AutoText menu under "Normal."

Many thanks to Mary, David, and Brad for their messages.

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RESOURCES

Microsoft Word MVP Shauna Kelly provides particularly lucid and helpful explanations of Word and its features on her Web site, "Making the Most of Word in Your Business":

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/index.html

She has a number of articles for beginners, along with terrific discussions about styles and formatting; sharing documents; and numbering, bullets, headings, and outlines.

Check it out! You'll be glad you did.

Don't you love Word's shortcut menus? You know--the ones you get when you click the right mouse button. (If you're a Mac user, you can access the shortcut menus by holding down the Control key while pressing the mouse button.)

But did you know can customize the shortcut menus, putting the features you use most within easy reach? Here's how:

IN WORD 97 OR LATER

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Customize."

3. Click the "Toolbars" tab.

4. Scroll down the "Toolbars" list until you see the entry for "Shortcut Menus." Put a check in the checkbox next to it.

At this point, you'll see the "Shortcut Menus" menu bar in your Word window. It includes three menus: "Text," "Table," and "Draw." For now, click the "Text" menu. You can play with "Table" and "Draw" later.

You'll see a long list of the various text shortcut menus. Boy, there are lots of them! To see the one you usually get if you just click in the text of a document, click the one labeled "Text." Look familiar? If you're using our Editor's ToolKit program, you'll see a bunch of useful editing features. If not, you'll see the regular old Microsoft Word standards. You can add all kinds of commands, however, including Word features, macros, styles, fonts, and a bunch of other stuff. To do so:

1. Click the "Commands" tab in the "Customize" dialog, which should still be open on your screen.

2. Use the "Categories" and "Commands" lists to explore the various commands you can put on the shortcut menus. If you see something that catches your eye, use the mouse to drag it over to the text shortcut menu. If you change your mind, drag it off into your open document, where it will vanish into electron limbo. Want to use a different shortcut menu, such as "Comment"? Feel free.

3. Right-click an item on the menu to change its name, image, and so on. You can learn more about these options here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707444986

IN WORD 6 OR 95

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Customize."

3. Click the "Menus" tab.

4. Click the drop-down arrow in the box labeled "Change What Menu."

5. Use your mouse to scroll down the list and click the entry for "Text (Shortcut)" or one of the other shortcut menus.

6. Use the "Categories" and "Commands" lists to explore the various commands you can put on the shortcut menus. If you see something that catches your eye, select it with your mouse.

7. In the box labeled "Position on Menu," click an existing menu item below which to place your new command. (You can also click "Auto" [to let Word decide the position], "At Top," or "At Bottom.")

8. Click the button labeled "Add Below" (or "Add"). (To remove a command, click the "Remove" button.)

9. Click the "Close" button.

Now, when you click that right mouse button, you'll see the features *you* put there.

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RESOURCES

Well, look at that. Microsoft has a "Frequently Asked Questions" page for Microsoft Word. This resource is definitely worth checking when you have a question about you-know-what:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/word/faq

I work a lot with styles in Microsoft Word, and I like being able to look up at the drop-down style list on the formatting toolbar to see the name of the current paragraph style. I also like giving my styles long, descriptive names, such as Normal Text 2, Normal Text 2 No Indent, Normal Text 2 Block Quotation, and so on. The problem is, Word's drop-down style list isn't wide enough to display the entire name of the style, so I usually end up looking at something like this:

Normal Text 2

--even when the name of the style should be displayed like this:

Normal Text 2 Block Quotation

I have the same problem with Word's drop-down font list, especially with font families that have long names and lots of members (Franklin Gothic Book, Franklin Gothic Demi, Franklin Gothic Demi Cond, and so on). Yes, I can click the arrow on the right of the list to see the full name, but I hate reaching for the mouse, especially when all I want to do is display something.

If you, too, have this problem, there's an easy way to fix it. You can resize the drop-down list to show the full name of a style or font:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Customize." The Customize dialog box will appear.

3. Click inside of the drop-down list you want to resize. A black border will appear around the list window.

4. Move your mouse pointer to the right edge of the list window. Your cursor will change into a vertical bar with arrows sticking out of the sides (indicating that you can resize the window).

5. Click and hold your left mouse button.

6. Move the edge of the list window to the right until the window is the size you'd like it to be. Don't be shy--give yourself plenty of room.

7. Release the mouse button.

8. Click the "Close" button in the Customize dialog box.

Now, isn't that better? You may be surprised at how much frustration this saves from day to day. I know I was.

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READERS WRITE

After reading our article on creating an exclude dictionary, here--

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1709082320

--April Karys wrote:

In creating an exclude dictionary, as I did following your excellent directions, I found out that those of us running on a Mac platform using Word 2001 must save the document not in "text only" or "plain text," but in "speller exclude dictionary." Saving in plain text won't work. [This is also true in Word 98.]

In an article on searching with wildcards--

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705963026

--I mentioned the fact that wildcard searches can't be set to find whole words only. Callie Jordan wrote with a workaround for this problem:

It's true that Word doesn't have "whole word" as an option, but if you include a space before and after the word(s) you're looking for, it won't find butter when you're looking for b?t--it also won't find "bat" [in quotation marks] though, because that word isn't followed by a space. So there's still a limit. But there aren't as many words in quotes as there are just plain whole words. . . . It also won't find words at the end of a sentence, or with any punctuation. You could just run the Find/Replace a second time and don't do a global replace, verifying each find. There wouldn't be as many words to check after most of them had been replaced.

Thanks to April and to Callie for their useful tips.

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RESOURCES

If you're interested in learning the nitty-gritty details of using Microsoft Word, you can't afford to miss the MVP Word site, which includes tutorials and a great FAQ put together by various people associated with Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional program:

http://www.mvps.org/word

To navigate the site, click the items on the menu bar at the top of the Web page.

Microsoft Word comes with lots of features, many of which do not appear on menus or toolbars unless you put them there. Some of these features aren't even documented. Nevertheless, some of them are very useful for editing, writing, typesetting, and other publishing tasks. From time to time I'll write about these features in Editorium Update. For now, I just want to show you where the features are so you can start exploring them and putting the ones you like on menus, toolbars, and keyboard combinations for easy access.

In Word 6 and 95, you can see (and run) *any* of Word's features like this:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Macro."

3. In the "Macros Available In" box, find and click "Word Commands."

4. In the "Macro Name" list, you'll see all of Word's features.

5. Click a feature that looks interesting. You'll see a brief description of the feature in the "Description" box.

6. Click the "Run" button to run the feature.

In Word 97 and above, you can see (and run) *any* of Word's features like this:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Macro."

3. Click "Macros."

4. In the "Macros in" box, find and click "Word commands."

5. In the "Macro name" list, you'll see all of Word's features.

6. Click a feature that looks interesting. You'll see a brief description of the feature in the "Description" box.

7. Click the "Run" button to run the feature.

If you want to add a feature to a menu, toolbar, or keyboard combination, follow the procedures for adding a macro as explained in past issues of Editorium Update:

Adding menu items: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707444986

Adding toolbar buttons: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707286867

Adding keyboard shortcuts (Readers Write column): http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707100224

The only difference in the procedures is that in the "Categories" list, you should click "All Commands" instead of "Macros."

One caution: Please don't try any of these features on a document with any importance. Just use a test document with some junk text until you understand exactly what a feature does and feel comfortable using it. Have fun spelunking!