Out in the field (code)

When it comes to field codes, we find several different camps.

First, there's the group who says, "We need more documentation, with better examples."

Then, there's who says, "You don't need to know about field codes. They are so old fashioned."

Another group says, "What are these funny bracket things and gray places in my document?"

Finally, there is apparently a very large group of people who use Word and have never knowingly encountered a field code.

Do any of these sound familiar?

What is a field code?

Field codes provide a way to customize your Word document manually. That sounds like hard work, but the field codes also give you an inside look at some of the ways that you can customize a page number or a table of contents. (Really—those are fields.)

The results of a field code might look like this:

but if you press ALT+F9, the actual code might look like this:

The \o, \h, \z, and \u are switches that provide specific information. For example, \h specifies that the table of contents entries should be hyperlinks so that you can click the page number and go to that page in the document.

Word has a long list of field codes that you can add by clicking the Insert tab, clicking Quick Parts (in the Text group), and then clicking Field. Click the field that you want to insert, click the Field Codes button, and then click Options to see a list of all possible switches, with a description of each.

But do you want to know more?

We're always plotting and planning and sifting through customer data—yes, from you—to figure out what to document next. Where do we want to put our resources? We got off to a slow start on field codes because the basic information, the switches and properties, didn't change from Word 2003 to Word 2007—and all of the Word 2003 information is online.

Plus, Word 2007 has some very nice user interface features to do the heavy lifting. That's fine until someone wants to customize a part of their document. And that's when a little knowledge of field codes can help.

Now, we've added some articles on field codes to the Word 2007 Help, and customer comments are telling us that those articles are less helpful than we want them to be. Why? Do they assume too much context? Too much knowledge of field codes and other technical things, such as switches and parameters? Or do people get to those articles by mistake, when really they want a much easier way to get the job done?

If we added more background information, would more people use field codes? Is that even a good thing?

In keeping with the spirit of inquiry, I'd like to do a really short survey:

• Do you use field codes?
• If not, have you ever tried to use a field code?
• What would help you most?

Yes, I have a lot of questions, and your answers are appreciated. The more information we get, the better help we can provide.

-Joannie Stangeland

Tip of the Week: Make That Look Like This

Have you ever wanted to make some text in your document look like other text in your document? Or maybe you made a picture look just right in last week's status report and really don't want to start from scratch on the picture in this week's status report. Either way, this week's tip will save you some time.

How to Make "That" Look Like "This"

Option 1:

• Select "this"
• Click Format Painter on the Clipboard group on the far left of the Home tab
• Select "that"
• They will look the same

Option 2:

• Select "this"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "C"
• Select "that"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "V"
• They will look the same

For an example of option 2, let's say you have a document:

…and you want to make that:

…look like this:

So you…

• Select "Monday"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "C"
• Select Tuesday
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "V"

…and now "Tuesday" looks like "Monday" and you proceed to…

• Select the list under "Monday"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "C"
• Select the list under "Tuesday"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "V"

…and now Tuesday's list looks like Monday's list and finally you…

• Select the picture under "Monday"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "C"
• Select the picture under "Tuesday"
• Hold down CTRL+SHIFT while you press "V"

…and now Tuesday's picture looks like Monday's picture and you are left with…

Once you get the hang of either option, you will make that look like this all over your document and between documents in a matter of seconds.

I prefer option 2 and remember it by reminding myself that I can copy and paste the look of something by shifting how I would copy and paste the thing itself.

-Jonathan

PS If you want to make multiple things look like "this," Option 2 just works and Option 1 works if you double click Format Painter.

PSS If you like the way a picture is styled, but want to change the picture itself, you don't need to create anything from scratch. Just right click on the picture and select Change Picture.

[Update: "this" and "that" were backwards in the steps under the options and have been corrected]

The Little Things: Ellipsis Ending a Sentence

In Word 2007, when you end a sentence with an ellipsis…i.e. you tap the period key four times…you get an ellipsis and a period, not four periods.

Ellipsis and a period: I wanted an easy way to refer to specific lines in the document during conversations. Now I can say: "Jonathan, on line 34 the document says blah…."

Four periods: I wanted an easy way to refer to specific lines in the document during conversations. Now I can say: "Jonathan, on line 34 the document says blah...."

-Jonathan

Handy How To Videos

If you need something to watch over lunch, check-out the following new Word 2007 How To videos from Office Online [text below reused from Office Online]:

Add and remove page breaks: Frustrated with the layout of your document? By taking advantage of automatic page breaks and using manual page breaks sparingly, you can save yourself effort and get the results you want.

Add or delete pages: Having trouble getting rid of a page from your document? Do you just want to add a page in a specific location? A Microsoft employee who works with Word shows you the little secret for how to easily add or delete pages from your Word 2007 documents.

Change formatting by using section breaks: Suppose you want to make some simple formatting changes within a document, such as making one page landscape orientation, or adding columns to another page. A Microsoft employee who uses Word 2007 shows you how to accomplish your tasks easily.

Get the page numbers you want: You can get the page numbering you want in your Word 2007 documents without having to set it up manually. You can even use different styles of numbers in different sections of your document.

Set tab stops or remove them: Do your tabs sometimes appear to misbehave? Ever wonder how to see a ruler for setting tab stops? See how to insert and delete tab stops and how to see and use the ruler.

Set page margins or change them: Adjusting page margins is easy once you know which feature to use.

Line Numbering

I recently had a friend email me a Word document where just about every line was part of a numbered list.

When I asked my friend why he did this he replied: "I wanted an easy way to refer to specific lines in the document during conversations. Now I can say: 'Jonathan, on line 34 the document says blah….'"

My friend was right-on that having a unique number associated with every line of a document makes it easier to talk to, and that one way to do that is to make the whole document a list. Where he was a little off was how to do that as easily as possible.

The easiest way to number all of the lines of a Word document is to use Line Numbers. Shocking…I know.

Before Line Numbering

After Line Numbering

-Jonathan

Picture Styles

While I’m obviously a fan of Word 2007, there are only a few things in Word 2007 that literally left me speechless the first time I experienced them. Picture Styles are one of those things.

It’s hard to do justice to the simplicity and impact of this feature with words, so here’s my attempt to let Picture Styles speak for themselves:

Insert a picture in Word 2007.

You will see the Picture Tools Contextual Tab and you will be one click away from the following goodness:

Widows & Orphans

Hi everyone. My name is Leslie Cole and I write help content for Word. This is my first blog entry, and it was prompted by a number of customer questions about the subject of widows and orphans. Let me know if I answered your question; I look forward to hearing from you.

Many Word customers are concerned with the fate of widows and orphans—both the human and document-related ones.

Document-related widows and orphans are the first or last lines of a paragraph that end up all by themselves at the bottom or the top of a page.

Some print document diehards think that widows and orphans are unsightly, and they might even encourage you to remove them from your document.

You'll be relieved to know that the widows and orphans control in Word 2007 and earlier versions is "on" by default. You should never see a widow or an orphan in a Word document unless you unchecked the widow and orphan control for some reason.

You can find the check box by clicking the Home tab and then clicking the dialog box launcher in the lower right corner of the Paragraph group. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab in the Paragraph dialog box to find the control.

Now, save your concerns for the real widows and orphans.

-Leslie

Mac Compatibility Pack Released

If you know anyone who uses Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2004 for Mac, please let them know that the Mac version of the Compatibility Pack is now available.

From the download page:

"[The] Open XML Converter allows you to convert Open XML files that were created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows so that you can open, edit, and save them in earlier versions of Office for Mac. Open XML Converter can convert Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations that are in the Open XML Format so that you can open and edit the files in Office 2004 for Mac and Office v. X for Mac. You can choose to convert and open one file, or convert a large number of files."

Download page for the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0

-Jonathan

More Q&A: Columns and Text Wrapping

We saw some questions around columns and text wrapping in Word popping-up in the blogosphere recently, so in today's Q&A:

• How do I layout part of my document in columns?
• How do I get my figures/images/objects on the right side of my document and the text to wrap around the right aligned figure/image/object?

QUESTION 1 – How do I layout part of my document in columns?

If you want text (only in a specific area) to be in two columns, then

1. Highlight the text you want in two columns
2. Go to the "Page Layout" tab and click on the "Columns" drop down
3. Click on the "Two" item on the list to make the highlighted text into two columns

If you want pictures to be in two columns, then you can

1. Go to the "Insert" tab and click on the "Table" drop down
2. Select a 2x1 table cells to insert a table into your document

1. Insert your images into the table using the "Insert Tab"

1. Select the table and click on the "Table Tools Design" tab
2. Click on the "Borders" drop down and select "No Borders" from the menu

QUESTION 2 – How do I get my figures/images/objects on the right side of my document and the text to wrap around the right aligned figure/image/object?

1. Click on the figure or image in your document

   This will cause a new "Format" tab to appear at the top of the application

2. Click on the "Format" tab and click on the "Text Wrapping" drop down menu
3. Click on the "More Layout Options…" item in the list

   This will cause the "Advance Layout" dialog to appear.

1. Click on the "Text Wrapping" tab of the dialog
2. Click on the "Square" option for text wrapping.

   You'll see the options for which side you want to wrap on become available.

3. Click on "Left only" and click OK

The text in your document should now wrap around the left side of your figure or image, so you will be able to place the image on the right side of your document.

You may also want to try using our "Position" dropdown if you want to place the figure or picture in a pre-defined location. Choosing a position in this dropdown automatically applies the text wrapping you need.

-Amani

Who is "Author?" Part 2

Thanks to some great comments from Jeremy and PamC on the Who is "Author?" post it looks there are a few additional points worth making about the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Document Inspector.

Since this is only mentioned briefly in Who is "Author?," I wanted to call-out that only the personally identifiable information Document Inspector was used by Sally's client. This is why Sally's client's tracked changes were not removed, but the associated PII was removed.

Also, it's important to note that once PII is removed from a document using the PII Document Inspector, it cannot be brought back. The only thing that can be done is to enable "future" PII to be saved in the document. How to do this—enable PII to be saved in the document moving forward—is the overall message of Who is "Author?".

Finally, when you use the PII Document Inspector you will not see "Author" until you run the PII Document Inspector and save. Put differently, if you have some tracked changes attributed to yourself and run the PII Document Inspector, you will see your name associated with them until you save. If you make more changes after that save, you will see your name next to those new changes until your next save.

-Jonathan

Who is "Author?"

Personally identifiable information (PII) is a hot-button issue these days. If you've ever had your identity stolen, you'll understand why. Personally, I spent about six months clearing up my identity being stolen about a year ago. Lame.

If are concerned with PII in your Word documents—because maybe you are going to distribute the document outside of your organization—there's a nifty new feature in Word 2007 called the Document Inspector that you should check-out. Reed blogged about it awhile ago and I'm going to talk a bit more about it here. Specifically, and somewhat ironically, I'm going to tell you how to re-enable PII to be stored in your document after running the PII Document Inspector.

Since re-enabling PII storage in a document is much less common than removing PII from a document, the option to re-enable PII is relatively hard to get to, but it's there and it's useful if you've ever faced a situation like this: Sally's team is working on a proposal for a client. They sent a draft to the client on Monday and asked for feedback via tracked changes and comments. When Sally gets the draft back, she sees a bunch of tracked changes and comments attributed to "Author" [see Reviewing Pane on the left side of the screen shot below].

Because Sally is a ninja Word user, she knows that her client does not have some overachieving employee of her client named "Author," but that the client ran the PII Document Inspector after having their entire team review and mark-up the proposal. Running the PII Document Inspector removed all of the reviewers' names from the changes and comments and replaced them with "Author."

But now Sally needs to have her team review the revisions, and she doesn't want all of her teams' changes and comments to also be attributed to "Author." So, after opening the PII-free version of the document on her computer, Sally clicks on the Office Button in the top left hand of Word and clicks Word Options. After clicking on Trust Center, Sally sees the following and clicks on Trust Center Settings.

She clicks on Privacy Options and clears the check box next to "Remove personal information from file properties on save," and the she clicks OK.

Sally can now email the document out to her team with Track Changes turned on, and the names of her teammates will be associated with their changes and comments.

In short, Sally's client used the Document Inspector to make their changes and comments anonymous before sending it to Sally, and then Sally unchecked the check box that causes the anonymity to happen.

PII. Now you see it…now you don't…and now you do again.

-Jonathan

Word Q & A: Is the change tracking off?

This is a true story:

I'm riding my bike home from work. It's a pretty long ride—almost 18 miles. I'm about a third of the way into it, past the first big intersection and pedaling along the shoulder up a slight grade when my cell phone rings. It's my husband.

"How do I turn those change marks off?"

Traffic is whizzing by, so I pull over to where I'm a little safer and get off my bike.

This is a common customer question. In Office, we've answered it many times—and we now know that it's still confusing for people.

I told him how to find the commands so that he can turn the tracked changes off. (If you're using Word 2007, click the Review tab, and then click Track Changes.)

"They're still there."

Cars were speeding by.

"Yep." Then I explained how clicking Track Changes means that no new changes will be marked in the document—but any changes he had already made would keep their revision marks. To get rid of all the revision marks in the document, he needed to accept them or reject them.  (In Word 2007, those commands are also on the Review tab.)

Next, I told him about how he could click Accept All if he was sure he liked his document the way it was.

"Thanks!" He went back to work, and I got back on my bike—with some nagging in the back of my mind.

Like I said, it's a common customer question: "How do you turn track changes off?" And more times than not, people really want to know how to get rid of all the markup in their document. Turn it off, make it stop, and make it go away.

People also want to know how to prevent the changes that seem to have disappeared from reappearing (like some evil magic) when they open the document again. They especially want to prevent this is if someone else—perhaps a potential employer—is opening the document.

The answer is the same: You have to accept or reject all the changes. You can review them one at a time. Or you can use the Accept All or Reject All commands. Or, in Word 2007, you can use Document Inspector to remove all kinds of information—revision marks included.

We've talked about this in the following ways:

·         Show or hide comments or tracked changes

·         Turn on or off change tracking

·         Get rid of tracked changes, once and for all

·         Demo: Use tracked changes and comments in your Word 2007 documents

·         Demo: Remove tracked changes from Word 2007 documents

·         Inspect documents for hidden data and personal information

My question for you: What do you think is the best way to explain tracked changes and how to get rid of them when you're ready to move on?

We want to hear from you.

-Joannie Stangeland

Feedback on Office Online

Over at Office Online, we love to hear from you. Almost everything we do around here is identified and prioritized and implemented based on your ratings and comments on the Office Help articles, training courses, and demos.

On behalf of the entire Office Online team, I thank you for taking the time to rate a Help topic or leave a comment. Especially, if the topic wasn’t helpful.

Now, we want to ask for a little more of your feedback.

We're curious: How do you communicate with your favorite sites? We want to know what brings out the “chatty” you…the you who interacts with other users on the site, the you who leaves a comment on this blog.

For example, do you read reviews by other users before you buy a book on Amazon or book a hotel on Expedia? Later on, do you go back and add your review of the book or hotel to help others with their decisions?

What about sites, like Wikipedia that allow you to edit? If you could edit a Web page or share a how-to video on a site, would you?

Inquiring minds want to know how you interact with others online. Can you help out the Help and tell us?

Thanks!

Joannie Stangeland

Office Labs and Community Clips

Following up on Jon’s blog about questions that we are not posting about on our team’s blog, I wanted to share a new resource that just went live a few weeks ago. The new resource is called Community Clips and can be found at http://communityclips.officelabs.com/. Unlike our other help and how-to resources, Community Clips is a portal for viewing, sharing, and discussing videos on Office products, including Word. Think of it like a YouTube for videos on helping people become more productive with Office. Just like YouTube anyone can post videos that they would like to share.

I don’t know about you guys, but I learn the fastest by seeing someone perform the task that I am struggling with. Being in Office, I have the luxury of just going down the hall and asking someone a question. Usually, I can just peak over someone’s shoulder and watch them accomplish the task. It’s like pressing the Easy Button.

Sometimes I can’t always use the Easy Button. For example, out of curiosity I really wanted to learn some of the new ASP.Net and Silverlight technologies. Who could I ask? I could go ask the teams working on those technologies, but I don’t really have the same relationship with those guys as I do with people in Office. I did a bit of searching and discovered two really cool sites (http://asp.net/learn/ and http://silverlight.net/Learn/) that really helped me learn and pick up those technologies. Both of these sites had some really great how-to videos. These sites gave me exactly what I was looking for...an Easy Button. 

Hopefully you guys will come to think about Community Clips as your Easy Button. Before you go and post some videos, I would definitely recommend you check out Jen’s great post on tips and tricks on making good videos.

Hope this helps.

Zeyad

New Graduation Templates

They include all sorts of goodness from grad announcements, to grad invitations, to grad photo albums [image below] and grad thank you cards.

• Graduation design set
• Textures graduation design set
• Formal graduation design set
• Formal black-and-white design set

-Jonathan