Getting Word’s Help with Office Chores

This article is dedicated to the proposition that everyone should get their work done sooner. It explains how Word can be a help in the office, especially when it comes to working on team projects. This article also explains mail merging, Microsoft’s term for generating form letters or labels and envelopes for mass mailings.

Finding the Right Word with the Thesaurus

If you can’t seem to find the right word, or if the word is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite remember it, you can always give the Thesaurus a shot. To find synonyms for a word in your document, start by right-clicking the word and choosing Synonyms on the shortcut menu. With luck, the synonym you’re looking for appears on the submenu, and all you have to do is click to enter the synonym in your document. Usually, however, finding a good synonym is a journey, not a Sunday stroll. To search for a good synonym, click the word in question and press Shift+F7, choose Tools -> Language -> Thesaurus, or right-click and choose Synonyms -> Thesaurus. The Research task pane opens. Now you’re getting somewhere:

 -  Choosing a synonym: Move the pointer over the word, open its menu, and choose Insert.

 -  Finding a synonym for a synonym: If a synonym intrigues you, click it. The task pane displays a new list of synonyms.

 -  Searching for antonyms: If you can’t think of the right word, trying typing its antonym and then looking for an antonym in the Research task pane. The task pane sometimes lists antonyms for words.

 -  Revisit a word list: Click the Back button as many times as necessary. If you go back too far, you can always click its companion Forward button.

Highlighting Parts of a Document

You can use the Highlight command to mark paragraphs and text that need reviewing later. And on rainy days, you can use it to splash color on your documents and keep yourself amused. Whatever your reasons for highlighting text in a document, follow these steps to do it:

1. If necessary, click the down arrow beside the Highlight button and choose a color. If the stripe on the bottom of the button is the color you want, just click the button.

2. Drag the cursor over the text you want to highlight.

3. Click the Highlight button again when you’re done. You can also highlight text by selecting it and then clicking the Highlight button to choose a new color from the Highlight drop-down list. Highlight marks are printed along with the text. To temporarily remove the highlights in a document, choose Tools -> Options, select the View tab in the Options dialog box, and deselect the Highlight check box. To permanently remove highlights, select the document or the text from which you want to remove the highlights, click the down arrow to open the Highlight dropdown list, and select None.

Commenting on a Document

In the old days, comments were scribbled illegibly in the margins of books and documents, but in Word, comments are easy to read. Highlights, a different color for each commenter, appear on-screen where comments have been made in a document, and brackets appear around words and passages as well. You can read a comment in Normal view and Outline view by moving the cursor over bracketed text; in Page Layout view and Web Layout view, comments appear in bubbles. (Choose Tools -> Options, select the View tab in the Options dialog box, and check the ScreenTips check box if comments don’t appear when you move the pointer over them in Normal or Outline view.) If you’re putting together a proposal, you can pass it around the office and invite everyone to comment. If someone makes an especially good comment, you can include it in the main text merely by copying and pasting it. To write a comment:

1. Select the word or sentence that you want to criticize or praise.

2. Choose Insert -> Comment or click the Insert Comment button on the Reviewing toolbar. The Reviewing pane opens at the bottom of the screen with comments that have already been made and the names of the people who made them. You see the Reviewing toolbar as well.

3. In the Reviewing pane, type your comment in the space provided under the word “Comment” and your name. If your name doesn’t appear in the Reviewing pane, choose Tools -> Options, select the User Information tab, and type your name in the Name text box. Here are a handful of tasks that deserve comment (if you’ll pardon my little pun):

 -  Seeing and hiding the Reviewing pane: Click the Reviewing Pane button on the Reviewing toolbar to hide or display the Reviewing pane. You can also click the Show button on the toolbar and choose Reviewing Pane from the menu that appears.

 -  Seeing and hiding comment brackets: Click the Show button on the Reviewing toolbar and choose Comments to hide or display the brackets that appear in the text where a comment was made.

 -  Deleting a comment: Click a highlighted comment in brackets or a comment in the Reviewing pane and then click the Reject Change/Delete Comment button on the Reviewing toolbar. You can also right-click a comment in your document and choose Delete Comment on the shortcut menu.

 -  Deleting all the comments in the document: Click the down arrow beside the Reject Change/Delete Comment button and choose Delete All Comments in Document.

 -  Deleting comments made by one or two people: First, isolate comments made by people whose comments you want to delete. To do that, click the Show button on the Reviewing toolbar, choose Reviewers, and, on the submenu, deselect the name of a commenter whose comments you want to keep. Do this as many times as necessary until brackets appear only around the comments you want to delete. Then click the down arrow beside the Reject Change/Delete Comment button and choose Delete All Comments Shown.

 -  Editing a comment: Rewrite it in the Reviewing pane. You can right-click a phrase in brackets and choose Edit Comment to open the Reviewing pane to a comment you want to edit.

Showing Revisions to Documents

When many hands go into revising a document, figuring out who made revisions to what is impossible. And more importantly, it’s impossible to tell what the first draft looked like. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the revision work was for the good or the ill. To help you keep track of changes to documents, Word offers the Tools -> Track Changes command. When this command is in effect, all changes to the document are recorded in a different color, with one color for each reviewer. New text is underlined, a vertical line appears in the left margin to show where changes were made, and text that has been deleted either appears in balloons (in Print Layout and Web Layout view) or is crossed out (in Normal and Outline view). By moving the pointer over a change, you can read the name of the person who made it as well as the words that were inserted or deleted. Then you can accept or reject each change. You can also see the original document or a copy with revisions simply by making a choice from a menu.

Marking the changes

To start tracking where editorial changes are made to a document, do one of the following:

 -  Double-click TRK on the status bar.

 -  Choose Tools -> Track Changes (or press Ctrl+Shift+E)

 -  Click the Track Changes button on the Reviewing toolbar. The Reviewing toolbar appears on-screen. If you’re the first author to have a crack at this document, your changes appear in red. If you are the second author, they appear in a different color. Word can tell when a new reviewer has gotten hold of a document and assigns a new color accordingly. To track formatting changes as well as editorial changes, click the Show button on the Reviewing toolbar and choose Formatting on the menu. If you prefer not to see balloons within balloons in Print Layout and Web Layout view, click the Show button and choose Balloons -> Never Use Balloons from the menu that appears.

Marking changes when you forgot to turn on revision marks

Suppose that you write the first draft of a document and someone revises it but that someone doesn’t track revisions. How can you tell where changes were made? For that matter, suppose that you get hold of a document, you change it around without turning on revision marks, and now you want to see what your editorial changes did to the original copy. Here is some good news: You can see where changes were made, as long as you have a clean copy of the first draft. To see where changes were made to the first draft of a document, use the Tools -> Compare and Merge Documents command. After you are done comparing and merging, revision marks appear where changes were made. Follow these steps to compare and merge documents:

1. Open the copy of the document that you or someone else made changes to. In other words, open the second or a subsequent draft.

2. Choose Tools -> Compare and Merge Documents. You see the Compare and Merge Document dialog box.

3. Find and select the first-draft file.

4. Click the down arrow beside the Merge button and choose an option on the drop-down list:

• Merge: Makes the changes and revision marks appear in the first draft of the document.

• Merge into Current Document: Makes the changes and revision marks appear in the subsequent draft, that is, in the document you opened in Step 1.

• Merge into New Document: Makes the changes and revision marks appear in a new document. Compare documents when you want to see where the original and revised documents differ, not what was inserted or deleted. If both reviewers deleted the same paragraph, for example, you won’t see the paragraph crossed out; instead, it doesn’t appear at all in the compared copy. To compare documents, follow the procedure you use to merge them, but select the Legal Blackline check box in the Compare and Merge Documents dialog box, and then click the Compare button.

Reading and reviewing a document with revision marks

Reading and reviewing a document with revision marks isn’t easy. The revision marks can get in the way. Fortunately, Word offers a handful of techniques for dealing with documents that have been scarred by revision marks:

 -  Temporarily remove the revision marks: Click the Show button on the Reviewing toolbar and deselect the Insertions and Deletions option on the menu. Select the command again when you want to see revision marks.

 -  See what the document would look like if you accepted all revisions: Open the Display for Review menu on the Reviewing toolbar and choose Final (or choose View -> Markup).

 -  See what the document would look like if you rejected all revisions: Open the Display for Review menu and choose Original.

 -  See more clearly where text has been deleted: Open the Display for Review menu and choose Original Showing Markup. Now a line appears through text that has been deleted. Text that has been deleted does not appear in balloons as it does when you choose Final Showing Markup on the Display for Review menu.

 -  Focus on revisions made by one or two reviewers: Click the Show button, choose Reviewers, and deselect a reviewer’s name on the submenu. Do this as many times as necessary to remove names and be able to see only revisions made by one or two people. Choose All Reviewers on the submenu when you want to see all the revision marks.

Accepting and rejecting changes

Whatever your preference for accepting or rejecting changes, start by selecting a change. To do so, either click it or click the Previous or Next button on the Reviewing toolbar to locate it in your document. With the change selected, do one of the following:

 -  Accept the change: Click the Accept Change button or right-click and choose Accept on the shortcut menu.

 -  Reject the change: Click the Reject Change button or right-click and choose Reject on the shortcut menu. To accept all the changes in a document, click the down arrow beside the Accept Change button and choose Accept All Changes in Document.