This quirky problem has happened often enough that it warrants a post of its own. The problem doesn’t happen on my desktop running Microsoft Windows XP with Office 2003. It occurs only on the laptop running Microsoft Vista with Office 2007. I can’t tell you if it’s a Vista problem, an Office problem, or both. … Read more
I was sleepwalking while deleting pictures one-by-one in a document — not remembering there was a faster and easier way to do this. First, I tried copying and pasting the image in the find/replace tool, but no luck. I knew there was a way to do it as I recalled discovering this process a long … Read more
My laptop has Office 2007 on Vista (let’s not argue about Vista or why it’s on my laptop). I used Word without a problem and the next day, it started misbehaving. First, it wouldn’t recognize the mouse. Then it wouldn’t let me select other tabs in Options even using the keyboard. Naturally, I went to … Read more
Once I got out of automated mode, I woke up and realized that I often use Paste Special with unformatted text when working in MS Word. It became a habit like CTRL+V, CTRL+X, and CTRL+C. To do Paste Special without formatting, I clicked CTRL+V to paste, selected the Paste Special icon (smart tag) and selected … Read more
I’m editing an eBook that requires special formatting for every story. Naturally, this was a good fit for a macro. The first macro did all the steps, but fumbled on the call outs. Better idea: create two macros with the second one covering the call outs. This worked like a charm… until I closed Word … Read more
A better subtitle for this is “Tips for Taming It with Macros.” The book begins with showing how to tweak the interface to meet your needs, one of the few hacks not requiring macros. For a long time, I never modified the interface beyond choosing the tool bars I wanted to view. I frequently used … Read more
If you copy something from a Web site or elsewhere… or you reuse a document and the formatting is making you crazy with its weirdness, then stop the insanity. The first option to make the document behave loses some of the formatting. You can always undo the changes if you don’t like it by pressing … Read more