Head on over to Lulu to buy the epub, updated and doubled in size!
In the preface, you’ll find a password for the resource site where you’ll find:
Continue reading New Edition of EIW365 Available NowNew Edition of EIW365 Available Now
Tag Archives: video demo
Next Edition Coming Soon!
Now double the size, this expanded and updated edition incorporates an entire booklet on working with tables and three sections on ways to customize your workspace and combine and manipulate the features to hack the tools for maximum effect. Plus, it covers all of Word’s updates including changes to Modern Comments, Track Changes, Spellcheck, and the new Editor toolset.
Continue reading Next Edition Coming Soon!
Q&A: Spellcheck Is Now in “Editor” in Word
QWhere did Spellcheck go!?
AIt’s tucked inside “Editor” now. It’s pretty much the same, except that readability statistics are found in an area of the Editor pane too, not after running Spellcheck. See the demos below.
Continue reading Q&A: Spellcheck Is Now in “Editor” in WordWorking with Tables: Tidying Up Spanning Heads
In this series on working with tables, we’ve converted text into proper tables, detected them, navigated within them, and styled them. Now we’ll dive into to tidying them up.
Some of the things that make tables messy are heads that don’t span what they should, misaligned columns, data that doesn’t align, and headers that should repeat on each page. Let’s start with the first issue: getting the spanning heads right. (Check out the demo video at the end, too.)
Create spanning heads
Making a header that stretches over several columns takes just two clicks:
- Click and drag over the cells you want to turn into the spanning head, then
- right-click on the selection, and choose “merge cells” from the context menu that pops up.
Alternatively to step 2, you may select the Merge Cells icon on the [table] Layout ribbon shown below.
Word will combine all the contents of the selected cells into a single cell that spans the selected columns. It’s especially handy that all the contents are combined in cases where the writer tried to fake a spanning header. Just remember to delete the extra line breaks this merging of content creates.
Remove spanning heads
If instead, you need to make a head span fewer columns, you can select the Split Cells icon on the [table] Layout ribbon. Word then asks how many columns to split it into; enter the number of columns right and column edges should line up automatically. Next week we’ll look at how to clean them up if they don’t align.
The contents of the spanning head can be styled as you would other table contents.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes the changes that were made to a table leave all kinds of background code that make a mess of what you’re trying to clean up. Sometimes, adding a row and starting fresh is easier than fixing all the errors. Occasionally, it’s easier to create a whole new table and do it right the first time.
You may want to turn off Track Changes while you format the table as all the tracking can obscure important changes made to table contents that you want to be sure the authors do vet. A comment could be left summarizing the formatting changes if the authors are concerned.
Check out all the other posts in this series about Working with Tables and learn all about them in the multimedia ebook self-study course!
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
Learn with us! Join a course today.
© 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!
Working With Tables: Is it Even a Table?
How do you know if text is in a table? In the first post in this series, we saw that tab marks and multiple spaces can help you spot text that has been “typewritered” into a table. Gridlines are a dead giveaway that you’re looking at a table, but what if there are no gridlines? How can you tell then?
- Click “view gridlines.”
- Look for cell end characters.
- Look for the Layout ribbon.
These are all really quick checks. Here’s how to do each one.
View Gridlines
- Place the cursor in the suspect text.
- On the Home ribbon, click the Borders icon in the Paragraph group to open the drop-down menu of options (shown at right).
- Click on View Gridlines.
- If the light-grey borders appear, revealing a table, you win!
Cell End Characters
- On the Home ribbon, click the Show/Hide ¶ icon, or press the shortcut:
Mac: cmd + 8
Windows: ctrl + * - Look for cell end characters at the end of what would be cells. They look like a blue circle with blue lines radiating out from the “corners.” (shown here)
Layout Ribbon
- Place the cursor in the suspect text.
- Look at the ribbon for a tab called Layout. If that has appeared, it’s probably a table. 99.9% certain.
Demo Video
See these tips in action!
Troubleshooting
Text may be in a text box rather than a table. If this is the case, you can see the border of the box when you click on the text, or when you right-click on the text, the context menu that pops open will contain the option to Edit Text.
Check out all the other posts in this series about Working with Tables and learn all about them in the multimedia ebook self-study course!
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
Learn with us! Join a course today.
© 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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