Web Worker Daily

Do you spend a lot of time formatting documents in Microsoft Word? If so, there are a number of under-the-hood features that can make you more efficient at it, and make your documents look better. In a previous post I compiled time-saving shortcuts for Word, and readers chimed in with a slew of tips of their own. In this post, I’ll round up some of the best tips for making your documents look better.

This post will assume that you already make use of Word’s Styles, which are, from a formatting perspective, among the program’s most powerful tools. Styles controls are found on the Format menu at the Styles and Formatting option.

Remove Those Pesky Blue Web Addresses. You know how a Word document that has several web addresses in it starts to look ugly because they’re highlighted in blue? You can quickly make the URLs look like the rest of the document. Just right-click on the URL, and select Remove Hyperlink from the menu. (You can also select Edit Hyperlink if you want to change the URL.)

Eject Those Ransom Note Fonts. Do you often grab text from web sites and drop it into Word documents? The result can end up looking like a ransom note. A quick way to drop the text in without all the formatting from the site is to go to the Edit menu and select Paste Special. Then select Unformatted Text.

Use the Format Painter. It’s amazing how few Word users use the built-in Format Painter. The icon looks like a paintbrush on Word’s standard toolbar. To use it, select, say, a paragraph in a document that has the formatting you want to reproduce. Then click the paintbrush. Then select, say, a paragraph that you want to have that formatting. It will be automatically applied.

Take Formatting Back to Square One. Are you having problems with the formatting in a Word document? Maybe you formatted a paragraph with fonts you don’t like or aligned it incorrectly. To get a quick view of how the paragraph is formatted, put your cursor over text within the paragraph and hit Shift-F1. This will bring up Word’s Reveal Codes pane, which will tell you about the formatting. Do you want to go back to default formatting settings? If so, select the paragraph and hit Ctrl-Spacebar to go back to the defaults.

Insert Hyperlinks in Your Documents. Did you know that you can attach a hyperlink to any word or string of words in your documents? Just select what you want to appear as a link, right-click on it and select Hyperlink. Then supply the web address in the dialog box. Readers will be able to click to visit the linked web site.

Use Proper Symbols. Do you need to insert the symbol for the British Pound in a document? Maybe you need to insert the tiny “TM” sign for a trademark in a file. To access Word’s large library of symbols you won’t find on your keyboard, go to the Insert menu and select Symbol. In the dialog box, also click on the Special Characters tab and note that there are keyboard shortcuts for symbols that you may use frequently.

Use Your Right Mouse Button. If you eschew your left mouse button and use your right mouse button instead to click and drag elements around a page, you get more options for how you want your document formatted. For example, select a paragraph, hold down your right mouse button, and drag toward a new location in the document. When you get there, you’ll see a menu that allows you to move (cut and paste) the paragraph, or copy it to the new location without deleting the first instance. If you choose the second option, any time you edit the first instance of the paragraph, the edits will be made in the second instance of the paragraph too.

View Formatting Marks. To view the actual codes Word employs to describe the formatting of a document or a section of one, bring up Formatting Marks. To do this, select a portion of a document, go to the Tools menu and select Options. Switch to the View tab, and check the boxes in the Formatting Marks section. Uncheck the boxes to make the formatting marks invisible.

Do you have any good Microsoft Word Tips?