QI copied text with formatting I don’t want to keep. How can I paste it without that formatting?
AEasy! There’s both a built-in keyboard shortcut and a button:
Continue reading Q&A: How can I paste without formatting?Tag Archives: efficiency
Shrink Files by Deleting Unused Styles
Word files can get bloated, taking up far more MB than they should. If you’re dealing with a book-length manuscript full of tracked changes and comments, that bloat can bog down the computer and lead to failures, glitches, and basic Office malfeasance.
Continue reading Shrink Files by Deleting Unused StylesStreamline Accepting Changes
Click less when resolving tracked changes with this pro tip!
Reject changes you do not like, and leave the rest. That leaves a
document full of changes that you do want to accept. Then, select Accept All Changes from the Review ribbon and clean up the file with a single click!
Spot What Tracked Changes Can Hide
Always give a document a once-over in Simple Markup or No Markup view before submitting it as a finished edit. This often reveals a bunch of formatting errors that arise from working with markup displayed (that is, with Track Changes visible). Common errors often obscured by the redlining on the screen include:
- double spaces between words,
- spaces around punctuation, or
- no spaces between words.
How to Get a Word Count from a PDF using Word
Whether you need a word count for estimation or billing purposes, or for something else entirely, MS Word comes to the rescue. There are two easy ways to get text from a PDF into Word:
- Paste the contents into Word
- Open the file in Word
Pasting text into Word is simplest, but it doesn’t work with every file type. To get the whole contents of a slide set, for example, first print the slides to PDF, then copy all from that new file.
- Open the file
- Select all (ctrl + A, or cmd + A on a Mac)
- Copy
- Open Word and Paste
Open Word, then tell it to open the PDF. Word will convert the PDF and the Word count will appear along the bottom edge of the screen.
Troubleshooting
It may take a few seconds for Word to do its count; just wait. If it seems stalled, scroll down a few pages or go right to the end.
Word can make all kinds of errors detecting the text in a PDF, especially if that PDF was a scan rather than a “print” of an original file. (Misread ligatures and insert spaces mid-word.) Word will also include all of the markups and notes made to the PDF, and if those notes overlap text, that text will be excluded. Body text from a marked-up PDF is best gotten into Word by the copy–paste method.
This captures the running feet and heads too. If the word count needs to be precise, do a search-and-destroy for those.
Yes, you can export a slide set as an RTF, but we’re talking PDFs here.
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
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© This blog and all materials in it are copyright Adrienne Montgomerie on the date of publication. All rights reserved. No portion may be stored or distributed without express written permission. Asking is easy!
Sort to Find Duplicates
Right on the Home ribbon in MS Word you’ll find a Sort button. It’s handy for alphabetizing, to be sure, but you can use this as a hack to find duplicates in a bibliography too.
Some bibliographic styles list references in the order they are mentioned within the body of the text. This means they’re in 1, 2, 3 order rather than alphabetized by author name. Especially when a text is team written, duplicate entries can happen, and they’re hard to find when the bib or refs list is long.
Sort, to the rescue! With a couple steps, first. Watch the demo video or follow the 3 easy steps below.
- Copy the reference list to a new doc, but when you paste, select Keep text only from the options in the Paste icon on the Home ribbon.
- Select all, then select Convert Text to Table either from the menu, as shown in the demo, or from the ribbon as shown in the image below.
- Place the cursor in the table, then select the A→Z sort icon on the Home ribbon (beside the ¶).
- Tell Word to sort by column 2, and you’re ready to skim the list for duplicates.
This sort trick can also help you spot small inconsistencies in author names, such as Department for defence vs Department of defence.
Troubleshooting
- Do this in a new document, so you don’t mess with the formatting of the original.
- To maintain the auto numbering in the original document, make your changes by hand rather than pasting a revised list back into the original.
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Quick Change: upper- to lowercase, and more
Has your writer used all uppercase letters “for legibility”? Did they use them liberally for emphasis? Fix it all with a click (or 3):
- Select the text to change, then
- click the Change Case icon on the Home ribbon and
- select the preferred style.
Curly Quote Catches
They look nice, and some would say they facilitate reading ease. But curly quotes can cause snafus with macros, wildcards, and content management systems (CMS) like online education interfaces and website back ends. And sometimes Word just doesn’t want to create a mark with the right curl. Here’s how to fix those snags.
Correcting the Curl
If your quotes (or apostrophes) are simply facing the wrong way, the easiest thing to do is type a second mark beside it then erase the wrong one. Or, use one of the keyboard shortcuts listed in the table below. Alt codes work on both operating systems but Mac users may have to turn on the alt codes (or even the unicode) keyboard first. Windows users should type the first two keys together, then press the keys that follow the comma.
| Alt Code | Mac | Windows | ||
| ‘ | opening single quote | alt + 0145 | opt + ] | ‘ |
| ’ | closing single quote | alt + 0146 | opt + shift + ] | ctrl + ‘, ‘ |
| “ | opening double quote | alt + 0147 | opt + [ | shift + “ |
| ” | closing double quote | alt + 0148 | opt + shift + [ | ctrl + ‘, shift + “ |
Solving F&R Errors
If your find and replace string isn’t working, or it is royally messing up the manuscript, try replacing all the curly quotation marks with straight ones before you run the F&R. Then change them back.
You can read about how to easily change them in this other post.
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
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© This blog and all materials in it are copyright Adrienne Montgomerie on the date of publication. All rights reserved. No portion may be stored or distributed without express written permission. Asking is easy!
How to Find Highlighting
Editors sometimes use highlighting in MS Word to flag content. My publisher clients have asked me to highlight design and production instructions within the text, and I use highlighting to flag item for fact checking or a second look. (Design instructions include things like [table near here] and [note this is a mu symbol].)
Therefore, one of my final checks on a file is to review all the highlighting. Word makes this easy, using the Advanced Find and Replace to skip through all instances of highlighting.
Continue reading How to Find Highlighting10 Things to Add to Word’s AutoCorrect
Word’s “autocorrect as you type” feature can be used as a built-in text expander to save you thousands of keystrokes over a single day. Here are ten suggestions to get you started.
- your initials → your full name
- ph → your phone number
- e[ → your email address
- abb → abbreviation
- a[ → AU: Change ok?
- x space → ×
- / space → ÷
- c/ → ¢
- cite → AU: Please add a complete citation for this quote to the references.
- wtf → AU: Can you explain this to me another way so that I may suggest an edit for clarity?
Once you’ve started entering these “shortcuts” you’ll start noticing other times that an expander can be put to use. Maybe it could enter your mailing address, or the entire intro text for a file transmittal message!
This is also where you’ll find that (TM) turns into a proper ™️ symbol, and more!
How to Create AutoCorrect Entries
Mac users, open Word Preferences and click AutoCorrect.
Windows users, go to File > Options > Proofing. Then click the AutoCorrect Options…
Troubleshooting
Be sure to close down Word so that these changes are saved. If Word crashes before you shut down, all your new AutoCorrects will be lost.
How do you put AutoCorrect to use? Join the conversation on Blusky or Facebook using the hashtag #eiw365.