Word 2000 in a Nutshell | O'Reilly Media

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You can find a better program to perform almost any single function that Word offers. Excel is better at graphs and expressions, Illustrator is better for creating images, and many programs are better for creating web pages. However, it's hard to find another program that offers as much broad-ranging utility as Word.

To start with, it's certainly good at word processing, a phrase that means a lot more today than it did just a few years ago. Word provides professionally designed templates for creating business and personal letters, proposals, reports, newsletters, flyers, and even brochures. Layout and formatting tools are better than ever. Word can also create drawings, tables, HTML, forms, and even custom programs.

And that's really the design philosophy behind Word. It is a tool that is meant to put a host of different features into the hands of people who mainly need to do simple word processing, but also need extra features occasionally.

This chapter is like an information desk for the rest of the book. It examines the Word interface in general and briefly shows how to type, edit, and format documents. It also includes a task list that covers the common uses and keyboard shortcuts for all of the Word menus and shows you where in the book to go for more detail.

At first glance, you won't notice many significant changes in Word 2000 from previous versions of Word. Aside from the fact that the default setting now combines the Standard and Formatting toolbars on a single line, it's difficult even to tell whether you are running Word 2000 or Word 97.

One very significant change in Word 2000 becomes obvious when you open more than one document. Word now boasts a single document interface (SDI), in which each open document has its own window completely separate from other documents (Figure 1-1). Each document also appears on the taskbar as a separate button. Switch between documents with the Window menu (in any of the open documents) and by clicking the taskbar buttons.

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At first glance, you won't notice many significant changes in Word 2000 from previous versions of Word. Aside from the fact that the default setting now combines the Standard and Formatting toolbars on a single line, it's difficult even to tell whether you are running Word 2000 or Word 97.

One very significant change in Word 2000 becomes obvious when you open more than one document. Word now boasts a single document interface (SDI), in which each open document has its own window completely separate from other documents (Figure 1-1). Each document also appears on the taskbar as a separate button. Switch between documents with the Window menu (in any of the open documents) and by clicking the taskbar buttons.

Figure 1-1: The single document interface

The Alt-Tab and Alt-Esc keyboard shortcuts, normally used for switching between applications, also switch between open Word documents. The SDI behaves as if each open document is a distinct application. However, the core Word program files are only loaded into memory once.

In previous versions of Word, menus and toolbars were distinct. In Word 2000, menus and toolbars are both a type of command bar (Figure 1-2). Commands on these bars, whether they are buttons or word commands, are treated the same by Word. This change means a couple of things. You can now drag the menu bar to undock it and make it float anywhere in the Word application. Also, customization of menus and toolbars is now the same. Add buttons to traditional menus and add full menus right beside buttons in toolbars. You'll learn more about this in Chapter 3.

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When you insert the Office 2000 CD-ROM, the installation program starts automatically and displays a series of installation dialog boxes that confirm the name and company name, ask for the CD key from the back of the CD case, and offer components to install.

Most of this is standard stuff, but Office 2000 does use the newly designed Windows Installer. The new installer provides a better way of selecting components to include in the installation and makes it easier to maintain installations later. The list of components to install is accompanied by a Windows Explorer-like system showing expandable sections under each main component (Figure 1-6).

Figure 1-6: Choosing Word 2000 components to install

Install each component in a number of ways:

Run from My Computer: This option installs the component on the local hard drive.
Run all from My Computer: This option sets all components in a branch to install to the hard drive.
Run from Network: You won't see this if you're installing on a PC that isn't networked. This option lets you run Word from a network server instead of from the local drive. Choose this only if you have continuous access to the network server.
Run all from Network: This option installs every component of the selected branch on the network, not just the main program.
Run from CD

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By default, Word opens a new, blank document each time it starts. This document contains many default settings, such as business-standard margins, single line-spacing, left-aligned tabs set to every half-inch, and a standard font (Times New Roman, 12 points).

Double-click an existing document in Windows Explorer to start the Word application and open the selected document directly. If the document is one you've worked on recently, check the Documents folder on the Start menu for a shortcut.

Storing documents on the Windows desktop seems like a good idea because it makes them instantly available for review, editing, or printing. However, it also makes them hard to organize. Instead, store the document in a better location and create a shortcut to the document on the desktop. To create a shortcut on the desktop, choose File → Open. In the dialog box that opens, right-click the document. Choose Send to → Desktop (Shortcut).

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Word offers nine standard menus. The commands found within each one are described in detail throughout the various chapters of this book. The following sections present a mini-synopsis of each menu, the useful functions the menus provide, and where in the book to go for details.

Use the File menu to control Word files. Start, save, close, and print documents, edit document properties, and exit the Word program. The File menu's most frequently used commands are included as the first six commands on the Standard toolbar. These six commands also contain some anomalies. Normally, the menu command and the toolbar equivalent perform the same task in the same way. Not so with the New button and File → New, and the Print button and its menu companion, File → Print. In both cases, the menu command opens a dialog box for setting options and the button performs the command using default actions.

If you press and hold the Shift key before opening the File menu, the Close command becomes Close All (meaning all open documents) and the Save command becomes Save All. Use these changes to close and/or save all open documents without repeatedly opening the File menu.

Section 1.4.1.1: Keyboard shortcuts

Create a new document: Ctrl-N
Open a document: Ctrl-O
Save a document: Ctrl-S
Save a document with a new name (Save As): F12
Print a document: Ctrl-P
Close the active document: Ctrl-F4
Exit Word: Alt-F4

Section 1.4.1.2: File task list

Create a new document: File

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It's surprising how many Word users I know (and I mean long-time, sophisticated users) who still get annoyed with many of Word's little quirks and yet never try to figure out what Word is really doing. Instead, they accept these quirks as a matter of course and almost subconsciously correct any errors that result.

For example, try selecting two consecutive paragraphs by dragging the pointer over them, cutting (or copying) them, and then pasting them somewhere else in the document. Notice that Word doesn't copy the formatting of the second paragraph, but does for the first paragraph. Many users do this over and over again, get annoyed by it, and fix it each time by manually reapplying the style or formatting to the second paragraph. There is a pretty easy way around this (and you'll learn it later in the chapter), but until you learn what Word is doing, it's not easy to see the solutions to these kinds of problems.

This chapter takes an under-the-hood look at Word. Among other things, it covers:

Global architecture: Each time you start Word, it actually creates a new interface, based on built-in program information, global templates (like normal.dot), user-defined templates, and document settings.
Files: All kinds of information besides text are stored in Word files, including graphics and inserted objects. Every Word document also has an attached template file that controls the styles, toolbars, and macros in that document. In addition, Word uses temporary (.tmp) and AutoRecover files to help ensure that documents are kept safe while editing.
Parts of a document: Word maintains separate layers for text and drawings. Various types of objects can be inserted in these different layers. Within the text layer, Word breaks documents down into three parts for formatting purposes: sections, paragraphs, and characters. Styles are used to quickly apply formatting to both characters and paragraphs.

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When using Word, you are looking at the program through several layers, the current document being closest to you. All of these layers combine to form Word's global layer, the overall interface that is built and presented each time Word starts and a document is created (or opened). Basically, the global layer is built like this:

When Word first starts, it begins to build the interface based on the built-in application layer. The basic Word interface and all of the menus, toolbars and commands are programmatically loaded on the screen based on settings in the program files and the Windows Registry.
Word then finds the normal.dot template and adds it into the interface. Any custom commands, toolbars, and options override those in the application layer.
Word then looks at files in \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Startup (the default location — change it using Tools → Options → User Location). It first loads any .dot (template) files in alphabetical order and then any .dll and COM add-in files, also in alphabetical order. Any customizations in these files override those built so far. For example, if a file named a.dot and a file named b.dot both exist in the startup folder, a.dot's customizations are loaded and then b.dot's customizations are loaded, overriding a.dot's.
Once these three steps are complete, Word has officially loaded, assuming Word starts without opening a document at the same time. At this point, additional templates and add-ins can be manually loaded using Tools → Templates and Add-Ins → Add.

Launch Word from the command line using the

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When starting a new document, Word creates a temporary AutoRecover file in the \Windows\Temp folder, which is used to recover document information should Word crash. The first time a new document is saved, Word also creates two other files. The first is the document itself, which takes an extension based on the type of document you create (.doc for Word files, .dot for templates, .rtf for rich text files, and so on). Next, Word creates a temporary file in the same folder as the document. It holds all of the work done inside a document between saves.

You are probably most familiar with the document file. A document file is created and named whenever a new document is saved for the first time. There are lots of things you can do with a file in Word, mainly by using the File menu. For detailed information on manipulating files with Word, check out Chapter 4. In this section, though, we're going to take a look at what goes into a file (how Word itself uses the file) and what can be done with the file from outside Word (i.e., from Windows itself ).

A document file contains the text you type, but it can also contain:

Characters that are typed and characters that aren't, such as paragraph marks, tab marks, section marks, and more. These are covered a bit later in the chapter.
Formatting applied to those characters, whether it is applied directly through character formatting or indirectly through paragraph formatting.
Formatting applied to the sections in a document. This includes section location and page layout information such as margins and alignment.
Styles defined in the document itself or copied from the template the document is based on.

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As discussed earlier, whenever a document is opened or created, Word creates a global layer as the application starts up. Documents themselves also contain a number of layers that are unrelated to Word's global layer. After the document is established, you'll interact with text, drawing, and header/footer layers for the purposes of building content. In this section, we'll take a look at the interaction of those layers and then delve deeper into the parts of the document.

Every Word document contains six different layers that when stacked on top of one another produce a page similar to the illustration shown in Figure 2-6.

Figure 2-6: The six layers of a document

The following list shows the layers of a Word document from top to bottom:

Front Drawing Layer. Think of this layer as a transparency laid on top of the text layer of a document. Only floating objects, such as drawings or text boxes, exist in this layer. If an object is in this layer, it appears in front of the text of the document.
Main Text Layer. This layer usually contains the text of a document, though text is often placed in floating text boxes in drawing layers. In addition to text, you can place inline and framed objects in this layer. These objects are discussed in the next section.
Back Drawing Layer. This is the transparency laid behind the text layer of your document. Only floating objects exist in this layer. If an object is in this layer, it appears behind the text of the document.

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Word is something like the Swiss Army knife of document creation products. It boasts a lot of functionality for doing almost anything, from basic typing and formatting to indexing, creating tables, charts, pictures, web pages, and even serving as its own little programming platform. As soon as you fire up Word and poke through the interface, the abundance of menus, toolbars, and commands reflects this functionality. Many of Word's functions are used quite frequently, others less frequently, and still others not at all. Fortunately, Word lets you customize almost every facet of its menus and toolbars, and even some of its basic operations, to suit your style.

Customization is a pretty big topic and encompasses a lot of the actions taken in Word. Creating custom themes and styles, recording macros to automate tasks, turning off the Office Assistant, and creating AutoText entries are all ways to customize the Word environment. These actions are all covered in this book. This chapter is mainly concerned with two of Word's more intricate and powerful commands:

Tools → Options: This command opens a dialog containing ten separate tabs for setting options ranging from what components of a document are visible onscreen, to what components print, to how Word handles spelling and grammar checking. The first section of this chapter details all of the options on the Tools → Options tabs, what those settings affect, and how to implement them. Many of the settings on the tabs apply to Word's application layer and affect any document displayed. Other options are applied only to the active document.
Tools → Customize: This command opens a dialog with three tabs — one for creating and managing command bars, one for customizing the commands on those bars, and one for setting some general options specifying how the command bars work.

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The two different types of customizations covered in this chapter, those done using Tools → Options and those done using Tools → Customize, are saved in different ways. Tools → Options and Tools → Customize → Options settings are saved in the Windows Registry. Tools → Customize → Commands settings, custom toolbars, and custom key combinations are saved in a template or document.

In Word 2000, all user options are stored in the Windows Registry in the registry subkey HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\.

Several subkeys exist under the main Word subkey:

Data key: This key holds information concerning Word's most recently used (MRU) lists.
Options key: This key holds information about options you set in Word using Tools → Options.
Stationery key: This key contains the default location for the template for WordMail and the links to find the template.
Table of Authorities key: This key stores the Category list that appears in the Table of Authorities list when you press Alt-Shift-I or use Insert → Index and Tables → Table of Authorities → Mark Citation, as described in Chapter 7.
Wizards key: All wizard defaults are stored here. These settings are created the first time a wizard is run.

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The Tools → Options command is used to change Word's settings. Use it to specify what components of a document are viewed onscreen or printed. Set user information (name, address, and all that), file locations (for example, where templates are found and the location documents are saved by default), and even control Word's interface to some extent. There are ten tabs on the Tools → Options dialog and we'll be examining them all in the upcoming sections.

The View tab (Figure 3-1) controls the on-screen display of a document. Turning off some of the display options can make Word redraw and scroll documents more quickly. Some of the options, like displaying the formatting marks, are turned off by default, but may be valuable when enabled. It's awfully hard to use Word well if you can't see half of what it's doing. The options on this tab only apply to the active document and to new documents created after the options are set, but not to any existing documents, even if they're currently open.

Figure 3-1: Choosing what is displayed in a document

The Tools → Options → View tab is broken down into four sections: Show, Formatting marks, Print and Web Layout options, and Outline and Normal options.

Section 3.2.1.1: Tools → Options → View → Show

The Show section of the View tab (Figure 3-2) controls how Word displays certain interface elements and special objects in a document.

Figure 3-2: Controlling interface and document object display

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Browsing through Word's menus presents a superset of all of Word's functionality. While Word's new adaptive menus are designed to provide access to commonly used commands and suppress those used less frequently, these adaptive menus are really not a good solution, for a couple of reasons. First, different people have different ideas of what common commands are. Second, many people rely on scanning menus to find commands they use less frequently and may not remember where to find them. Some options selected here affect all Office programs; others—such as toolbar and menu customizations—remain local to the program they are used in.

Use the Tools → Customize command to perform four different types of customizations:

Tools → Customize → Options: Set general customization options that govern how Word's personalized (adaptive) menus work and how icons appear on menus and toolbars.
Tools → Customize → Toolbars: Use this tab to create new toolbars, rename and delete existing toolbars, and reset default toolbars.
Tools → Customize → Commands: This tab lets you add, remove, and modify commands in Word's menus and toolbars. It's also used to create new menus.
Keyboard Customization: At the bottom of the Customize dialog that holds all three of these tabs, a Keyboard button opens a dialog for creating and modifying keyboard shortcuts for just about every command in Word.

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The File menu performs many common functions, such as creating, saving, and printing documents. Using this menu, it is possible to create multiple versions of a document within the same Word file using the Versions command. You can even save a document as a web page in HTML format or send documents to various types of recipients, such as mail and routing recipients, Exchange Server folders, and programs like Microsoft PowerPoint.

File → New

Whenever a new document is created in Word, it is based on one or more document templates (.dot files). Templates serve as boilerplates, containing settings, text, and formatting that is applied to a new document. Templates may also contain macros that can be used in a new document. The Normal document template (normal.dot) is automatically loaded with Word, making it the global template. For a complete discussion of how Word uses templates, refer to Chapter 2.

A generic blank document is created based on normal.dot (found in \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates) by using Ctrl-N, by selecting the New Blank Document toolbar button, or by simply starting Word.

File → New launches the New dialog box shown in Figure 4-1, containing templates and wizards to create other document types.

Figure 4-1: Creating a new document

No preview is available for some templates, especially those without text. If you create a template and wish a preview to be available, open the template in Word and select File → Properties → Summary → Save Preview Picture. The preview of the document is available in both Word and Windows Explorer. The preview area on the New dialog box is often too small to be of much use. Choose Format

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As its name implies, Word's Edit menu is used to edit text and other objects in a Word document. Use it to undo and redo actions; cut, copy, and paste text and objects; insert objects such as pictures, hyperlinks, and fields; and search for elements within.

Central to these editing commands is the ability to cut, copy, and paste. Whenever you cut or copy selections in a document, Word uses a special area of memory named the Clipboard to store those selections. These selections could be text, tables, graphics, or anything else you can select. In previous versions of Word, the Clipboard stored only one item at a time. New cut or copied items replaced whatever was previously in the Clipboard. In Word 2000, a new and improved Clipboard can now hold up to twelve items.

When more than one item is added, a Clipboard toolbar opens that presents a button for each stored item (Figure 5-1). Hover the pointer over a button for a moment to see the actual contents of each item in a pop-up ScreenTip. Click any button to paste the contents of that item at the insertion point. The toolbar also has buttons for copying the current selection, for pasting all items in the clipboard at once, and for clearing all items from the clipboard.

Figure 5-1: Word's new clipboard

Many new users aren't aware of the new Clipboard and simply close the toolbar whenever it appears. After a few times, Word assumes that you do not want the Clipboard toolbar to appear and does not open it in the future. Force it to appear again later by right-clicking on any toolbar and choosing Clipboard from the context menu.

Working with the extended Clipboard is fairly simple within Office 2000 applications. Each of the major applications (Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint) uses the same Clipboard and toolbar as Word. Place several items in the clipboard from a Word document and they are available when working on an Excel spreadsheet. However, neither Outlook 2000 nor FrontPage 2000 allows access to the Clipboard toolbar. Only the last selection copied to the Clipboard in any of the supporting Office applications is available when you use the standard paste command in Outlook or FrontPage.

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The View menu contains commands for changing the visual perspective on the active document. The menu also contains tools for displaying parts of the document that are not always visible, such as comments, headers, and toolbars.

Word's four document views provide different ways of looking at a document for different needs. The four views include:

Normal: Work in normal view for typing, editing, and formatting text. Normal view shows text formatting but simplifies the layout of the page so that you can type and edit quickly.
Web Layout: Work in Web layout view when creating a web page or a document that is viewed on the screen.
Print Layout: Work in print layout view to see how text, graphics, and other elements will be positioned on the printed page.
Outline: Work in outline view to see the structure of a document and to move, copy, and reorganize text by dragging headings.

View → Normal

Access Word's Normal view using View → Normal or the Normal view button at the far left of the horizontal scroll bar. In Normal view, the document appears as if it were one, infinitely long, scrollable piece of paper (Figure 6-1). Normal is the default view and is the most useful during the course of document creation, as it shows text and formatting, but does not cloud the screen with headers, footers, footnotes, and precise page layout.

Normal is the default for new documents. However, Word remembers the view last used before exiting a document and opens the document again using that view.

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As word processing software evolves, documents consisting only of text are becoming rare. Word's Insert menu contains commands for adding the extra elements that make up many contemporary documents. The commands are primarily used to add special Word objects, such as page breaks, fields, comments, footnotes, and drawing objects. The menu also provides commands for adding content from other Word documents or even from other types of files, such as spreadsheets or databases.

Insert → Break

When typing a document that runs over the length of a page, Word inserts a page break and typing automatically continues on the next page. These breaks are referred to as automatic breaks , and cannot be changed or deleted.

In Normal view, page and section breaks show onscreen at all times as dashed horizontal lines. In Print Layout view, page breaks appear as physical splits in the paper, and no break codes appear. To see breaks onscreen in Print Layout view, use the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar. Working in Show/Hide mode also makes it easy to delete a page break by selecting the break and pressing Delete.

Forced breaks are manually inserted into a document to control where Word breaks a page, column, or text wrapping. Insert a forced break using the Insert → Break command, which opens the Break dialog box (Figure 7-1).

Double-click a section break line to quickly open the File → Page Setup → Layout dialog.

The following list describes the Break dialog options:

Figure 7-1:

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Word's Format menu helps make any document more visually compelling. The commands change the appearance of a document's text, paragraphs, and background and even create styles that allow numerous formatting settings to be applied at once. There are also commands for fixing capitalization mistakes, adding drop caps, converting text to columns, configuring tabs, and even forcing text to appear vertically instead of horizontally.

Format → Font

In Word, characters are the letters, numbers, and symbols typed on a keyboard. Every character typed in Word is actually represented by a numeric code. Hit Shift-Z to put in a capital letter Z, for example, and you're really inserting the keyboard code 90 into a document.

A font is a routine that tells Word how to draw each of the codes onscreen and how to print them. So a font is really just a facade applied to the numeric code. To see that this is true, type a capital Z into a document in the Arial font. Now, switch to the Wingdings 3 font. The Z you typed should now look like a left arrow. It's still the same keyboard code; it just has a different font applied to it.

Characters can have other formatting applied to them as well, specifying everything from italic to size to color. Though many of these formatting features are available on the Formatting toolbar, the Format → Font command offers greater variety and more precise control.

Unless you are only making simple, one-time changes to character formatting, it is probably better to create a style. Styles are collections of character or paragraph formats that you can apply all at once. For more on using styles, see the Format section later in this chapter.

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The Tools menu contains commands that customize the Word interface, automate tasks, proof a document's spelling and grammar, and collaborate with other Word users in several ways. This chapter examines commands in the first and third command groups of the menu — commands that concern spelling and language, AutoCorrect, AutoSummarize, Mail Merge, envelopes, and letters.

Commands in the second group, those that deal with collaboration, are detailed in Chapter 13. The Tools → Macro submenu is covered in Chapter 18. The Tools → Customize and Tools → Options commands are covered in Chapter 3.

Tools → Spelling and Grammar

The Tools → Spelling and Grammar command (Figure 9-1) shows errors in context along with suggested corrections. It presents choices for handling an error, including ways to show Word that the error isn't actually an error.

Figure 9-1: Checking a document for spelling errors

Right-click any errors in the document to open a context menu with correction suggestions. Text underlined with squiggly red or green lines indicates spelling or grammar errors, respectively. Errors are only shown in the document if both the Tools → Options → Spelling and Grammar → "Check Spelling as you type" and "Check Grammar as you type" options are enabled (the default option).

The following list describes the options for spelling and grammar checking:

Not in Dictionary

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Tables are one of Word's most powerful features, used both to organize information and to lay out documents. A table is a container holding any number of cells arranged in rows and columns (Figure 10-1). Tables get special treatment from Word. They can be created or resized like graphics, but the cells in the table can hold text, graphics, fields, and other types of objects — even other tables.

Figure 10-1: Viewing the special formatting marks in a table

Word uses a number of special formatting marks to identify a table and its parts:

Move handle. Hold the pointer over the table for about two seconds to make the move and resize handles appear (shown in the top left corner of Figure 10-1). Click and drag the move handle to move the table around in the document (this works for all Word views except for Normal view).
Resize handle. Click this handle to turn the pointer into a double-headed arrow. Drag the handle to resize the table.
End of cell mark. Turn on the Show/Hide feature on the Standard toolbar to show end of cell and row marks on a table. End of cell marks are nonprinting characters that denote the end of a cell and are shown only by using the Show/Hide command.
End of row mark. End of row marks are nonprinting characters that denote the end of a row and are shown only by using the Show/Hide command.

Several other marks exist, depending on the view that's used. Another common one is a black arrow that when clicked will select an entire row or column.

Many people think of tables only as a means to organize numbers and text in a quasi-spreadsheet, like the example in Figure 10-1. However, tables are also used as layout tools in all kinds of different documents. A table does not have to be as strictly defined in rows and columns as you might think. Cells can be merged or divided and can even hold other tables. Figure 10-2 shows a document created using a table to lay out the various elements.

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Word's new Single Document Interface makes it easy to switch between open documents by clicking the document buttons on the Windows taskbar. Word also offers another convenient way to switch between documents: the Window menu. The Window menu offers users the advantage of quickly switching between documents using the keyboard, something more difficult to do with taskbar buttons.

In addition, the Window menu offers three commands for viewing multiple instances of a single document and arranging documents that are already open: New Window, Arrange All, and Split.

Window → New Window

The Window → New Window command opens a duplicate of the currently active document. This can be useful for reviewing different parts of a document at the same time. The contents of the two windows are identical: make an edit in one window and the changes appear simultaneously in the other window. Each window behaves like a regular document; switch back and forth between them using the taskbar or the Window menu or arrange them side-by-side on the screen.

There's no real limit to the number of windows that can be opened for a given document. On opening the first new window for a document, Word labels the original document (in the title bar) as the name of the document followed by a colon followed by a 1 (i.e., Chapter 10:1). Word labels each consecutive new window :2, :3, and so on. Saving any of the open windows of a single document saves the document. Remember that no matter how many new windows are created using Window → New Window, you are still looking at only one document.

When running your monitor at a higher resolution (better than 800x600, say), the Window → Split command is usually more useful than the New Window command. The Split command is discussed later in this chapter.

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Let's face it — Word is a big program, and all the users I know find themselves needing help sometimes. Word's online help system is a pretty useful tool, though most users find themselves wanting to turn off the Office Assistant the first chance they get. In addition to providing access to Word's standard help system, the Help menu offers a few other tools as well. The What's This command is a handy way to see what a particular item in Word's interface does or what the formatting is for a character or paragraph. Office on the Web links to Microsoft's web site, which provides information on Word and even a few handy downloads. WordPerfect Help leads to a complete command reference (and even demos) for WordPerfect users. Finally, Detect and Repair scans all of the Word program files to detect corrupt or missing files and replace them from the Office CD.

Help → Microsoft Word Help

Word offers two basic interfaces to the help system: the traditional help window and the disreputable Office Assistant. Both offer access to all of the same help files.

The Office Assistant

Unless you performed a custom installation of Word and specifically chose not to install the Office Assistant, that little animated paper clip (see Figure 12-1) was likely your first introduction to Word's online help.

Figure 12-1: Clippit, looking innocuous, but he's annoyed more people than Word itself

Some people love it and some people hate it, but the one thing about the Office Assistant Microsoft did right was to give users a way to turn it off. Right-click the Office Assistant and choose Options from the shortcut menu. Remove the check next to "Use Office Assistant" and you'll be bothered no more. To use the assistant but not have to look at it all the time, choose Hide from the same shortcut menu. The assistant reappears when it has something to say.

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It is unusual never to show a Word document to anyone else. Many of us pass Word documents around so that others can collaborate on and review them. This chapter covers the major Word tools for collaborating with multiple users on a document. These include:

Track Changes: This feature allows you to visibly keep track of each author's revisions within a document. Word automatically marks each author's edits with colored text. In addition, whenever you point to a marked change, a ScreenTip pops up to let you know the author and date.
Comments: These annotate a document with notes that don't really belong in the document text itself.
NetMeeting: This is a separate program that lets users collaborate in real time using tools such as chat, voice, video, and a shared whiteboard.
Web Discussions: This is a new tool that lets users who have access to a central discussion server create threaded discussions within and about a document and subscribe to documents so that they are emailed when the document changes.

Word's Track Changes feature is one that many people find confusing. In truth, I find the feature itself pretty straightforward. Part of what makes it seem complicated is that there are several different ways to get at it in the Word interface.

Here is what Track Changes basically does:

When Track Changes is turned on, Word marks any changes made to the document in a different color for each author that makes changes.
You can then review the document, see what changes each author made and when, and accept or reject each of the changes.

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Word's Track Changes feature is one that many people find confusing. In truth, I find the feature itself pretty straightforward. Part of what makes it seem complicated is that there are several different ways to get at it in the Word interface.

Here is what Track Changes basically does:

When Track Changes is turned on, Word marks any changes made to the document in a different color for each author that makes changes.
You can then review the document, see what changes each author made and when, and accept or reject each of the changes.

Sound pretty simple? It is. Let's see how it works.

As with most things in Word, there are several ways to turn on Track Changes. The first is to choose Tools → Track Changes → Highlight Changes. This opens the dialog shown in Figure 13-1. Choose the "Track changes while editing" option and click OK to turn on Track Changes. The other two options on the dialog specify whether changes are visible on the screen and whether they are printed along with the document. The Options button on this dialog opens the Track Changes tab of the Tools → Options dialog, which is covered a bit later in Section 13.1.4.

Figure 13-1: Turning on Track Changes using Tools → Track Changes → Highlight Changes

The "Highlight Changes in printed document" option prints all of the changes and change marking in the document. When this option is disabled, Word prints the document as it would look were you to accept all of the changes in the document. Printing a document with changes can sometimes be useful, but keep in mind that without a color printer it can be pretty hard to tell between different authors' changes.

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Table of Contents

Section 1.4.1.1: Keyboard shortcuts

Section 1.4.1.2: File task list

Section 3.2.1.1: Tools → Options → View → Show