If you've read many past issues of this newsletter, you know that I loathe Word's AutoFormat options, although I do use one of them--"Replace straight quotes with smart quotes." But sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I can't insert a quotation mark going the right direction. If I want a closing quotation mark, Word insists on giving me an opening one--or vice versa. If you've run into this problem, you know how maddening it can be. Wouldn't it be nice to type precisely the kind of "smart" quotation marks you need without having Word second-guess what you're doing? It turns out there's a built-in way to do that. Here are the key commands you need:

OPENING DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an opening double quotation mark, press this key combination:

CTRL + `

(That little character on the end there is the single quotation mark on the key to the left of the "1" key on your keyboard.)

Next, press this:

SHIFT + '

(That little character on the end is an apostrophe. In other words, just type a quotation mark as you usually would.)

There's your opening double quotation mark.

CLOSING DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

To get a closing double quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + '

Then press this:

SHIFT + '

OPENING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an opening single quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + `

Then press this:

`

CLOSING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an closing single quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + '

Then press this:

'

Now that I've told you all of that, I've got to say that I don't much like those key combinations. They're hard to type, and they seem inconsistent. Luckily, Word allows us to create our own key combinations, so let's try setting up a more natural and consistent system:

1. Click Insert > Symbol > Symbols tab.

2. Make sure the "Font" list shows "(normal text)."

3. Make sure the "Subset" list shows "General Punctuation."

On the bottom row in the fifth column, you'll see an opening single quotation mark.

In the sixth column, you'll see a closing single quotation mark.

In the ninth column, you'll see an opening double quotation mark

And in the tenth column, you'll see a closing double quotation mark.

Now let's assign some keys:

1. Click the opening single quotation mark.

2. Click the "Shortcut Key" button.

3. Press the new key combination you want to use. I'm thinking this one:

CTRL + '

4. Click the "Assign" button.

5. Click the "Close" button.

While we're still in there, let's assign the rest of the quotation marks. To do so, repeat steps 1 through 5 for each quotation mark. Here are the other key combinations I'm going to use:

For the closing single quotation mark: ALT + '

For the opening double quotation mark: SHIFT + CTRL + '

For the closing double quotation mark: SHIFT + ALT + '

When you're finished, press that final "Close" button to put away the "Symbol" dialog.

That should do it. Note that you can continue to use Word's AutoFormat quotation marks if you want. But when you need to, you can easily specify exactly the kind of quotation marks you need to use.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article "Style by Microsoft," quite a few readers sent additional Microsoft "style" nominations for our "hall of shame." Many thanks to all of them!

Kenneth Sutton wrote:

Here's my nomination of the "replace internet paths with hyperlinks". Bah!

In a similar vein, India Amos noted:

How about this classic: e-mail addresses underlined (not to mention blue and hotlinked). Yecch! Have you ever _deliberately_ clicked a linked e-mail address in a Word file? Me neither.

Finally, Andrea Balinson wrote:

The "style by Microsoft" example that drives me crazy is "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks," which makes Web addresses appear underlined in blue. It's one thing if the document you're writing is designed to be read on a computer; in that case, having URLs as hyperlinks can actually be useful. Most of the time, though, I see printed letters, memos, and other paper materials in which the URLs are underlined -- obviously because whoever created the documents didn't know or care enough to stop Word from formatting them as links.

LeAnne Baird wrote:

Here's my pet grammar-spelling peeve:

If you don't know that 'til is a contraction of until, Microsoft spell checker only gives you till as an option, not till and 'til. What would it cost them to fix this? .00000000000001 per licensed copy.

Caryl Wenzel wrote:

I have complained many a time of "style" imposed by Microsoft that is not accepted in an editorial style manual. Yet, someone at Microsoft thinks he or she is doing someone a favor by providing all these so-called helpful ideas.

I routinely omit such formatting and follow traditional editorial guidelines. I just wish Microsoft would learn the same. In fact, even Microsoft publishes it own style manuals for the books its publishing arm produces, and many of these imposed styles are not allowed.

Peg Hausman wrote:

My pet peeve about Word's "help" is its default enforcement of the alleged rule against using "which" to introduce a restrictive (essential) clause in a sentence. I've appended a longish e-mail (below) that I sent to a local electronic discussion group a while back explaining why the rule doesn't hold water. But the short version is that it was originally simply a mild preference expressed by H. W. Fowler in his famous _Modern English Usage_ (1926). The preference got picked up by AP and was soon presented as grammatical gospel, reproducing itself via journalism teachers all over the United States, in spite of the fact that it fails to reflect most normal educated usage.

Redmond has picked up this fiction and incorporated it into its Grammar function. Type a sentence like "The only document which really mattered was the one they neglected to send" into Word, and it will put the well-known wavy green underline under the fourth through the sixth words. A couple of investigative clicks will get you this message:

"If the marked group of words is essential to the meaning of your sentence, use 'that' to introduce the group of words. Do not use a comma. If the words are not essential to the meaning of your sentence, use "which" and separate them with a comma."

I have two problems with this. One is that it is too dogmatic: If MS wants to help people abide by AP (and AP-influenced) rules, that's fine, but it should be noted as a matter of AP house style and not as law.

The other problem is that a lot of people won't get as far as the second click, so won't know what the wavy green line is about. They may, however, discover through experiment that adding a couple of commas will make the wavy green line go away. I've seen quite a number of restrictive clauses incorrectly garnished with commas for this reason, and the effect can be most confusing. If you add commas to the sentence above--"The only document, which really mattered, was the one they neglected to send"--it promptly sounds witless and absurd.

As noted below, there's a longer discussion at this URL:

I'm afraid even the abbreviated polemic in this e-mail may be too long for you to use [Editor's note: Not at all. It's fascinating!], but in any case, thanks for the chance to cast my vote against a really annoying Wordism!

-------- Included Message --------

Subject: Re: [dcpubs] Which old which? The wicked which!

DATE: 09/03/2003 12:00:00 PM

From: Peg Hausman

To: DCPubs mailing list

References: <1a5.d64a18a.2b279f11 [at symbol] aol.com> <3DF646D8.2050704@cox.net>

Failure to observe the which/that distinction doesn't reflect evolution of any sort, for the simple reason that it has never at any time been a normal rule of English.

Apparently we owe the rise of the which/that rule to Fowler's _Modern English Usage_ (1926). Fowler mentions that some writers seem to follow a practice of using "which" only for non-restrictive clauses, and says he thinks it would be a good idea. But he certainly doesn't present it as a law of the language, current or past: "Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers."

In fact, a couple of centuries earlier the feeling was that "that" was a rather dubious pronoun, best avoided by careful writers. Here's part of a thumbnail history of which/that from the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_:

_That_ is our oldest relative pronoun. According to McKnight 1928 _that_ was prevalent in early Middle English, _which_ began to be used as a relative pronoun in the 14th century, and _who_ and _whom_ in the 15th. _That_ was used not only to introduce restrictive clauses, but also nonrestrictive ones. . . .

By the early 17th century, _which_ and _that_ were being used pretty much interchangeably. . . . During the later 17th century, . . . _that_ fell into disuse, at least in literary English. It went into such an eclipse that its reappearance in the early 18th century was noticed and satirized by Joseph Addison in _The Spectator_ (30 May 1711) in a piece entitled 'Humble Petition of _Who_ and _Which_ against the upstart Jack Sprat _That_.'

Unfortunately, Fowler's "it would be nice" notion about keeping "which" nonrestrictive was apparently picked up by someone at AP and incorporated into the AP stylebook. As a result, professors at journalism schools across the land started teaching the which/that rule as gospel, and editors influenced by AP style have been trying to impose it on the general public ever since. It's in quite a number of stylebooks now. The only hitch is that it has never made it into the common language--not only of those who barely made it through English 101 but even of the professionally literate. As the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_ noted in 1989:

If the discussions in many of the handbooks are complex and burdened with exceptions, the facts of usage are quite simple. Virginia McDavid's 1977 study shows that about 75 percent of the instances of _which_ in edited prose introduce restrictive clauses; about 25 percent, nonrestrictive ones.

We conclude that at the end of the 20th century, the usage of _which_ and _that_ --at least in prose--has pretty much settled down. You can use either _which_ or _that_ to introduce a restrictive clause--the grounds for your choice should be stylistic--and _which_ to introduce a nonrestrictive clause.

Please look at Ms. McDavid's figures again: "which" introduced restrictive clauses *three times as often* as it introduced non-restrictive ones, in *edited* prose. Read a few novels by good, sensitive authors, and note the same pattern. Listen to intelligent people talking, and note the same pattern. In trying to browbeat the US at large (forget the UK) into observing the which/that "rule," we're tilting at windmills, spitting into the wind, beating our heads against the wall, trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, and otherwise wasting our precious time.

A perverse recent development is that our buddies at Microsoft have incorporated the rule into their grammar-checking software. As a result, people who have no notion of the rule are mystified by seeing wiggly green lines underneath sentences that look just fine to them. On experimenting, some of them find that adding a couple of commas makes the green lines go away. The result is mispunctuated restrictive clauses ("the product, which drew the most attention at the inventors' show, was the autopiloted heat-seeking mousetrap. . ."), surely a worse plague than the original alleged problem.

I agree that it would be a nice rule if it existed in a linguistically meaningful sense. There are, in fact, a lot of things on my wish list for the English language, including a decent spelling system and a genuine gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, but wishing won't make it so.

There's a long but interesting discussion of the issue at

I think the remarks by Jane Lyle in this posting, in particular, are dead on (she's managing editor of Indiana University Press and one of the mavens of copyediting-l). Or just look at very thorough treatment of the question in the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_. (I'm forever recommending this book and hope I'm not too monotonous about it, but I do think leaves all other usage guides in the dust.)

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Garbl's Writing Center

Garbl (Gary B. Larson) provides a free editorial style manual, an annotated directory of writing Web sites, a concise writing guide, and a personalized advice and writing forum. Lots of good stuff for writers and editors:

http://garbl.home.comcast.net/

Recently a colleague said to me, "Look at this manuscript. All the ordinal numbers are superscripted." What he meant was that "1st," "2nd," "3rd," and so on had the "st," "nd," and "rd" in superscript. Then came an interesting question: "Do you think I should leave them that way?"

Now, I don't know about you, but I've never in my life been tempted to set ordinals with superscript, so my answer was basically "Are you kidding?" Later I started thinking about where the superscripts had come from: Microsoft Word's AutoFormat feature. And that led me to ponder a broader question: Are editors beginning to let Microsoft Word dictate editorial style?

It's tempting here to get off on a discussion of how the means of production influences the things produced, but instead may I just say that if we let Word dictate editorial style, we're in trouble. In my opinion, such "helpful" features as AutoFormat were created mainly as one more whizbang feature for Microsoft's marketing staff. The value to everyday users is negligible or worse. So I thought it might be helpful to identify "style by Microsoft" items to watch out for. Here's my list:

* The aforementioned superscript ordinals. You can learn how to turn off such items here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700237543

* Superscript note numbers in footnotes and endnotes. You can learn how to change these to regular numbers here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1703696660

* Automatic capitalization of articles, conjunctions, and prepositions when using Format > Change Case > Title Case. Our Editor's ToolKit program solves this problem with its "Make selection title case" feature. You can learn more about Editor's ToolKit here:

http://www.editorium.com/14857.htm

* Opening single quotation marks rather than apostrophes. For example, if I write "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves," I want the character in front of the "T" to be an apostrophe, not an opening single quotation mark. Our FileCleaner program (also included with Editor's ToolKit Plus) will correct most such problems:

http://www.editorium.com/14845.htm

* The tiny, ugly ellipses "character" (ASCII number 133 on PC, 201 on Macintosh). Brrr. If you need ellipses, properly spaced periods look vastly better. Again, FileCleaner will fix the problem.

* Arial and Times New Roman. Everywhere I look, I see documents with headings in Arial and text in Times New Roman. Just because Microsoft uses these fonts as its default doesn't mean *you* have to. Go ahead, modify the styles in your Normal template. Be different! Be daring! Be tasteful!

Have you noticed other examples of "style by Microsoft"? If so, please let me know, and I'll include your nominations in next week's newsletter:

mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

For more on Word's annoying eccentricities and how to turn them off, see Elizabeth Burton's article here:

http://www.simegen.com/school/business/manuscriptpreparation/taketioff.html

Also, if you haven't already done so, be sure to check out Jean Hollis Weber's book Taming Microsoft Word 2002. It's a great resource, well worth the modest price:

http://www.jeanweber.com/books/tameword.htm

[Editor's note: This week's feature article comes from Dan A. Wilson, a true gentleman and an editor's editor. Dan explains how to modify even the *built-in* buttons on Word's "My Places" toolbar. Don't want a "Desktop" button getting in your way? Dan explains how to remove it--and much more. I really appreciate Dan's generosity in supplying this information. If you're not already familiar with Dan's work, you'll definitely want to visit his Web site, the Editor's DeskTop, where he has still more useful information that every editor should read:

http://www.editorsdesktop.com/index.html

While you're there, check out Dan's editing services. Then, when you really need a professional, you'll know where to find one.]

This information applies to Word 2002 (Word XP). The My Places bar was not fully customizable prior to the appearance of the 2002 (XP) version. It is easy to add new icons to the My Places bar in Word 2002, to re-order the icons, and to remove any icon(s) you have added, as Jack pointed out in the Editorium Update of July 9, 2003. But a small amount of registry tweaking will give you complete control over the My Places bar icons, and let you consign the standard, default icons to distant memory.

Entries on the My Places bar are contained in the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice10.0CommonOpen FindPlaces

The Places key contains the following two subkeys: StandardPlaces and UserDefinedPlaces. These subkeys contain the following keys:

StandardPlaces. This subkey contains five keys that correspond to the five default items that appear on the My Places bar.

KEY NAME MY PLACES ITEM

Desktop Desktop

Favorites Favorites

MyDocuments My Documents

Publishing My Network Places

Recent History

UserDefinedPlaces. This subkey contains keys that correspond to items you have added to the My Places bar.

Example:

KEY NAME MY PLACES ITEM

Place0 firstplaceadded

Place1 secondplaceadded

Place2 thirdplaceadded

The following values can be used for keys contained in the StandardPlaces key and the UserDefinedPlaces key:

NAME TYPE DATA OPTIONS

View DWORD {1=List, 2=Details, 3=Summary, 4=Preview}

ArrangeBy DWORD {1=Name, 2=Type, 3=Size, 4=Date}

SortAscending DWORD Boolean to sort ascending/descending

Index DWORD Relative position on the My Places bar

Show DWORD Zero to hide a Standard place

Okay, now, here's the trick: If you locate a DWORD "Show" in one of the StandardPlaces keys (or create a new DWORD "Show" in one of the StandardPlaces keys) and modify its value to "0", that folder will not appear in your Word MyPlaces bar in the Open and SaveAs dialogs. I'll explain this step-by-step below.

There must be at least one icon in the MyPlaces bar. If nothing else is there, Desktop will remain. But if there are other icons showing, you can get rid of the (essentially useless for most users) Desktop icon, the MyDocs icon, or any (or all) of the other default icons.

The standard, low-tech way to access the registry is:

1. Click the Windows Start button.

2. Click "Run..."

3. Type "regedit" (don't include the quotation marks).

4. Press Enter or click OK.

The Registry Editor opens.

To hide the Desktop item on the My Places bar, open this registry key (click the plus to the left of a key's name to expand it, then scroll down to the next subkey listed here and click the plus to its left ...):

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice10.0CommonOpen FindPlacesStandardPlaces

Now, before you do anything else, save a copy of the registry key you are about to change. If anything goes wrong when you close the Registry Editor, all you have to do is locate your saved copy of the key (it has a name you assigned to it, and the extension .reg), double-click it, say Yes when you are asked whether you want to add this to the registry, and all will be the way it was.

Here's how you save a copy of a key: First, click the name of the key. In the example below, that would be the Desktop key. Click File in the Menu Bar at the top of the window, and click Export. Type a name of your choice in the blank, and navigate to a folder you choose to use as a storage folder for the saved-key file you are about to make. Now just click Save, and the key's entire image is saved as it is before you change anything. If you ever had to restore the key to its prior state, all you would have to do is double-click the name of the file you saved, answer Yes, and the changed key would be restored.

Now that the Desktop key is saved, let's change it. [Editor's note: Be careful not to change anything else or go merrily messing around while you're in there. If you do, you could foul up your computer fairly seriously. Also, don't continue unless you've followed Dan's instructions for saving a copy of the registry key.]

1. Right-click Desktop.

2. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

3. In the New Value#1 box, type Show, and then press ENTER.

4. Right-click Show, and then click Modify.

5. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 0 in the Value data box, and then click OK.

6. Close the Registry Editor.

That's it.

Reboot.

If the StandardPlaces key you want to hide already has a Show item in the right-hand panel of the Registry Editor window, simply right-click the word Show, click Modify in the pop-up that appears, and type the number (not the letter) 0 in the value box, where the number 1 will already be selected, waiting to be changed. Once you have made a change, click OK and close the Registry Editor.

If the StandardPlaces key you want to hide does not already have a Show item, create one as above. You simply right-click the key you want to create a Show DWORD value in, and go from there. It's a snap.

I added a Show DWORD with a value of 0 (zero, not "O," remember) to each of the StandardPlaces keys when I had added several of my own folders to the My Places bar. I now have five (large) folder-icons showing in Word's My Places bar with no arrowhead at the bottom or top to indicate that there are more icons offscreen. I have icons for my folders called Admin, Editing, Current, Archives, and Computing. They're the ones I use most often in Word, and it's really handy and efficient to have them readily available in the My Places bar, so that I don't have to click through other folders to reach them.

After all, *handy* and *efficient* are descriptors it would be wonderful to be able to use for everything Word. This information can move you a step closer to that goal.

Copyright (c) 2003 by Dan A. Wilson

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

After reading today's article, you may want to know more about the registry and how to use it. If so, a great place to learn the basics is the WinGuides Web site, here:

http://www.winguides.com/article.php?id=1&guide=registry

Then you'll find more Word-specific stuff at the Word MVP site, here:

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/DataKeySettings.htm

This week I've been editing a new project in Microsoft Word and decided to try something new--editing in Print Layout in Full-Screen mode. I didn't think I'd like it, but I do--a lot. If you want to try it, you can activate the feature by adjusting some items under the View menu, in this order:

1. Turn on Print Layout.

2. Set the Zoom level to "Whole page."

3. Click "Full Screen."

Whoa! Your Word menu bar has disappeared! That's okay; just move your mouse pointer to the top of your screen to bring the menu bar out of hiding. Move your mouse pointer back down, and the menu bar will vanish again, leaving a full page of your document floating over a gray background.

(To turn *off* Full-Screen mode, press the Escape key, or display the menu bar and again click View > Full Screen.)

What about your toolbars? They're probably still at the top of your screen, which keeps your document page from being displayed as large as possible. But who said toolbars have to stay at the top of the screen? You've now got lots of gray space at the sides of your page, and you can use that space to hold your toolbars. Just click and hold the vertical bar on the left of a toolbar, drag the toolbar to a new location, and release your mouse button. You can leave the toolbar "floating" in the gray space around your document (and resize it, if necessary), or you can "dock" it on either side of your screen.

With Full-Screen mode turned on, you'll immediately notice how tiny the type is in your document. "I can't work like this!" you'll say. And you'll be right. To overcome this problem, you'll need to attach a new template to the document--a template formatted especially for editing. I'd recommend making body type at least 18 points and headings even larger--whatever you need for nice, legible type, even if that means you no longer have as many words on a page. Don't worry; after you've finished editing, you can attach a template with the final formatting the document needs for publication. You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700934923

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704544112

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704628448

Also, to really make this work, you'll need a big monitor. I do most of my work on a 21-inch screen, but a 19-incher will do. On 17 inches, it's iffy. If you're still using a 13- or 15-inch monitor, it's time to upgrade, and I'd recommend getting the biggest monitor you can afford (the ideal would be an LCD that can pivot to a "portrait" orientation!). You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705314503

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705425420

Some of the advantages of working in Full-Screen mode, are:

* You can see a full manuscript page on your screen.

* The information on your screen is "digital" rather than analog, resembling pages rather than scrolls. In other words, it's presented in discrete, self-contained batches, and hitting the Page Down key really does take you a full page down. (In our Editor's ToolKit program, it also places your cursor at the *top* of the next page; sweet!) You can more naturally perfect a page before moving on to the next one. You don't have that feeling of not knowing where you are or that you're in an unending, scrolling mass of words.

* The discreteness of the pages allows for positional memory and a better sense of proportion--editing seems more natural, like working on paper. You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700396609

* All the distraction of toolbars and menus is gone, leaving you free to concentrate on your editing.

As mentioned earlier, you can still access Word's menu bar by moving your mouse pointer to the top of the screen, but you can also access it by pressing the ALT key. Then you can activate menu items by pressing the key for the letters that are underlined on those items. For example, the File menu has an underline under the F, so you can press F to access the File menu. If you already know what those underlined items are (without looking), you can press both keys at once to access the menu: ALT + F.

Here are some additional tips for editing in Full-Screen mode:

1. Click Tools > Options > View and turn off the following items (to maximize the space on your screen):

* Status bar.

* Horizontal scroll bar.

* Vertical scroll bar.

2. Click View and turn off the ruler.

3. Get more text on a page by reducing the size of your margins under File > Page Setup.

4. If your pages aren't already numbered, insert page numbers. With the status bar gone, you'll need them to gauge your progress as you work through that manuscript.

5. Use Word's "Go To" feature (CTRL + G) to move around in your document.

All of this makes it possible to have a clean screen and see each page as a unit--a pretty nice way to edit! If you've never used Full-Screen mode, why not give it a try?

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Juanita Hilkin wrote:

One last tip on document preview. If you have a wheel mouse, hold down the control key while you roll the wheel, and the view of your document will become larger or smaller depending on which way you roll the wheel. This makes it easy to quickly adjust the view on the screen but still lets you type in the document.

After reading last week's article on modifying the "My Places" toolbar, Claes Gauffin wrote:

As you said, there are no ways to modify the toolbar in earlier versions. But what you can do, is to modify the contents of, for example, the "My documents" folder to something useful. If you normally organize your different projects in separate folders, you simply create shortcuts of all these project folders and put the shortcuts into the "My documents folder." And presto! You suddenly have a swift way of reaching all your current work.

Nan Bush wrote:

An add-on I couldn't live without on Word 2000 is Woody Leonhard's WOPR Places Bar Customizer. With it, you can customize up to ten directory links on the Places bar. It's very easy to install and has worked flawlessly for me for two+ years. As a technical writer juggling many documents, I can't imagine (well . . . yes, I can) trying to navigate without it. HIGHLY recommended. I just looked it up to be sure of its availability and found the WOPR Places Bar Customizer and other WOPR products from:

http://www.wopr.com/html/order.shtml

Thanks to all for their great suggestions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

High on the mountaintop, the wizard waves his wand, intoning the words of power. "OLEFormat.DoVerb wdOLEVerbShow!" he cries. "Application.OnTime Now!"

Trembling, you approach. "O mighty one," you plead, "I am weary and frustrated. I seek to make Word do my bidding rather than follow its own will, as it is so cursedly wont to do. Will you not teach me your wondrous spells?"

The wizard eyes you carefully, measuring your sincerity. Satisfied, he nods his assent. "We will begin with the spellbooks," he says, drawing a large, dark volume from his voluminous sleeve. The teaching has begun.

Steve Hudson, the Wizard of Word, really has published his spellbooks, which contain the power to bring Word under your control. The spellbooks are three:

1. Word VBA Beginner's Spellbook. This is the perfect reference for any Word user who has ever had to think about recording a macro or automating templates. Whether novice or expert, there are few Word users who won't benefit from the unique topics covered in this book.

2. Word Spellbook. A book for the experienced novice or intermediate user who is ready to move to a more advanced level. It does not cover writing techniques or other secondary information; it is dedicated to the functionality behind Microsoft Word--and nobody understands that better than Steve.

3. Word VBA Spellbook. This more advanced book assumes that the reader already has some programming knowledge. Then it explains how to get results from the inside out. The book is not so much for professional Word developers but rather for Word users who need to develop solutions for their own use.

The price for these collections of powerful knowledge? Just $20 each. For what you'll get, that is ridiculously cheap. The information would be a bargain at twice the price. Better get 'em now before Steve changes his mind. Then you too can be a Word wizard. The way to the mountaintop is here:

http://www.geocities.com/word_heretic/spellbooks.html

In the Open, Save, and Save As dialogs in recent versions of Word, there's a large vertical toolbar on the left-hand side of the dialog. The toolbar has buttons on it that make it easy to get to such places as My Documents and Desktop. Appropriately enough, the name of the toolbar is "My Places." Or maybe that's not so appropriate, since in any version of Word before 2002, there's no way to modify this toolbar--at least no way I've been able to find.

But in Word 2002 there is a way to add places (folders) to the toolbar. Why should you care? Because doing so will give you quick and easy access to your latest editing projects without having to navigate all over the place. Here's how to add a folder you want to use:

1. Click the "File" menu and then click "Open," "Save," or "Save As."

2. In the dialog that opens, navigate to the folder you want to add to the My Places toolbar.

3. Click the folder so it's active.

4. Click the "Tools" menu at the top of the Save As dialog.

5. Click "Add to My Places."

That will add the folder to the My Places bar. You may need to click the down arrow at the bottom of the bar to see the folder you added. However, you can move the folder up in the list by right-clicking it and then clicking "Move Up." (You can also move it down by clicking "Move Down.") If you want to remove the folder from the bar, right-click it and then click "Remove." You'll notice that you can't remove the existing folders, such as My Documents. They're there to stay.

If you eventually accumulate too many folders to handle, you can better manage them by reducing the size of their icons (which, by default, are *huge*). To do so, right-click one of the folders and then click "Small Icons."

Thanks to Michael C. Coleman for suggesting this article.

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READERS WRITE

I've received so many great tips from readers that there's just not room to include them all in a single newsletter. So if your tip isn't here, please be patient. I'll be including it soon.

The previous newsletter included a tip for editing in Print Preview. A number of readers wrote to say there's an easier way: click the Magnifier button (it looks like a magnifying glass over a piece of paper) on the Print Preview toolbar. You'll then be able to edit away. The Magnifier button is a toggle, so after you're through editing, you can click it again to return to Print Preview. Many thanks to all who sent this tip and the others below. Keep those email messages coming!

Bill Rubidge sent some additional tips for working in Print Preview:

You can invoke print preview with a macro, and set yourself to edit mode, with this bit of VBA:

ActiveDocument.PrintPreview

ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.View.Magnifier = False

You might also use this bit of VBA to set a page-width zoom:

ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Zoom.PageFit = wdPageFitBestFit

I also believe you can enter full-screen view with this:

ActiveWindow.View.FullScreen = True

Full screen view is nice if you want to edit in a true WYSIWYG mode, without distraction from any tools, and if your computer is powerful enough or your document simple enough that editing in this mode works fast.

You also have access to all the standard Word commands in print preview mode, even if you can't see the icons and the menus. I avoid using the mouse and icons as much as possible, and just invoke the commands I want using the keyboard shortcuts for the menu bar.

One final suggestion--if you have a document set up to print on both sides of the page, so that you will have facing pages in the final bound document, you can set print preview to show you two pages side by side. If you use full screen view, you can usually read the documents, if you have a big enough display and set the resolution to a good size like 1024 x 768. This view in edit mode is especially useful if you are trying to do nice layout in Word. You can adjust your page breaks to balance your layout across pages. (I recommend fixing page breaks with keep-with-next paragraph commands and start-new-page paragraph commands, rather than page breaks. That way, you won't have as much to undo if you make text edits and the content gets pushed around.)

___________________________

Phil Rabichow wrote:

Just thought I'd mention something in follow-up to your article on Document Preview. You would think that if you open a document, go to File > Properties, and check the "Save preview picture," then you would have a picture as you describe in your article--one that you can see, read, and scroll through.

However, it's just the opposite! If you check that box, two things happen:

1. The file size grows.

2. You only see a snapshot in preview mode in the File > Open dialog box--and you can't scroll. The snapshot is so small (in Word 2000, anyhow), you can't read anything. Moral: never check that box.

___________________________

Eric Fletcher wrote:

I've been away for a bit and just caught up on the last few newsletters. I see you've been delving into one of my favorite features of Word: the document properties dialog.

Several years ago we had a huge job coordinating publication of ~300 publications in three languages from numerous authors. Each publication would be in any of several different phases at any time so I knew document management was going to be critical. To deal with it, I set up a template with a "cover page" consisting of styled fields to show information from the document properties, then very fastidiously followed a rigorous naming convention with the "Show document properties when saving" option set on.

I've attached a sample document so you can see what I mean. [Editor's note: To maintain privacy, I have not made this document available, but you should still be able to get an idea of what Eric is talking about from his comments.] Here are a few of the features:

1. The cover page has fielded info from the Summary part of the properties dialog. Title, subject, keywords, and comments are styled to display. The "comments" field has a running history of where the file has been. Our procedure copies the subject each time the file is saved with a new name (actually, it migrates through sets of folders; in our case, CHP-A through CHP-D as it moves through various set stages) and appends it to the end of the comments field so I keep the history with the file.

2. Some of the other fields are in the statistics tab: pages, words, creation date--and even some math to show things like average number of words per page (for our client's purposes originally but now very useful for quoting on similar work).

3. I set up a custom field "Default language" to identify the default spelling dictionary and display it on the cover page. We often do work in English, French, and Spanish, so it is helpful to be able to see at a glance what language is set as the default. The value and the setting is managed by a custom macro. (Custom fields can be very useful but the feature is poorly documented.)

4. Since we include the cover page for the client, we type any notes they need to see here so they can send the document off to their author without the notes if they choose. The page number references are fields referring to bookmarks, so we can be quite specific without having to worry about pagination differences. (Sometimes the files are sent electronically and printed at their site.)

5. Although this is a bit removed from the properties dialog, I've included sample portions of the proforma table of contents for the styled headings (we provide all levels at the interim stages so they can see the structure of their work--often handy for reducing confusion without having to be a heavy!) and the ToC for figures. The latter is seldom used in finals but we've found it helps a lot in author reviews since many of them are most keen to see that aspect of the text rather than re-reading the entire content.

I've cadged together various macros to generate summary documents using the properties fields: for example, I can list all files in the CHP-B stage in French and show the number of words. Such macros usually end up being job-specific, but they can be real lifesavers if there are large numbers of files. Of course, a well-thought-out naming convention is critical as well--but if you use the properties, you can greatly extend the number of variables to uniquely identify a particular file.

Oh, and a final tip: since I never use the Insert key, I map the File > Properties command to it. So, to see my properties dialog, I just hit Insert. (And if your finger slips going for Delete or Home, having a dialog pop up is pretty harmless--and reminds one of the usefulness of the feature!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

MyInfo is an outlining and organizational tool I've been using for the past few weeks to keep track of all kinds of ideas, notes, and projects. The program's Web site describes it as a "tool for individuals who need a better way for storing and working with their personal and business information," noting, "It was designed to help you organize documents, ideas and projects easily."

The program certainly does that, and it has a number of features that I think sets it apart from other such organizers:

* Customizable, sortable columns. For me, this is the big one. It means I can sort my many notes by category or deadline or status or just about anything else I can dream up. I can even create my own drop-down list of items to choose from. This is a *nice* feature that I've seen nowhere else.

* Item cloning. If I have a note in one folder, I can have a duplicate in another folder, and whenever I make a change in either one of them, that change is also made automatically in the other. In effect, I can file a note under many different category folders at the same time. If I have a note about creativity, for example, I can store it (cloned) under "Thinking," "Writing," and "Inventing" without worrying about keeping the clones in synch.

* Save options. You can save all or selected items in RTF format using all kinds of slick options, such as automatic item numbering, custom dividers, and comments.

* Fast, intuitive navigation.

* Usability. MyInfo has one of the cleanest program interfaces I've seen, making even its most advanced features simple to use.

If you're looking for an easy, effective way to organize your projects and your life, you'll definitely want to look at this program. You can learn more (and try it!) here:

http://www.milenix.com/myinfo.php

Maybe I'm just dense, but I've found another Word feature that I've been wanting but didn't know existed--document preview. If you've read the past couple of newsletters, you know I've been spending a lot of time poking around Word's Open dialog, and this is my latest discovery. To use the feature:

1. Click File > Open.

2. In the window on the left, find some Word documents and click one of them so it's selected.

3. The toolbar at the top of the Open dialog includes several buttons. At the far right is the "Tools" button. Next to it, on the left, is the Views button, which isn't labeled but looks like a tiny list of files. Just to the right of the Views icon is a tiny down-arrow. Click that arrow to see the different views that are available.

4. One of the views is called "Preview." Go ahead--click it.

5. Wow! In the window to the right, you'll see a preview of the document contents. You can even use the scroll bar on the right of the window to scroll through the document. On my computer, quite a few file types will work, including HTML.

Now you can see what's in a document *before* you open it, so no more opening a document just to find it's not the one you wanted. Very handy!

By the way, this feature works in Word 95, 97, 2000, and 2002. (The Open dialog in Word 2001 on a Macintosh has a "Show Preview" button, but on my Mac the feature never seems to show anything.)

Here's a bonus tip: In Word 2002, you can change the size of the Open dialog by clicking and dragging the lower left corner with your mouse. Make that window as big as you like. Now you can really see those previews. Nice!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Christopher Seal sent the following tip for editing in Print Preview:

I find it annoying that when scrolling through a Word document in Print Preview mode that when the mode is closed the document reopens at the page where you were when you opened Print Preview. You could be at page 1, then go into Print Preview mode, scroll through checking page balancing or whatever, and then see some text you want to change on page 127.

So you exit Print Preview, find yourself at page 1, then find the text on page 127. It is so much quicker to edit the text in Print Preview mode when you see what you want to change. Here's how.

With the main document in Print Preview mode, open another Word document in Normal mode. Now refocus on the main document, which you left in Print Preview mode. The cursor is now an I-bar, allowing you to edit the text.

Works in Word 2000 on Windows 98 and 2002(XP) on Windows 2000.

Many thanks to Christopher!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Scribendi, a multi-service editorial company, features some great pictures and a screensaver especially for editors. You can join the fun here:

http://www.scribendi.com/screensave.htm

While you're there, check out the company's editing services:

http://www.scribendi.com/

Last week's newsletter introduced the idea of using Microsoft Word to search for Word documents to which you've assigned certain properties, such as categories or keywords. This week we'll look at how to sort by those properties in a folder. I've learned, however, that this will not work in Windows 95 or 98. In XP, it works great, and it may work in some other versions.

Before you can sort by document properties, you'll have to assign those properties. Here's the basic procedure:

1. With a document open in Word, click File > Properties.

2. Click the Summary tab.

3. Enter the information by which you'll later want to sort. For example, you could enter a category, keywords, or a comment.

4. Save the document.

5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for other documents. Note that you should really do these steps whenever you create a new document. Word can help you with this by automatically opening the Properties dialog the first time you save a document. To activate this feature, click Tools > Options > Save > Prompt for document properties.

You can also assign properties outside of Word by right-clicking a file in a folder and then clicking "Properties" and the Summary tab.

After assigning the properties you want to use, you can sort by those properties in Windows Explorer or any Windows folder. To do so:

1. Open the folder you want to use.

2. Click the View menu and then "Details." You should now see a line of buttons above your list of files. The buttons will have names like "Name," "Date Modified," and "Size." To sort your files by one of these properties, click the button for that property. For example, to sort your files by the date they were modified, click the "Date Modified" button.

3. Now, the good stuff. Take your mouse and right-click that button bar. Wow, look at all the properties you can include on the button bar!

4. For the really good stuff, click "More . . ." at the bottom of the menu.

5. Put a check in the box for the items you want to use, such as "Subject" and "Category." Then click the Okay button. Wow again! Now you can see those properties in your file list. (Note that you can apply these settings to all of your folders, if you like. To do so, click Tools > Folder Options > View > Apply to All Folders.)

6. Click the button for the property by which you want to sort. Pretty slick!

How can you use this feature? Well, how about keeping track of all documents from a particular author? Or maybe you'd want to group chapters that belong to a certain section of a book. How about using the feature as a document database that allows you to group all documents (from a variety of projects) by a particular subject? There are lots of possibilities.

On a Macintosh, life isn't quite so glorious. There's no way (that I know of) to sort by Word document properties in a folder (at least in OS 9.1, which I'm using). You can, however, sort by properties that you assign to files *outside* of Word. To do so:

1. Open the folder you want to use.

2. Click View > View Options.

3. Under "Show Columns," put a check in the box for the properties you want to display and sort. "Comments" and "Label" are really the only customizable properties available here. Note that you can also set these for all folders under Edit > Preferences > Views.

4. Select a file to which you want to assign properties.

5. Press Command + I to bring up the General Information dialog.

6. In the Comments box, enter the text by which you want to sort. For example, you could type a category or keyword here.

7. If you like, click the Label button and assign a category such as "Essential," "In Progress," or "Project 1."

8. Close the dialog to save your changes.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

William T. Buckley wrote:

When I went to test your instructions in the DOCUMENT PROPERTIES portion of the Editorium for this week--06.11.2003--I found they did not work, at least not on my setup.

I am using Word 2002 (10.4524.4219) SP-2, running on Win2K professional.

After I read your discussion of the usefulness of the document properties capability, I then moved on to your detailed instructions:

* I clicked File > Open.

* I located the "Tools" button on the upper right of the dialog.

* BUT, when I went to look for "Find" under "Tools," there was no such option available in the dialog.

So I am unable to go forward with your instructions. And I'm at a loss to explain why. Is it me, my Word software, my OS, all of the above, none of the above?

I responded that before publishing these instructions, I really should have checked to see how the feature has changed in Word 2002, which now uses the term "Search" instead of "Find." Also, after clicking "Search," it's now necessary to click the "Advanced" tab, which will get you into the fancy features I described in the newsletter.

Thanks to William for his questions and comments.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Jim Cronin wrote:

Anyone who appreciates acerbic wit will love this screensaver from Deloitte Touche Consultants:

http://www.dc.com/bullfighter

The free Bullfighter program, which roots out consultant-speak, also uses the same biting comments as it diagnoses one's writing.

Thanks, Jim!

I've been thinking a lot lately about document management--that is, how to keep better track of all those Microsoft Word files I have floating around my computer. One tool I've neglected is Word's Properties feature. If you work in a law office, you probably know all about it. But if you work in a publishing house, like me, you may not even know this tool exists.

To see the Properties feature in action, open a Word document (or create a new one). Then click File > Properties. The Properties dialog will open, and you'll see five tabs:

General

Summary

Statistics

Contents

Custom

I'm not going to cover all of these tabs or their contents, but I would like to call your attention to the one that looks most useful for document management--the Summary tab.

Most of the items on the Summary tab are self-explanatory, but the important thing to note is that you can enter or modify any of them. In particular, I'm interested in the Subject, Category, and Keywords boxes. Why? Because if I type information into these boxes, I can do two very cool things. One of them is to search for files with a particular subject, category, or keyword.

Here's how:

1. Click File > Open.

2. Locate the "Tools" button on the upper right of the dialog. Did you know that was there?

3. Click "Find." Wow, is that a nifty dialog or what?

4. In the "Property" dropdown list, find the item you want to search, such as "Subject."

5. In the "Condition" list, find the conditions that fit the search you want to do, such as "Includes words" or "Begins with phrase."

6. In the "Value" box, type the words or phrase that you want to find in the property you selected from the "Property" list.

Here's an example. If I wanted to find all my files on the subject of elephants, I'd choose "Subject," "Includes words," and "elephant." Note that this won't find the *word* "elephants" in the text of a document. Rather, it will find all of the files whose Subject *property* includes the word "elephants."

7. Click the "Add to List" button. The search element you just defined will appear in the big box at the top of the dialog.

8. Click the "Find Now" button.

Word will search through your files and display those that match your search. Then you can open the files you want to work on. Note that you can narrow your searches by adding more than one item, that you can save your searches to use again later, and that there are various other features to help you refine your searches. You can learn more about each feature by clicking the Help button (labeled with a question mark) and then clicking the feature you want to know more about.

I mentioned that there were two cool things that can be done with document properties. One of them is searching. The other one is to sort by document properties in Windows Explorer. I'll reveal the details next week.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's newsletter on using styles in Word 2002 while avoiding the Task Pane, Jim Cronin wrote:

Prior to Word 2002, you could redefine a style by making direct formatting alterations in a paragraph then clicking on the style name in the toolbar's Style drop-down list and pressing Enter twice. This was a lot easier and quicker than using Word 2002's Task Pane. The solution is to click Tools > Options from the toolbar, select the Edit tab and ensure the "Prompt to update style" checkbox is selected.

Romke Soldaat sent some other useful style commands to add to your custom Styles toolbar as mentioned in last week's newsletter:

Apply Heading 1

Apply Heading 2

Apply Heading 3

Style by Example

Modify Style

Redefine Style

Rename Style

Delete Style

Style

Style Gallery

Romke also sent a nifty little macro that you can add to your toolbar. The macro displays Word's Organizer feature, all set so you can organize styles:

Sub OrganizeStyles
With Dialogs(wdDialogOrganizer)
.DefaultTab = wdDialogOrganizerTabStyles
.Show
End With
End Sub

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can find out here.

Thanks to Jim and Romke for these great tips.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

I have been sick, sick, sick of my computer running so slow. Then it dawned on me: spyware! I quickly downloaded, installed, and ran Spybot Search & Destroy, from PepiMK Software. Now my computer is back under my control. If you've got similar problems, you might want to check this out:

http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=start

There's no charge for the program, and on my computer it worked well. Your mileage may vary. If you want to try it, be *sure* to read the documentation before proceeding.