The new millennium is almost upon us, but luckily Microsoft has seen fit to equip us with Office 2000, the disk busting office suite that does everything except change the baby. (That'll be coming in a service pack.) Love it, hate it, Office is here to stay, and if you're using it, you know there's way too much here to master.

Hence the creation of Steve Cummings' Microsoft Office 2000 Secrets, a weighty tome (11 pounds, 3 ounces) dedicated to making sense of Microsoft's monster. While we can't print all the secrets contained in the book, we can give you a taste of the offerings. Here you'll find all manner of tips, tricks, and insights into Office 2000, 97, and 95.

We've focused mainly on general Office operations, from interface secrets to general document tips to security, with a dollop of power Word tips that will leave you hungry for more. For the seven-course meal, buy the book.

--Robert Luhn

Installation

Manually repairing your Office installation. The Windows installer regularly verifies that your actual Office installation matches the configuration specified during the setup process. How ever, if you think something's gone wrong since setup, you can perform the examination whenever you like. In any Office application, choose Help·Detect and Repair, or start the installer for Office and click Repair Office. With the latter method, you can reinstall Office in its entirety. Only use this option if the less drastic repair procedure doesn't fix the problem.

Customizing the installation process in an organization. If you manage the installation of Office on other users' PCs, you can use the Custom Installation wizard to modify the default settings for the Office setup process. The wizard is available in the Office Resource Kit.

You can control the following installation options:

the default path where Office 2000 files are installed;

whether and how previous versions of Office applications are removed during setup;

the installation option for each Office 2000 component (in a network installation, you can designate which components must be run from a server);

custom Registry entries;

shortcuts to be automatically created on the Start menu, on the Office Shortcut bar, and in other folders.

One thing you can't do with the wizard is specify different folders for different Office components on a user's computer. If your PC doesn't have enough space in a single disk volume to hold Office in its entirety, you must delete other files, get a larger hard disk, or settle for fewer Office components.

Command line options for starting Office apps. You can control the behavior of most Office applications by entering optional "switches." One way is to step out to the DOS box and load the application and its switches there, such as winword/a/n.

But most people don't routinely start programs from the command prompt. To use these switches within Windows, type them into the application's Properties box. To access the Properties box, right-click the application's shortcut (such as its icon in the Start·Programs menu), select Properties, and add the switch at the end in the Target box.

About the Office Resource Kit. Microsoft's Office Resource Kit (ORK) is a huge collection of information about administering Office 2000 in organizations, plus a bunch of supporting software tools. Although Microsoft explicitly intends the ORK for managers, not lowly end users, the kit contains loads of details on topics such as custom configuration and file formats. The ORK is available as a separate product on CD, and you can buy the printed documentation as well. You can also download ORK files from Microsoft's Web site at www.microsoft.com/office/ork/default.htm.

Customizing Secrets:
Office Your Way

Macros. To get anything done with an Office application, you must issue a series of orderly commands. Because your work varies from day to day and document to document, the commands you use vary as well--if they didn't, you could hire a programmer to create software that does your work for you. But then you'd be out of a job.

The word macro means big, suggesting that you can accomplish big things with a macro, feats that would otherwise require a succession of little commands. But macros don't have to do big things. Any time you find yourself repeating even two steps, consider condensing the procedure into a macro.

You probably already know how to record a macro in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Just select Tools·Macro·Record New Macro, give the macro a name and keystroke assignment, and then type away.

To replace one of Word's built-in commands with a custom macro, assign the new macro the same name as the command. You can find the name you need by selecting Tools·Macros·Macro, and selecting Word commands from the Macros In list. Note the name exactly, close the dialog box, and record your macro. Once you've recorded and saved the macro, clicking the button or menu option that executed the original command will now run your macro instead. I suggest that when you replace a Word command, your macro should duplicate the original command as part of the sequence--your macro should enhance the existing command, not eliminate it.

For example, let's say you want Word to display your document at a particular magnification percentage (zoom) every time you switch to Outline view. The name for the Word command that switches to Outline view is View Outline. To replace this command, you'd create a macro called View Outline and then record these actions: choose View Outline, set the magnification using the Zoom button, and then click the floating Stop button.

Toolbars. All the Office applications now share a powerful drag-and-drop system for customizing toolbars. If you're used to Office 95 or earlier versions, you'll find that the new setup makes tinkering with the toolbar structure much easier.

An equally big change is conceptual: Office applications no longer make a distinction between the menu bar and toolbars. Someone at Microsoft must have had a minor epiphany one day, realizing that a menu "button"--which you click to display a menu--is just like a toolbar button. Microsoft refers to menus and toolbars collectively as command bars. In Office 2000, the main Menu bar is simply another toolbar, which by default contains only menu buttons.

Thus, you customize toolbars and menus using the same techniques. In addition, you can place menus onto toolbars, which normally hold graphical buttons, and graphical buttons onto menu bars. Alas, Office 2000 doesn't carry the paradigm to its logical conclusion. You can't display a menu using a graphical button. Nor can you display menu items as icons alone.

Adding buttons the easy way. Office 2000 makes it easy to enrich a toolbar's set of buttons. When any built-in toolbar is docked, clicking the thin More Buttons button at the far right opens a menu listing buttons that aren't currently visible and, more importantly, revealing the Add or Remove Buttons command. Select this command, and a secondary menu shows all the buttons that might be suitable for the current toolbar. Click the buttons on this menu to add or remove them from the toolbar. Deactivated buttons--even those you Alt-dragged off the toolbaron the menu, so you can add them back at any time.

Adding buttons to toolbars. To place new buttons on your toolbars, select Tools·Customize, click the Commands tab, and drag the desired item from the Commands list on the right to its destination on any toolbar.

The problem is figuring out where the item you want is filed. The left side of the tab lists categories of commands that more or less duplicate the standard menus. Below the menu-related categories are related commands that aren't available on the default menus. Below these is a category devoted to macros and other items you don't normally consider commands: in Word, fonts and formatting styles, and in Access, database tables, forms, and queries. Select a category and the commands therein are shown on the right in the Commands list.

Note that items displayed with an icon in the Commands list become graphical buttons when you drag them to a toolbar; those without icons are displayed as text-only buttons.

Menu display options. To make it easier to find menu options, Office applications now can display only the options you've recently used. Turn on this feature by selecting Tools·Customize, click the Options tab, and check the Menus show recently used commands first box. With the feature active, you can still see the entire menu by holding the mouse pointer over the little double arrow at the bottom of the menu for a second or so. The commands that didn't appear on the short menu appear recessed.

Other pertinent settings in the Options tab include the following.

Show full menus after a short delay. Check this box if you want the entire menu to appear without clicking the little double arrow.

Reset my usage data. Click this if you want complete menus shown. Office immediately resumes tracking the commands you do use and will soon start hiding the ones you don't.

Menu animations. Fond of screen distractions? This setting forces Office to display menus gradually rather than all at once.

Restoring the original menus. If you go too far in your menu customization, don't fret. To restore the original menu setup, select Tools·Customize, click the Toolbar tab, and click the Reset button. The restoration happens immediately, and there's no going back. If you want to preserve a customized menu, copy it to another menu or toolbar first.

Office on the Internet

Internet features are rampant in Office 2000. What are some of things you can do?

You can insert hyperlinks directly into your Office documents--Word even converts Web addresses into hyperlinks automatically as you type them. Office hyperlinks can refer to Web pages, Internet addresses, documents on your network or computer, and e-mail addresses. Clicking a hyperlink takes you to the specified location via your browser, e-mail program, or by opening the referenced document.

You can jump to Web pages and other Internet addresses via the Web toolbar in all Office applications.

All Office apps except Outlook let you open Web pages (HTML files). Note that Access extracts tabular data from HTML files, ignoring formatting and other content.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint not only let you save any document in HTML format, but they also let you reopen the document with content and formatting intact in the source application. In Access you can save datasheets, reports, and form data as Web pages, with the option to enable people viewing the pages to interact dynamically with the database. Outlook sends and opens e-mail messages in HTML format.

The Office 2000 Premium edition includes FrontPage, a full-fledged Web publishing and management tool. It's easy to transfer Office documents to a FrontPage Web site, and FrontPage shares its design themes with Office programs.

Office now includes a set of new ActiveX controls you can plug into Web pages that you design. Anyone with a compatible browser can open these pages and interact with worksheets, pivot tables, charts, and Web databases. Office also lets you add VBScript or JavaScript code to Web pages with a new script editor.

If you use Outlook or a compatible e-mail program, you can send Office documents as e-mail messages. In Word, you can start a new message by clicking a hyperlink to the recipient's e-mail address.

Outlook's address book stores a person's name, address, and Web addresses. Select Explore Web Page, and you're taken directly to the person's page.

You can jump directly to the Microsoft Office Web site from within any Office application.

Secrets of Polished Text

AutoCorrect is an umbrella term covering various automatic changes Office can make as you type. It's available in all Office applications except Outlook. AutoCorrect jumps into action the moment you complete a word--by typing a space, a punctuation mark, or by pressing Enter--and checks each word against its list, instantly making the appropriate substitution.

New in Word 2000 (and not found in other Office 2000 apps) is the ability to use the spell checker's suggestions to automatically correct misspelled words as soon as you type them. The change is made only if Word is pretty sure it knows which word you intended.

Although AutoCorrect works in text boxes, it's inactive in WordArt objects. In Excel, AutoCorrect works on any text entered in cells--cell comments, embedded charts, text boxes, buttons, headers, and footers. It does not make substitutions in protected worksheets, formulas, or text that results from a formula.

Secrets of Active Documents

Although people still think of a document as a sheaf of papers, many Office documents never make it to the printed page. A document that spends its entire existence on disk or on-screen is less portable than its paper counterpart, but it has certain advantages. For one, you can create interactive documents by filling them with controls--push buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, and the like--that alter the document's appearance or content or that trigger an action. And you can do it without programming.

When to use active documents. Web pages introduced everyone to the concept of active documents. But you don't need a Web site to take advantage of them with Office. Electronic documents stored on your PC or the network server can perform many tricks. One typical use for active documents is on-screen forms. Controls make it easy to create a document with fill-in-the-blank fields and boxes for checking options. While you can accomplish the same end using custom-crafted dialog boxes created with VBA, it's far simpler to embed controls directly in a document.

About controls in Office documents. Think of a control as any element in an on-screen document that reacts to a user action, such as a mouse click. Office controls at your disposal fall into several overlapping groups as follows.

Hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are hotspots that, when clicked, take you to another place in the current document, to a different document, or to a Web page. You can use hyperlinks to make any Office document interactive. Simple text hyperlinks--such as those on a Web page in underlined blue type--are the most common. But you can also assign a hyperlink to any graphic inserted in a document. Hyperlinks work just as well in ordinary Office documents as they do in Web pages.

HTML controls. In Word only, the Web Tools toolbar lets you insert standard HTML forms controls directly into documents destined to be Web pages.

AutoShapes. AutoShapes are Office's supplied clip art that you can turn into active push buttons. In Word, Power Point, and Excel documents, Auto Shapes can serve as hyperlink buttons. In Excel, you can assign macros to them. PowerPoint AutoShapes have special talents--when clicked, they can perform actions such as navigating to another slide or playing a sound.

ActiveX controls. ActiveX controls are standard software components that can be used in applications developed with programming tools such as VBA, Visual Basic, or C++. Office lets you embed these controls in Word, Excel, and Power Point documents and then add VBA code "behind" them to make them do tricks.

Excel's Forms toolbar. The controls on Excel's Forms toolbar are an easier way to create interactive on-screen worksheets than the ActiveX controls mentioned above because no VBA programming is required to make them work.

After you add a control to a worksheet, you can then build a formula that produces results based on the current value of the control. To do so, you must link the control to a worksheet cell and then refer to the linked cell in your formula. To specify the linked cell, right-click the control, choose Format Control, and then click the Control tab. In the Cell Link box, specify the cell that will display the current entry in the control as follows.

For a checkbox, the linked cell displays either TRUE or FALSE.

For a list or combo box, the linked cell displays the number of the item selected in the list.

For spinner and scrollbar controls, the linked cell displays the numeric value selected by the control.

With a set of option buttons, the linked cell shows the number of the selected button. To specify the items to appear in a list or combo box, type them into a worksheet column, open Format Control, click the Control tab, and enter the column in the Input Range field.

Although Excel controls aren't ActiveX controls, you can write VBA code for events, such as mouse clicks, that occur to the control. To add code, right-click the control, then click the Edit Code button on the Forms toolbar. VBA event procedures for Excel controls appear in standard VBA code modules, whereas code for ActiveX controls embedded in a worksheet is kept in the special code module for that worksheet.

Adding ActiveX controls. As noted, you can make AutoShapes "active" by linking them to a hyperlink or macro. That's fine for triggering simple functions, but active AutoShapes can't display information themselves. ActiveX controls are far more flexible and powerful. Office comes with a smattering of prefab controls. You can also choose from a selection of ActiveX controls from Microsoft and third-party developers. Office's controls include a Check Box (for indicating two possible values), a Text Box (for capturing information), a Command Button (which can activate a hyperlink or VBA procedure), and a List Box (that lets users select from different prefab choices).

In Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, you can use ActiveX controls directly in documents and also on the custom VBA forms. With Access and Outlook, you can only place controls in custom forms. However, Access and Out look forms aren't standard VBA forms and are rather distinct from one another. These variations can be confusing at first, but take heart--you use the same basic methods to work with ActiveX controls in all Office applications.

To insert an ActiveX control in a Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint slide, activate the Control Toolbox. The button for the Toolbox is on the Visual Basic toolbar, but you can also display the Toolbox directly via View·Toolbars.

With the Toolbox on-screen, you can get down to business. In Word, place the pointer where you want the control to appear. The location must be in the main part of your document--you can't place controls inside tables or text boxes. (You don't need to select a location first in PowerPoint or Excel.) Click the Toolbox button and pick the control you want. Word automatically places the control near the insertion point; in PowerPoint and Excel, you must click in the document where you want the control to go.

To insert an ActiveX control that's installed on your system but not visible on the Toolbox, click the More Controls button. You can select controls from the scrollable list that appears.

Using Design Mode. As soon as you insert an ActiveX control, Office switches to Design Mode--look for the pressed-in Design Mode button. In this mode, clicking a control selects it so that you can change its look or behavior. Use the handles (the little black squares) surrounding the control to resize it, as you would a graphic. Click anywhere else on the control to drag it to a new location. To toggle design mode on and off, click the Design Mode button. When not in Design Mode, clicking a control executes it.

Word inserts a new ActiveX control in a document as if it were text. Although you can move the control around in the text, you can't position it anywhere on the page. To gain this freedom, right-click the control and choose Format Control. Click the Layout tab and pick a wrapping style other than In Line with Text. Tight or Square is usually the best choice. You can then move the control around the document with abandon.

Sharing Information

Pasting data as a hyperlink. In all Office applications except Outlook, you can create a hyperlink to another document by pasting data from the source document. Once the hyperlink is in place, clicking it jumps you to the original document. Word's Web toolbar automatically appears, so you can return to the document containing the hyperlink by clicking the Back button.

To insert a hyperlink this way, copy the data, switch to the target application, and use Edit·Paste as Hyperlink. This isn't an OLE link--the pasted data is treated in the usual way. (Excel cells become a table in Word, for example.) But the pasted data does appear with the telltale blue underlining of a hyperlink. One important first step: The source document must have been saved first, or the receiving application won't know how to find it again.

Printing the 2000 Way

Printing booklets in Word. Word 2000 has a great new feature for converting regular documents into compact booklets or drafts. Select File·Print, and in the Zoom section, change the Pages per sheet setting from 1 to any of the available values up to 16. When you print the file, Word shrinks each page appropriately. With a typical document, a setting of 2 gives you reasonably legible text and uses only half the paper. Higher settings are usually best for previewing the document's overall layout. ClickBook, from Blue Squirrel (www.bluesquirrel.com/products/cb/clickbook.html), is a lot better for booklets, but this feature is a start.

Shrink a Word document to fit the page. If you originally laid out your document for a specific page size and now plan to print it on smaller sheets, you may not have to reformat the whole thing. Instead, select File·Print, and in the Zoom section, try the new Scale to paper size setting. You can condense a legal-sized document so much that it fits on an envelope, but don't blame me if you can't read it.

Word's Shrink to Fit command (in File·Print Preview) has been around longer and works differently. Use it when a document is just a bit too long for a single page. (Actually, it works on documents of any length.) Shrink to Fit automatically reformats the document so that it fits on one page fewer than its current length, changing type size and line spacing. It works, but don't expect miracles or typographic elegance. Word's Undo command restores the document to its previous condition. The trick here is finding the command--it's only available as a button (look for the little overlapping pages) on the Print Preview toolbar.

Secrets of Opening and Saving Files

Though everyone knows how to open and save files, Office 2000 has souped up these features. Select File·Open, and you'll see a whole new graphical dialog box. Dig around, and you'll find familiar Office 97 features and then some.

Selecting multiple files. Select File·Open, and you can open two or more files on the spot. You can select two or more files in a range (click the first file with the mouse, hold down Shift, and click the last file) or randomly (hold down the Ctrl key and click the desired files). However, you can't save more than one file at a time, so if you want to perform Windows file-management chores from within Office, use the Open dialog box, not Save As.

Keyboard tricks. Of course, anything you can do with the mouse, you can probably do faster with the keyboard, often with Windows Explorer–like tricks. Want to rename a file from within the File·Open dialog? Just select it in the file list, press F2, and type away. In the file list and want to go back a folder level? Press backspace. Want to refresh the file list? F5 is the key. Curious about that file's properties? Select it, and press Alt+Enter for the goods. You can also activate any of the dialog box's toolbar buttons by pressing Alt+1 through Alt+7.

Button basics. You've seen most of the buttons in the Open and Save dialogs in other Windows apps, or they are pretty self-explanatory. The big navigation buttons are down the left side, and the smaller file management buttons are across the top. For example, the big Desktop button displays … the Windows Desktop. Click the big Favorites button and you'll see … your Favorites folder. Click the little Search the Web button, and voilà, your browser launches to its default search page.

One nicety is the "split" Open button at the bottom right of the File·Open dialog. Click the right "slice" on the button, and you'll discover a wealth of options, based on the file type in question. You can open a file as a copy (Office duplicates the file and names it "Copy of original filename") or open the file in your default browser or in a specific Office application--not necessarily the one that created the file. Select Open Exclusive to fetch a file in Access, and it's exclusively yours--no one else on the network can open the file.

Recovering from AutoRecover. Office's AutoRecover feature can bail you out when your computer crashes, but it doesn't always work as you'd hope. If you save documents frequently anyway, the AutoRecovered version may actually be older than the one stored in the original file. So don't replace the original file with the AutoRecovered document until you've confirmed which file is more current. Fortunately, using the Save command on an Auto Recovered document doesn't automatically wipe out the original file. File·Save summons the Save As dialog box; if you want to replace the original file, you must enter its name and then confirm the replacement.

When you restart an application after a crash, it may not load one or more of the AutoRecovered documents. If you're pretty sure they exist, you can open them yourself. With Word, you'll find them by selecting Tools·Options and clicking the File Locations tab. Power Point Auto Recover files are stored in the \Temp folder or whatever folder is designated for temporary files. Word Auto Recover documents are always named "Auto Recovery save of filename." If you can't find the files, use Windows Explorer's Tools·Find·Files or Folders and search for AutoRecovery*.*. Note: You only get one chance to manually recover these Auto Recover files--they are deleted when you quit the application.

Security

Details, details. While all Office applications (except PowerPoint) provide basic password protection for their files, each goes about it in a slightly different way. Office passwords are consistently case-sensitive, though.

Password protection has been improved in Office 2000. Now passwords are a good way to protect your files from unauthorized modification (with the caveat that a malevolent intruder can always delete a file altogether), and they also keep information hidden from snoops. When you protect a file with a password, Office 2000 now encrypts it by scrambling its contents to make it completely unreadable to those without the password.

Password-protecting Word documents. You can password-protect Word documents by selecting Tools·Options and then clicking the Save tab. To require a password for accessing the document, type one in the Password to open field. Once assigned, a user supplying the correct password can open and read the document but can't save it under the current name, so it can't be modified (File·Save As still works, however). To allow only authorized users to change a document, enter a password in the Password to modify field.

Password-protecting Excel workbooks. Excel lets you password-protect entire workbook files or selected portions of their contents. In the File·Save As dialog box, choose Tools·General Options. Enter a password in the Password to modify field and a user can open a workbook but not change it. Enter a password in the Password to open field, and you prevent anyone from opening the workbook at all.

Controlling modifications to Excel data. Excel gives you precise password control over which elements in worksheets or workbooks other people can view or modify via Tools·Protection.

You can protect a single worksheet (contents, objects, and/or scenarios) in any combination. With the contents protected, for example, a user without the password can't change cell entries except for those cells you specifically unlocked prior to protecting the sheet. Hidden formulas, rows, and columns can't be unhidden.

Once you password-protect a workbook, the password is required to see hidden worksheets or to change the worksheets in any way, including moving, deleting, hiding, renaming, or adding new ones. You can even make recording macros off-limits and prevent users from moving, resizing, or closing workbook windows.

To prevent changes to sharing settings of a workbook, select Tools·Protection·Protect and Share Workbook. Check the box at the top and supply a password. Now no one can alter this setting without your permission.

Passwords in binders? To place a password-protected document in a binder, you must enter the document's password at the relevant prompt. But once the document enters the binder, its password protection is removed. And, believe it or not, you can't password-protect binders.

Access to Access. Like Word and Excel, Access provides two kinds of passwords, one restricting the opening of a database and the other preventing access by unauthorized users, even when the database is already open.

To require a password each time a database is opened, everyone must close the database file. Select File·Open, click the farthest right "slice" of the split Open button at the bottom right, and choose Open Exclusive. Then click the bigger slice of the Open button to retrieve the database. Once the database is open, choose Tools·Security·Set Database Password and type in your password.

Setting up user passwords. A database password prevents unauthorized users from opening the database in the first place, but once it's open, anyone with network access can use it freely. You should set up a security account password for each user to prevent someone else from logging in under that user's name, and you should define exactly what each user can and can't do with the database. To set up security account passwords, begin by defining a password for the default user account, called Admin. (Until you define this password, Access doesn't require a log-in procedure, and anyone can open and modify the database.) Then define additional passwords for other authorized users.

In brief, here's how you define a secure account password. Start Access from the workgroup containing the user account for which you're creating the password, logging in with the correct user name. Open the data and choose Tools·Security·User and Group Accounts. Click the Change Logon Password tab, and enter the new password. You can then define each user's privileges by going to Tools·Security·User and Group Permissions.

Encrypting a database. Encrypting a database is the only way to ensure that a knowledgeable hacker can't extract information from the file, even if you've password-protected it. After a database has been encrypted, Access can still work with it normally, without any special intervention on your part, decrypting information on the fly as needed.

To encrypt an Access database, everyone must close the database. Select Tools·Security·Encrypt/Decrypt Database and enter a name and path for the encrypted copy. (You can replace the existing database with the encrypted copy.) Encryption only protects the database's contents when you're not using Access to examine it. Password protections remain in effect, however.

Power Customizing: Word

Word is easily the most customizable of the Office applications. While all Office programs let you tweak the toolbars and menus to taste, Word goes further, enabling direct control over the shortcut (right-click) menus via drag-and-drop. Many more special options govern the look and function of the program. In addition, you have far more control over keyboard layout and shortcuts than you do in the other Office apps.

Switches. Your customization options begin each time you decide to run Word. Word accepts six optional switches, which you can enter in its Properties dialog box. Simply select Start·Programs, open the folder with the Word icon, right-click it, and select Properties. Enter a space and the switch in the Target field at the very end, as follows: C:\ProgramFiles\MicrosoftOffice\Office\winword.exe /a /m.

Some notable switches:

/n Starts Word with an empty window, no blank document.

/a Starts Word without any templates or add-ins.

/mmacroname Runs the named macro as soon as Word loads.

/l"add-in" Loads the named Word add-in (.wll file). Include the entire path between the quotation marks.

/t"template" Opens a new empty document based on the named template. Again, include the entire path between the quotation marks.

Activate the Word calculator. This isn't exactly a customization tip, but it's cool. Word has always had a command for performing calculations with on-screen numbers. Unfortunately, Word 2000 buries this handy command. To use it, select Tools·Customize, click the Commands tab, select Tools in the Categories list, and scroll way down until you see Tools Calculate. Haul it out and put it on the Tools menu or a toolbar.

Once the Calculate command is accessible, performing calculations is as simple as selecting numbers in your document and clicking the button or menu item. It doesn't matter how numbers are arranged--in a row, in a column, or even within or across paragraphs, separated by any amount of text. The result appears in the status bar and is placed on the clipboard, so a quick Ctrl+v deposits it at the insertion point. By default, Word adds the selected numbers, but it will dutifully perform subtraction, multiplication, or division if the appropriate symbol precedes a number in the selected text.

Customizing the Word keyboard. Keyboard efficiency matters more in Word than in any other Office application. You need both hands on the keyboard for full-tilt typing and editing, and you must break your stride every time you reach for the mouse. That's why Word, of all the Office applications, gives you the most freedom to customize the keyboard. Take advantage of that power. Create a keyboard shortcut for every item you use regularly, whether it's a command, macro, style, font, AutoText entry, or a character that isn't already available on the keyboard. (In fact, I recommend you use the Symbol dialog box--display it by choosing Insert·Symbol--to create shortcuts for individual characters, because it can display all the available characters at once and for any font.) While you're at it, change any of Word's built-in shortcuts that you find hard to remember or inconvenient to reach. Go to the table, "Special Symbol Characters by Category."

Creating and changing keyboard shortcuts. To create or redefine a keyboard shortcut, select Tools·Customize. Note that the Keyboard tab is no longer here; instead, click the Keyboard button. To assign a keyboard shortcut to a Word command or other function, locate the item in the Commands list on the right.

Select the item and its existing keyboard shortcuts appear in the Current Keys list at the lower right (who knows--maybe you don't need to create a new shortcut after all). You can have as many keyboard shortcuts as you like for each command, so you don't have to delete any existing shortcuts. To create a new shortcut, click the Press new shortcut key field and type the key(s) you've chosen for the shortcut.

Before you click the Assign key to create the new shortcut, make sure the keys aren't already assigned to some other command. If they are, the "Currently Assigned To xxxx" message appears just below your entry. You can replace the existing assignment, but you shouldn't unless it's one you're definitely not going to use.

Click Assign, and the new shortcut is added to the Current Keys list. By the way, the list can only show eight shortcuts, but the rest of the shortcuts will work even though you can't see them.

Choosing keys for shortcuts. When you're cooking up shortcuts, be organized, and assign similar shortcuts to similar commands. You might use Alt+Ctrl combinations for file- and document-related commands, Alt+Shift combinations for formatting commands, and so on.

However, my advice conflicts with another good idea--sticking to Word's default shortcuts whenever possible. The problem is that Word's defaults don't follow any sort of recognizable pattern, but imposing consistency means sacrificing defaults. The real world is a tough place. In any case, don't neglect any key as a possible shortcut. Except for nonstandard keys--such as those Fn keys on notebook PCs--most keys can be used as shortcuts, alone or in combination with Alt, Ctrl, or Shift. On my computer, Alt+ScrollLock and Ctrl+Break are valid combinations. (You may have different results depending on your PC and keyboard.)

Maximum control with two-step shortcuts. If you're really hungry for more keyboard shortcuts, you'll get all you can eat with Word's two-step shortcuts. In a two-step shortcut, the first key or combination you press initiates the sequence; you press another key combo to complete it. Let's say you set aside F10 as the first key for all your two-step shortcuts. You can now create shortcuts such as F10+5 or even F10+F10.

You can't use the Ctrl or Alt keys in the second step of a two-step shortcut. Yes, two steps take longer than one, but they're still faster than using the menus or the mouse. Besides, they're often easier to remember and use than some complex combination involving Alt, Ctrl, and Shift.

Two-step shortcuts are great for groups of similar commands. You could assign F10, F1 through F10, then a–j, to your most commonly used paragraph styles. You can even use special dingbat characters and punctuation keys. Word uses the latter for entering accented characters--for example, Ctrl+' followed by e inserts an é into your document.

Power Editing: Word

Before you can make changes in the text, you must locate the places where changes need to be made. That's why editing expertise begins with mastery of all the ways you can get around in a document.

Navigating with Document Map. Although it seems to be an unacknowledged imitation of an innovative shareware utility, Word's Document Map is an otherwise very useful tool. Choose View·Document Map and you'll get a quick outline-type overview of the document's organization, showing the headings arranged hierarchically in a narrow, scrollable pane. You can expand or collapse any branch of the outline by clicking the little box beside it. To dictate the overall level of detail, right-click the Document Map area and select a heading level from the menu.

But Document Map's real value is as a navigation aid. Click a heading, and Word takes you there instantly. As you move about in the document by other methods, Document Map highlights the heading for the section you're in. (Press Shift+F6, and you can move up and down the Map with the cursor keys. Select a heading in the Map, press Enter, and you're taken to that place in the document.) A paragraph appears in the Document Map only if it's been assigned to a numbered outline level (rather than body text) in the Paragraph dialog box. You can change the look of the headings displayed in Document Map by modifying the Document Map paragraph style in Format·Style.

Navigation keyboard shortcuts. While everyone knows Word's common navigation keys, there are some lesser known and very useful ones. Since keyboard navigation is much more efficient than using the mouse, I suggest you keep a cheat sheet handy--such as the sidebar, "Advanced Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts."

Use hyperlinks as cross-document bookmarks. When you work with several related documents at the same time, it would be nice to flip directly to text passages of interest in one step. (Or to let colleagues reading electronic documents on your company intranet do the same.) Ideally, you wouldn't have to know which document contains the text you want to display. Word's bookmarks can't accommodate you, because bookmarks are stored with a specific document and are only accessible when that document is active. There's no one-step way to go directly from one document to a specific bookmark in another document.

But you can accomplish roughly the same goal using Word's hyperlinks. Hyperlinks work in documents like they do in your Web browser, taking you immediately to another location--in the same document or another document.

While you can use this technique to give your readers navigational aids, it's not an ideal substitute for real bookmarks when you're editing a document. Hyperlinks can only jump to the location they point to from the hyperlink itself--you can jump to a bookmark from anywhere.

The easiest way to create a hyperlink between two Word documents (or within a document) is simply to copy a sliver of text from the second document. Insert the copied text using the Edit·Paste as Hyperlink. Clicking the hyperlink takes you to the text's original location.

Although creating a hyperlink in Word is easy, changing it is a little trickier. Click near the hyperlink, not on it, and then use the cursor keys to move into it. At this point you can edit the hyperlink text directly. To change the hyperlink's destination, press Shift+F10 and choose Hyperlink·Edit Hyperlink.

Power Formatting: Word

Form and content go hand in hand. Word has a vast array of commands and features that help you present your ideas in inviting, easy-to-read formats.

New font list. Any Office app's font list box now shows the name of each font formatted in that font. (Symbol fonts are listed in readable text, with samples.) The downside is that displaying all those fonts requires more of Word's attention, so scrolling through the list is noticeably slower. You can shut off the fancy font display by going to Tools·Customize, clicking the Options tab, and unchecking the List font names in their font box.

Quick character formatting. Even if you're a seasoned Word user, you may have overlooked a quick way to apply (or remove) character formatting to individual words. Just place the insertion point anywhere within the word between two letters and then apply the character format by pressing its keyboard shortcut or clicking its toolbar button. For example, to apply italics, you could press Ctrl+i. This technique won't work with the insertion point at the very beginning of the word.

Prior to Word 97, this quick-format method suffered from a bug. If the insertion point was between the last two letters of a word, you could apply a character format but you couldn't remove it. This bug has been squashed.

Removing character formats. You can remove all character formats from a selection in one step--just press Ctrl+Spacebar. With character formatting removed, the text takes on the characteristics specified in the paragraph format. Ctrl+Spacebar activates this nuke-the-character-formats operation as long as the default keyboard shortcut hasn't been changed. The underlying Word command is called ResetChar, in case you want to assign it to a different short cut or to a toolbar button.

Page Layout Magic With Word

If you've used Word, you know it's capable of amazing feats of page layout and graphic design. In fact, there are so many feats that space doesn't allow me to go into detail. But here's one interesting bread-and-butter trick for business users.

Ten steps to perfect labels and business cards. Business cards are an everyday necessity of commerce. Given the ready availability of inexpensive, micro-perforated business card stock, why not print your own? Follow the steps here--the procedure looks long, but the results are great.

Switch to Print Layout view. Choose Tools·Envelopes and Labels, and select the Labels tab. Click the Options button and select the label format that corresponds to your stock.

Type {AUTOTEXT LabelLayout} in the Address box, because Word's Insert·Field function doesn't work in the dialog box. Press Ctrl+F9 to insert the curly braces, and then type in the field codes inside the braces. You can use any name in place of LabelLayout, as long as it doesn't conflict with an AutoText entry.

Click the New Document button, and Word creates a one-page document containing a table in the label format you select. Each table cell represents a single label, and each contains a copy of the AutoText field you just created.

With the insertion point at the very beginning of the new document, choose Insert·Break and select the Next Page section break.

Move the insertion point to the top of the document and choose File·Page Setup. Click the Margins tab to set all the margins, as well as the header and footer, to 0. On the Paper Size tab, define a custom page size that exactly matches the size of your label. Apply these settings to This Section Only. If you get a warning about printable area after OK'ing the dialog box, choose Ignore.

Back in the document, you should see a small new first page with the dimensions of one label. Now get creative. Add text and graphics, laying out everything the way you want the printed label to look. You must place text in text boxes, and don't press Enter to add more paragraphs to the little page.

When you finish the layout, select all the objects, and choose Draw·Group on the Drawing toolbar to bind them together.

With the group still selected, choose Format·Object, click the Layout tab, and then click Advanced. Then on the Picture Position tab, check both the Move Object with Text and Lock Anchor boxes.

With the group still selected, choose Insert·AutoText·New and type in the LabelLayout name you entered earlier.

Now move back to the original page containing the actual labels. Press Ctrl+a and then F9 to update the fields in your labels.

When you print your labels, start printing at page 2, because you don't want to print the little first page. Specify how many label sheets you're printing in the Number of copies box.

Problems? If the label content doesn't line up correctly in the table, you probably inadvertently added paragraph returns to the little page. To delete the extra paragraphs, click the top left cell of the table on the main page (page 2), and press the Backspace key until you can't move the insertion point any farther. Now click the grouped layout, and repeat the last two steps above.

Unraveling the Mysteries of Tables

Use Word tables liberally, whenever your document must present a series of similar information. Building a simple table is oh-so-easy, but as always, Word's power is there when you need it. I'll focus here on some key areas and especially on some Word 2000 enhancements.

The Insert Table dialog box. With Word's Draw Table feature, you can literally sketch a table on the page. But if you prefer more precise results, Word 2000's new Insert Table dialog box is for you. It pops up when you choose Table·Insert·Table or click the Insert Table button on the Tables and Borders toolbar.

The Insert Table dialog box lets you specify the new table's dimensions, as well as select AutoFit options and access AutoFormat features. Checking the Set as default for new tables box just means that the current dimensions and the AutoFit choice will appear the next time you open the dialog box.

Creating and working with nested tables. New in Word 2000 is the ability to create "nested" tables (tables within tables) using any combination of Word's three main table-making commands.

When you're working with nested tables, Word provides visual cues so that you can tell which table you're clicking. Look for the four-headed arrow in the upper left-hand corner of the table and a small square diagonally across from it.

Laying out and formatting tables. Word can design a fancy table for you when you insert the table (choose Table·Insert·Table, and click the AutoFormat button) or after the fact (Table·Table AutoFormat). But while automatic formatting applies shading, text formatting (bold and italics), and gridlines, it doesn't handle important layout chores such as sizing the rows and columns and positioning the table on the page for the best effect.

Word 2000's new tools can help you do the job. You can now drag a table around freely and position it vertically and horizontally with numeric precision. To move or size a table with the mouse, hover the pointer over the table for a second or two. You'll get the four-headed pointer (the Move handle) and little box (the Resize handle). Drag the Move handle to reposition the table; yank the Resize handle to change its size. If you prefer to work by the numbers, select Table·Table Properties, click the Table tab, and start filling out the fields. You can set table width in percentage of page width or absolute units; choose how the table is aligned (by margin); pick how text wraps around the table much like graphic objects in Word; control margins inside cells; and more.

Adjusting cell height and width. Left to its own devices, Word adjusts the height of table rows according to the text you've entered, leaving column width as it was when you created the table. But you're not going to leave Word to its own devices, are you?

The easy way to modify the row height or column width is by dragging the cell boundaries. To make a row taller or shorter, drag anywhere on the row boundary. Be aware that this only works in Print Layout and Web Layout views. You also can't change the height of a single cell with the mouse or any other technique.

Changing the width of a column is a little trickier. If the column's boundary lines up on two or more consecutive rows, dragging anywhere along the boundary changes the width of all the aligned cells. But if you select a cell whose boundary isn't aligned with cells above or below it and drag, the unselected cells stay put.

You can also change row height or column width by dragging the row or column markers in the ruler. Hold down Alt, click the little box in the ruler, and drag. If these mouse techniques are too imprecise for your blood, use Table·Table Properties to set the row height and column width numerically. To resize multiple rows or columns simultaneously in the dialog box, select them before you choose Table·Table Properties.

The Cell tab lets you set the preferred width for the cell that was selected when you opened the dialog box. But the size you pick may not be the size you get. The answer? Go to Table·Table Properties, click the Table tab, then the Options button, and uncheck the Automatically resize to fit contents box. If you don't, Word tries to keep the cell's width as close as possible to your preference but will change it when necessary as you add or delete text in the table.

Using AutoFit to adjust table size based on content or screen size. Word 2000's new AutoFit commands can change column widths based on content or screen width. You can use these AutoFix tricks when you create a table from scratch (from Insert Table), or you can apply them to an existing table (using Table·AutoFit).

Select AutoFit to Contents, and Word automatically adjusts the width of all columns as you add or delete text or graphics. Word's goal is to make each column as wide as possible. Type more text in a narrow column, and Word shrinks fatter columns. To change this, uncheck the Automatically resize to fit contents box as noted above.

The AutoFit to Window setting equally spreads the cells in a table across the screen. Note: it only works in the Web Layout or Print Layout views. In the former view, Word automatically resets column width every time you change the window size (for example, by clicking the Maximize/Restore button).

A third command, Insert Table·Fixed Column Width, turns off these automatic adjustments, so that columns stay the same size as you add or remove content. If you find a column width that works for an existing table, choose AutoFit·Fixed Column Width to lock in the current dimensions. You can still adjust column width manually.

Inserting cells, rows, and columns. Rare is the table that doesn't eventually need more rows or columns. Microsoft has revamped the table insertion commands for Word 2000 so that they work more consistently and flexibly (and don't mysteriously appear and disappear as before). All the commands now appear in Table·Insert.

The big secret to remember about inserting table rows and columns is that Word inserts the number of rows or columns that are selected when you use the command. For example, if you select three rows and choose Table·Insert·Rows, three blank rows appear in the table. (If nothing is selected, Word inserts a single row or column.) Word 2000's insert commands for rows and columns finally let you decide where the new rows or columns appear. For rows, you can dictate if they appear above or below the selection; for columns, to the left or right of the selection. To add a row to the end of a table, put the pointer in the bottom right cell and press Tab.

Here's another secret: the Insert Table button on the Standard toolbar can make inserting rows and columns faster (different than the multipurpose button on the Tables and Borders toolbar). When you select rows or columns, the Insert Table button automatically metamorphoses into an Insert Rows or Insert Columns button. When individual cells are selected, the button becomes Insert Cells instead.

© 1999 IDG Books Worldwide Inc. All rights reserved.

Adapted from Microsoft Office 2000 Secrets by Steve Cummings, 1999, IDG Books Worldwide, 800/434-3422, www.idgbooks.com. Secrets™ is a registered trademark of IDG Books Worldwide.

Steve Cummings has been writing about computers since the early 1980s. A former columnist for PC World, he is the author of over a dozen computer books on topics ranging from mobile computing to Visual Basic for Applications, plus hundreds of articles for PC Week, PC/Computing, Macworld, and other magazines.

Advanced Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut Function in Word 2000 Ctrl+PageUp Previous browse object Ctrl+PageDown Next browse object Ctrl+Alt+PageUp Top of window Ctrl+Alt+PageDown Bottom of window Alt+PageUp Top of column Alt+PageDown Bottom of column Alt+F1 Next field Shift+F1 What's This? Help feature F11 Next field Shift+F11 Previous field Ctrl+F6 Next document window Ctrl+Shift+F6 Previous document window Alt+Up In Page Layout view only, previous document object (text column, table cell, footnote, text box, or frame) Alt+Down In Page Layout view only, next document object