Microsoft Office tips

Put Microsoft Word's styles to good use

One feature in Microsoft Word has saved me more time than all the other doodads in the program put together: Styles. I frequently edit Word documents created by other people. The first thing I do after opening their files is to reformat them so they're easier for me to work on. I created a handful of styles that let me make the changes in an instant via custom keyboard shortcuts.

The favorite font style of one of the tech writers I work with regularly is 10-point Bookman Old Style, which I find close to unreadable. Another writer I edit … Read more

Five easy Excel formatting tricks

I've never trained an elephant, but I imagine the process is similar to that of getting your Microsoft Excel worksheet to look just right. Here are five of my favorite Excel formatting tricks.

Double-click to fit columns and rows When you enter or paste text and numbers into Excel, the cells don't expand to fit their contents. The fast way to autofit columns and rows is to hover your mouse over the header border between the column and its neighbor to the right, or between two rows at the far left of the worksheet. When the resize icon … Read more

Switch quickly between Word's smart quotes and straight quotes

When I described how to replace Microsoft Word's smart quotes with straight quotes to keep the HTML versions of documents from breaking, several people objected, claiming that straight quotes make the docs more difficult to read. I agree completely, which is why I decided to tell you about the quickest way I know to convert from one quote style to the other. In just a few seconds you can optimize a document for the Web, or for readability in print or onscreen.

Suppose you want to put a Word document that's full of smart quotes--both the double quotation-mark … Read more

Create a keyboard shortcut to paste plain text

Last week I described the PureText utility that lets you paste plain text in Word and other applications via a keyboard shortcut. You can create a macro to get the same functionality in Word and Excel, without having to download anything.

(Note that the original post of this tip reported that PureText required that you click its icon in your system tray before you press the shortcut keys to paste plain text. This is true only if you open the destination app after the material you want to paste has been added to the clipboard. If both the source and … Read more

Fast fixes for five Word woes

You use your browser a lot. You use your e-mail program a lot. But the chances are better than even that you spend a big chunk of your workday in Microsoft Word. There's no way any application used by so many people for so many different tasks is going to be set up just right for you. Here are the five settings I changed to make Word work my way, more or less.

I say "more or less" because Word isn't quite the paragon of flexibility. You can make serious changes to the program's look … Read more