Tag Archives: essentials

5 Ways to Select Big Chunks of Text in a Word Document

Selecting unwieldy content doesn’t have to be a snafu experience.

You know that ctrl + A will “select all” contents of a Word file, but did you know that selecting less — large amounts but not all contents — can be as easy? No need to drag the mouse, jumping unexpectedly and far; it doesn’t have to be a tedious, glitchy, or imprecise experience. Just use one of these methods:

  • triple-click
  • outline view
  • ctrl + shift + up/down arrows
  • F8 (4 times)
  • zoom out, then select
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Turbo Boost Manuscript Styling with This Simple Macro for MS Word

Like many manuscripts, this imaginary sample has a standard sequence of content that can be styled automatically with a macro applied on each heading line: head, first paragraph, subsequent paragraphs.

Styles have many wonderful uses, so it behoves any editorial process to use them. We’ve looked at several ways to apply styles, now we’ll look at a macro that will apply several styles in one click!

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Quick Tricks for Applying Styles to Word Documents

Styles are applied to many good ends, in Word: production workflow, ebook coding, and making restructuring easy, to name a few. There are several easy ways to apply styles, too!

  • Styles area of the Home ribbon
  • Styles panel
  • Format painter
  • Keyboard shortcut
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Q&A: Can I accept only formatting changes?

Q Is there a way to only accept all formatting changes without accepting moved text? I can’t make it show *only* formatting. I can hide insertions/deletions and “accept all shown,” but that would also accept moves?

A You got it! Just hide all changes except the formatting ones and “Accept All Changes Shown” as shown in the steps below:

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Try This! Restructure Using Styles

In this exercise, you’ll practice applying Styles and using the Outline View.

Heading levels must be indicated in the manuscript in some way. Heads can’t simply be formatted as body text—even boldfacing will help the designer as much as the editor. And the reader absolutely needs them.

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Q&A: Keyboard Shortcut to Exit a Comment

Q Is there a way to get out of a Comment without using the mouse?

Esc, ←

A Yes, press Escape! Keeping your hands on the keyboard is the fastest way to work, and the perfect alternative to a mouse that’s lost its juice.

Troubleshooting

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Horizontal Review Pane for Mac

Call it a glitch, but if you’re missing the horizontal Reviewing Pane option in MS Word on your Mac, you can turn this glitch into a happy hack!

Create a macro for adding a comment and assign a shortcut to it. That’s it. You don’t have to add anything else to the macro. Using the macro will automatically open each new comment in a Reviewing Pane along the bottom of the screen (see figure).

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Find and Replace, Not Search and Destroy

Prevent Find and Replace from turning into “search and destroy” by using the Whole Word Only, option (“Find whole words only,” for Windows users). This feature helps you replace only whole words, and not matching fragments within other words.

Like a refined Find and Replace, the red-billed oxpecker picks parasites off an impala without hurting the host.

By simply selecting Whole Word Only, the software will identify only “man” and not “human“, for example. This helps to avoid replacement errors such as “inclient services” when attempting to replace instances of “patient.”

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