Have you ever wished you had a way to move quickly from one footnote to the next in Word? How about from one edit to the next? One heading to the next? If so, you need to know about Word's Object Browser, which is poorly documented but richly useful.
The Object Browser lives at the bottom of the scroll bar on the right side of your Word window. It consists of three buttons, which look something like this:
^
o
v
There's a double up-arrow on top, a small round button in the middle, and a double down-arrow on the bottom. The arrows take you to the next or previous something, and the button in the middle lets you pick what that something will be. Just click it to see and select the various options, which include:
* Go To
* Find
* Edit
* Heading
* Graphic
* Table
* Field
* Endnote
* Footnote
* Comment
* Section
* Page
That's a lot of stuff! Note that Go To will take you to whatever you've selected in Word's Go To feature, which you can summon up by clicking the Go To button in the Object Browser (or by pressing CTRL + G). And that means you can add the following items to the list of things you can browse:
* Line
* Bookmark (selectable)
* Comment (selectable by reviewer)
* Field (selectable)
* Equation
* Object (selectable)
Similarly, the Find button will open the Find dialog, allowing you to search your document as usual. But after you've found the first instance of the thing you're searching for, you can use the Object Browser to jump to the next one. And the next one. And the previous one. Whatever.
This would really be slick if we just had some keyboard shortcuts to do our browsing instead of having to click those tiny buttons. Well, okay, the shortcuts are CTRL + PAGE DOWN and CTRL + PAGE UP. Enjoy!
Thanks to Meg Cox for suggesting this topic.
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READERS WRITE
After reading last week's article on displaying pages two up, Julian Jenkins wrote:
Thanks for this advice. I now have the multiple pages button on my Formatting toolbar as suggested. However, the same thing can be achieved by selecting "Two Pages" on the zoom menu (underneath the various choices of percentages to zoom to).
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Aaron Shepard wrote:
If you select "Different Odd and Even Headers and Footers," Word will show odd pages on the right under Print Preview. In Word 98 for Mac, I'm going to Format > Document > Layout. Click "Different Odd and Even" and apply to whole document. I think I first used it with Word 2001 for the Mac, but I'm not sure. On the PC, it's under File > Page Setup.
Word 98 doesn't have the option on the zoom menu. Simply choosing a small percentage for zoom does bring up multiple pages, but there's a difference. If I use the Multiple Pages button, the pages automatically expand to fit the window. That doesn't happen with the zoom setting.
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Donald Hawkins wrote:
I liked your idea of showing pages two-up as described in the latest issue of your newsletter. You might mention that even after you copy the Multiple Pages button to another toolbar, there's an extra step to getting two-up pages. You still have to pick the configuration you want (1x2 pages, 1x3, etc.)--it doesn't go directly to the 2 page display. And when you're done and want to go back to normal view, you have to adjust the zoom back to 100%. (On my screen, print preview comes up at 49% zoom.)
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Chuck Tucker wrote:
I suggest a much simpler way to display pages Two Up. When I want to see two pages side by side in Word I simply hold the Ctrl key down and rotate the wheel on the mouse until I see two pages (or 3 or 4 or whatever) side by side. I can easily edit either page, move to other pages, etc. All I have done is change the zoom factor, and I don't need to go to Print Preview to do it.
I would also mention that in Word 2003 they have added a new feature under the View menu called "Reading Layout" that automatically generates a Two Up display with side-by-side views of the pages. There is also an associated Toolbar. You can change the zoom factor in this view and it remains two side-by-side pages. You can perform all usual edits on the pages. Scrolling down brings up the next two pages, etc. This feature is tied in with the Reviewing capabilities of Word--something I haven't pursued in any detail yet, but it looks like more reviewing features than were present in earlier versions.
Many thanks to all for their terrific tips.
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RESOURCES
If you're just getting started in Microsoft Word, you may appreciate the basic Word tutorials at Electric Teacher:
http://www.electricteacher.com/tutorials.htm
