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Speed Techniques for Using Word
Computers are supposed to make your work easier and faster. And if you can cut through all the jargon and technobabble, they can really do that. This article explains shortcuts and commands that can help you become a speedy user of Word. Everything in this article was put here so that you can get off work earlier and take the slow, scenic route home.
Getting a Better Look at Your Documents
A computer screen can be kind of confining. There you are, staring at the darn thing for hours at a stretch. Do you wish the view were better? The Word screen can’t be made to look like the Riviera, but you can examine documents in different ways, zoom in and zoom out, and work in two places at one time in the same document. Better read on.
Viewing documents in different ways
In word processing, you want to focus sometimes on the writing, sometimes on the layout, and sometimes on the organization of your work. To help you stay in focus, Word offers different ways of viewing a document. To change views, click a View button in the lower-left corner of the screen or choose a command from the View menu. Word offers no fewer than six ways to examine documents:
- Normal view: Choose View -> Normal or click the Normal View button (in the lower-left corner of the screen) when you want to focus on the words. Normal view is best for writing first drafts and proofreading. You can see section breaks clearly in Normal view. You can’t, however, see floating graphics in documents.
- Web Layout view: Choose View -> Web Layout or click the Web Layout View button to see what your document would look like as a Web page. Background colors appear. Text is wrapped to the window. Want to see precisely what your document would look like in a Web browser? Choose File -> Web Page Preview. The document opens in your default Web browser (probably Internet Explorer).
- Print Layout view: Choose View -> Print Layout or click the Print Layout View button to see the big picture. You can see graphics, headers, footers, and even page borders in Print Layout view. This is what your document will look like when it’s printed.
- Outline view: Choose View -> Outline or click the Outline View button to see how your work is organized. In Outline view, you see only the headings in a document and can easily move chunks of a document from place to place. - Reading Layout view: Click the Read button on the Standard toolbar, choose View -> Reading Layout, or click the Reading button when you want to focus on the words. The Reading Mode toolbars appear onscreen. Click the Document Map or Thumbnails button to get from heading to heading or page to page. Press Esc or click the Close button to leave Reading Layout view.
- Full Screen view: Choose View -> Full Screen if you want to get rid of everything except the text you’re working on. Click it or press Esc when you want the buttons, menus, and so on to come back. You can give menu commands from the menus on the menu bar in Full Screen view by moving the pointer to the top of the screen to make the menu bar appear.
- Print Preview view: Choose File -> Print Preview or click the Print Preview button to see what entire pages look like. Use this view to see the big picture and find out whether documents are laid out correctly. By clicking the Multiple Pages button, you can see one, two, or several pages simultaneously.
Zooming in, zooming out
Eyes were not meant to stare at computer screens all day, which makes the Zoom command all the more valuable. Use this command freely and often to enlarge or shrink the text on your screen and preserve your eyes for important things, such as gazing at the horizon. Give this command in one of these ways:
- Click the down arrow in the Zoom drop-down list and choose a magnification percentage. You will find the Zoom drop-down list on the Standard toolbar.
- Click inside the Zoom drop-down list box, type a percentage of your own, and press the Enter key.
- Choose View -> Zoom and, in the Zoom dialog box, choose a setting.
Working in two places in the same document
You can open a window on two different places simultaneously in a document. One reason you might do this: You are writing a long report and want the introduction to support the conclusion, and you also want the conclusion to fulfill all promises made by the introduction. That’s difficult to do sometimes, but you can make it easier by opening the document to both places and writing the conclusion and introduction at the same time. Word offers two methods for opening the same document to two different places: Opening a second window on the document or splitting the screen. Opening a second window To open a second window on a document, choose Window -> New Window. Immediately, a second window opens and you see the start of your document.
- Select the Window menu and you’ll see that it now lists two versions of your document, number 1 and number 2 (the numbers appear after the filename). Choose number 1 to go back to where you were before.
- You can move around in either window as you please. Changes you make in either window also appear in the other window. Choose the File -> Save command in either window, and you save all the changes you made in both windows. The important thing to remember here is that you are working on a single document, not two documents.
- When you want to close the second or third window, just click its Close Window button. This button is located in the upper-right corner of the screen, below the Close button.
Splitting the screen
Splitting a window means to divide it into north and south halves. In a split screen, two sets of scroll bars appear so that you can travel in one half of the screen without disturbing the other half. In a split screen, you can choose a view for the different halves. For example, choose Outline view for one half and Normal view for the other to see the headings in a document while you write the introduction. Word offers two ways to split the screen:
- Move the mouse cursor to the split box at the top of the scroll bar on the right. Move it just above the arrow. When the cursor turns into double-arrows, click and drag the gray line down the screen. When you release the mouse button, you have a split screen. - Choose Window -> Split. A gray line appears on-screen. Roll the mouse down until the gray line is where you want the split to be, and then click. You get two screens split down the middle. When you tire of this schizophrenic arrangement, choose Window -> Remove Split, drag the gray line to the top or bottom of the screen, or double-click on the line that splits the screen in two.
Selecting Text in Speedy Ways
To move text or copy it from one place to another, you have to select it first. You can also erase a great gob of text merely by selecting it and pressing the Delete key. So it pays to know how to select text. If you have a bunch of highlighted text on-screen and you want it to go away but it won’t (because you pressed F8 or double-clicked EXT to select it), double-click EXT again. After you press F8 or double-click EXT, all the keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor also work for selecting text. For example, press F8 and then press Ctrl+Home to select everything from the cursor to the top of the document. Double-click EXT and press End to select to the end of a line.
Tricks for Editing Text
Following are some tried-and-true techniques for editing faster and better. On these pages, you find out how to take some of the drudgery out of repetitive work, fix errors, fit text on the screen, and view format symbols so that you can tell why text lies where it does on the page.
Undoing a mistake
Fortunately for you, all is not lost if you make a big blunder in Word because the program has a marvelous little tool called the Undo command. This command “remembers” the editorial and formatting changes you made since you opened your document. As long as you catch your error before you do five or six new things, you can “undo” your mistake. Try one of these undo techniques:
- Choose Edit -> Undo (or press Ctrl+Z). The name of this command changes on the menu, depending on what you did last. For example, if you just typed a sentence, it says Undo Typing.
- Click the Undo button to undo your most recent change. If you made your error and went on to do something else before you caught it, click the down arrow next to the Undo button. You see a list of your previous six actions. Contrary to the Undo command is the Redo command. It redoes the commands you undid. If you’ve undone a bunch of commands and regret having done so, pull down the Redo drop-down list by clicking its down arrow and then choose the commands you thoughtlessly undid the first time around.
Repeating an action and quicker this time
The Edit menu contains a command called Repeat that you can choose to repeat your last action, and it can be a mighty, mighty time-saver. For example, if you just changed a heading style and you want to change another heading in the same way, move the cursor to the next heading and choose Edit -> Repeat (or press F4 or Ctrl+Y). Rather than go to the trouble of clicking the Style drop-down list and choosing a heading style, all you have to do is choose a simple command or press a key or two.
Moving Around Quickly in Documents
Besides sliding the scroll bar, Word offers a handful of very speedy techniques for jumping around in documents: pressing shortcut keys, browsing in the Select Browse Object menu, using the Go To command, and navigating with the Document Map or thumbnails. Read on to discover how to get there faster, faster, faster. If pressing Ctrl+PgUp or Ctrl+PgDn doesn’t get you to the top or bottom of a page, it’s because you clicked the Select Browse Object button at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar, which makes Word go to the next bookmark, comment, heading, or whatever. Click the Select Browse Object button and choose Browse by Page to make these key combinations work again.
Viewing thumbnail pages
In lengthy documents, the best way to get from place to place is to use Thumbnails view. In Thumbnails view, a thumbnail of each page in the document appears in the window pane on the left side of the screen. Each thumbnail is numbered so that you always know which page you are viewing. To quickly move from page to page, use the scroll bar on the left side of the screen. To switch to Thumbnails view, choose View -> Thumbnails.
“Browsing” around a document
A really fast way to move around quickly is to click the Select Browse Object button in the lower-right corner of the screen. When you click this button, Word presents 12 “Browse by” icons. Select the icon that represents the element you want to go to, and Word takes you there immediately.
Going there fast with the Go To command
Another fast way to go from place to place in a document is to use the Edit -> Go To command. Choose this command or press either Ctrl+G or F5 to see the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. The Go to What dropdown list in this dialog box lists everything that can conceivably be numbered in a Word document, and other things, too. Everything that you can get to with the Select Browse Object button, as well as lines, equations, and objects, can be reached by way of the Go To tab.
Hopping from place to place in the Document Map
Yet another way to hop from place to place is by turning on the document map. To do so, click the Document Map button or choose View -> Document Map. The headings in your document appear along the left side of the screen. Select an item in the Document Map, and Word takes you there in the twinkling of an eye. Right-click the document map and choose a heading level option on the shortcut menu to tell Word which headings to display in the map.
Bookmarks for hopping around Rather than press PgUp or PgDn or click the scroll bar to thrash around in along document, you can use bookmarks. Just put a bookmark in an important spot in your document that you’ll return to many times. When you want to return to that spot, choose Insert -> Bookmark, double-click the bookmark in the Bookmark dialog box, and click the Close button. Follow these instructions to handle bookmarks:
- Adding a bookmark: To place a bookmark in a document, click where you want the bookmark to go, choose Insert -> Bookmark (or press Ctrl+Shift+F5), type a descriptive name in the Bookmark Name text box, and click the Add button. Bookmarks can’t start with numbers or include blank spaces.
- Deleting a bookmark: To delete a bookmark, select it in the Bookmark dialog box and click the Delete button.
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