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| Understanding AutoText | |
| You can supercharge AutoCorrect entries with line
breaks or graphic images by selecting the block of text that you
want to create a keyboard shortcut for before you open the AutoCorrect
dialog box. Word users frequently confuse the AutoCorrect feature
with Word's AutoText feature. Let's look at the important differences
between these two powerful tools.
The net result of using AutoCorrect and AutoText is the same: You type a few keystrokes, and Word replaces those keystrokes, expanding them into words, phrases, or blocks of text and images. Every time you press the spacebar, type any punctuation, or press [Enter] or [Tab], Word evaluates the last series of characters you typed. If it's on the AutoCorrect list, Word replaces the text immediately. AutoText, on the other hand, keeps its own list, which is separate from AutoCorrect's list. Word only performs the replacements when you tell it to do so. When Word recognizes a shortcut, the AutoComplete feature kicks in (unless you've deactivated it). When that happens, Word displays a preview of the AutoText entry in a tip box above where you're typing. Press [Enter] to accept the AutoText entry, or ignore it and keep typing. |
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| Page Numbering Problem | |
| You're tired of having to renumber pages each
time you start a new section in a long Microsoft Word document.
SOLUTION: To keep the page numbering consistent through section breaks, click anywhere in the new section of the Word document and choose View, Header and Footer. On the Header and Footer toolbar, click on the Format Page Number button, then choose the Continue From Previous Section option. |
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| Spell Check - Resetting Ignore All | |
| Word users often spell check their documents after each revision.
Sometimes, however, when you're checking spelling, you accidentally click either Ignore or Ignore All instead of Change. In those cases, you're lucky if you can remember where to look for the misspelled word. When that happens, don't waste time manually searching your document for the suspect word. Instead, reset Word's internal Ignore All list and run the spell check over again. To do so: 1. Go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar. 2. In the Grammar section, click the Recheck Document button. (If you haven't yet checked spelling, this button will be labeled Check Document.) 3. Word will display a message informing you that, by answering Yes, you want Word to recheck words and grammar you previously chose to ignore. Click Yes and then click OK to close the Options dialog box. 4. Press [F7] or go to Tools | Spelling
And Grammar to run spell check again. |
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| Word Reads Your Mind | |
| Word’s Smart Tags turn ordinary documents
into personal project management centers. Want to schedule a meeting?
With Smart Tags active, Word will display a distinctive dotted line
under a date, and when you mouse over it, you'll see the familiar
information icon. When you click it, you'll see four options: Schedule
A Meeting, Show My Calendar,
Remove This Smart Tag, and Smart Tag Options. Being able to summon your Outlook Calendar and schedule events is a huge convenience for Word users. Of course, you must be connected to your network in order for these advanced features to work, but if you inadvertently select one of the options while you're offline, the event will time out safely. To investigate the power of Smart Tags in Word, go to Tools |AutoCorrect Options | Smart Tags. The first thing you'll notice is a check box that lets you turn Smart Tags off or on. In the list of "recognizers," you'll see Person Names, Dates, Times, Addresses, Places, Telephone Numbers, Smart Tag Lists, and Recent Outlook E-mail Recipients. As you'd probably expect, you get a slightly different set of options when you click the information icon for different recognizers. For instance, the options for the Person Name recognizer include Send Mail, Schedule Meeting, and other contact management options. |
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| Formatting Multiple Blocks of Text | |
| One of the most common tasks Word users perform is reformatting
an existing document. However, Word raises the bar when it comes
to fast reformatting, delivering a WYSIWYG-style Find And Replace
tool for simultaneously formatting multiple blocks of text.
Here's how it works. Right-click a block of text and choose Select Text With Similar Formatting from the shortcut menu. When you do, Word selects all of the text in the document that has the same attributes. Just apply (or change) the formatting, and Word applies those changes to everything you've selected, all in one fell swoop. If you're using an earlier version of Word, you can accomplish
the same effect using tools that have long been in Word's reformatting
arsenal. If you've formatted your document at the paragraph level,
you can tweak formatting settings on a global scale by redefining
a style. If the formatting in your document is nonexistent or you've
applied it manually, you can use the Format Painter to copy a set
of attributes from one block of text to another. Last but not least,
the Find And Replace dialog box lets you swap existing formatting
options for new ones. |
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| Swap Font Colors | |
| Word's Find And Replace dialog box can help you
clean up even the most troublesome documents. For example, let's
say you need to clean up a document that two or more people have
edited. But instead of using Word's native Track Changes feature,
each person added changes using a different color font.
In most cases, you can rectify this problem with just a few keystrokes. Press [Ctrl]A to select the entire document, go to Format | Font, and choose Automatic (or Black) from the Font Color drop-down list. But this workaround is little help if the document contains specially formatted text that needs to stay that particular color. Instead, press [Ctrl]H to open the Find And Replace dialog box. Make sure the cursor is in the Find What field, click More, choose Format, and select Font. From the Font Color drop-down list, select the color you want to replace and click OK. In the Replace With field, follow the same steps to select the new color (Automatic, Black, or whatever color you want). Then you can click the Find Next or Replace All buttons to swap the colors, regardless of the name or size of the font. |
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| Paste with Precision | |
| Here's a tip for your users who prefer to stay
at the keyboard as much as possible and minimize the number of times
they reach for the mouse. If they're wasting precious time reformatting
text after they copy (or cut) and paste, they may be able to save
time by paying closer attention to what they're copying and pasting.
To use this tip, users need to be comfortable working with visible paragraph marks. To display them, click the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar, or go to Tools | Options | View and select the check boxes for some or all of the nonprinting characters. Now, suppose you want to copy a line that has a Heading 1 format and paste it into a paragraph with normal formatting. When you select a line, Word selects the entire line, including the paragraph mark. If you use a normal paste (instead of Edit | Paste Special | Unformatted Text), Word will impose the Heading 1 style on the paragraph where you pasted. Here's a quick and easy way to copy and paste without including the paragraph mark (which stores the actual formatting). Position the cursor where you want to start copying, press the [Shift] key, and press [End] to select a single line of text. (To select more, press the Right Arrow key while pressing [Shift].) While still pressing the [Shift] key, press the Left Arrow key once. Doing so deselects the paragraph mark. When you copy and paste this text, it will assume the formatting associated with the target paragraph. |
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| Preserving Blank Lines | |
| When you copy and paste the contents of a Word
document into another application, the receiving application usually
respects (processes) blank lines. For instance, if you paste a Word
document into an Excel spreadsheet, the blank lines from the Word
document translate into blank rows in the worksheet.
Most of the time, those blank lines are welcome because they preserve the vertical spacing of the text you copied. But from time to time, you'll run into an application that ignores or suppresses those blank lines when you paste data copied from a Word document. Here's what to do when you need to stamp blank lines with a placeholder. In general, you can define a blank line in a Word document as two paragraph markers (hard line breaks) in a row. Assuming your document contains no more than one blank line in a row, the Find And Replace dialog box can help you preserve the vertical spacing while stamping the blank lines with placeholder text. Press [Ctrl]H to open the Find And Replace dialog box. In the Find What field, click the More button, choose Special, choose Paragraph Mark, and then repeat the selection. Tab to the Replace With field, choose Special | Paragraph Mark, type the placeholder text (such as [Blank line] or an asterisk), and then enter another paragraph mark. Click Replace All, and Word will replace each occurrence of two consecutive hard returns with the text you specified. When you copy and paste the text into another application, the document will preserve the "blank" lines, and your placeholder text will make them easily identifiable. |
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| Customize Page Headers | |
| Have your users ever asked if they could print
a slightly different header and footer for different sections of
their documents? One way to accomplish that mission is to insert
a section page break wherever they want to start the new header or
footer.
After a new section page break, tell users to go to View | Header And Footer. When they do, Word displays a new header that looks like the previous one. This is where most beginning Word users can get confused. They edit the text in what appears to be the header for the new section, click Close, and discover (usually too late) that they've inadvertently changed the header for the preceding section. Here's the trick: When they go to View | Header And Footer in the new section, Word does in fact copy the information from the previous header. However, users must first click the Header And Footer toolbar's Same As Previous button before they start editing the header (or footer) in the new section. Whatever changes they then make to the text will apply only to the new section. Don't worry if the Same As Previous button doesn't look "accessible." Just click it and then type the new header or footer text. |
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| Accentuate Headlines | |
| If your users are looking for a great way to draw
attention to a headline, offer them these two design tips.
First, create a table with a single cell. Right-click the cell and choose Borders And Shading. In the Preview area of the Borders tab, deselect the left, top, and right sides of the cell's border. For the Width option, choose a heavy line style such as 4 or 6. Click the bottom side in the Preview area to apply this new line style and click OK. Whatever you type in this cell will be sure to garner a reader's attention. For a more sophisticated look, create another single-cell table, enter your heading, and center the text. Select that text and go to Format | Font. From the Font Color drop-down list, choose white and click OK. Next, right-click the table cell and choose Borders And Shading. Select the Shading tab, and choose black from the Fill section. This formatting creates a dramatic, eye-catching effect. |
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| Label Columns in Printouts | |
| Have you ever created a table that just kept growing
and growing as they added new rows of data? When your table spans
two or more pages, you should include a "header" row at
the top of each page that contains labels for each column in the
table. Here are two ways to accomplish this mission.
First, you can select the first row of your table, press [Ctrl]X or go to Edit | Cut to place that row on the clipboard, go to View | Header And Footer, and press [Ctrl]V to paste the row into the document header. Your column labels will then appear on every page. The problem with this approach is that the column labels occupy space in the document header. If you also want to repeat information such as the document name and page numbers on every page, your header can get pretty crowded. Fortunately, there's a workaround that lets you repeat a table row on every page without using the document header. To start, select the first row of your table (the one that contains your column labels). Then go to Table | Heading Rows Repeat. When your table grows beyond the first page, Word will automatically repeat the first row on subsequent pages. If you want to repeat two rows on each page, select the second row and go to Table | Heading Rows Repeat, and Word will repeat those first two rows on subsequent pages. |
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| Expand Your Searches | |
| One little check box can make all the difference
when you use Word's Find feature. By selecting the Find dialog box's
Use Wildcards option, you can expand the "fuzziness" with
which Word locates matches to your text. Wildcards can save time
when you don't know the exact spelling of a word but you have an
idea.
Let's say you want to find all of the three-letter combinations in your document that begin with the letter "s" and end with the letter "t." Press [Ctrl]F to summon the Find dialog box, click the More button if it's visible, and select the Use Wildcards check box. The wildcard that represents a single character is the question mark [?]. So, in the Find What field, type s?t and click Find Next. Word will locate each three-character combination that begins with "s" and ends with "t," no matter what character is in the middle. Suppose you want to look at all the strings that begin with "s" and end with "t," no matter how many characters come in between. The wildcard that stands for any number of characters is the asterisk [*], so in the Find What field, type s*t and click Find Next. By the way, when you select the wildcard search option, Word "grays out" the Match Case option. That's because a wildcard search is case-sensitive to a certain point. The unknown characters represented by the wildcards can be of any case. However, Word will match the case of the known characters that you enter in conjunction with the wildcards. So, searching for S*t will not find the same results as searching for s*t. |
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| Convert Blocks of Text to a Table | |
| Word's Text To Table feature lets users convert
raw text or data to a table format. Most of the time, this feature
is used to convert comma-delimited or tab-delimited text so that
the resulting table has neatly organized columns and rows.
However, the text you convert to a table doesn't always have to be in a delimited or organized format. The Text To Table feature lets you wrap a table structure around just about any block of text. For instance, suppose you have a smattering of paragraphs and lines of both delimited and undelimited text and you want to put the whole lot into a table for formatting purposes. You don't have to do any copying and pasting, just select all the text, go to Table | Convert | Text To Table, and click OK to accept the default settings for the number of columns and rows. Then go to Table | Draw Table and customize the table by adding or deleting cell borders with the table-drawing tools. Want to merge two cells? Click the Eraser button and mouse over the cell border. To split cells into new rows or columns, click the Draw Table tool and shape your table visually. |
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| Moving Tables | |
| You've done it before: created a table in a document
and had it formatted perfectly before you realized the table was
located in the wrong place within the document, say at the top rather
than the bottom, or on the left rather than the right. Moving a table
up and down in a document is easy. To push it down, place your cursor
above the table and hit [Enter]; to move it up, just delete blank
lines above the table.
Moving a table from left to right isn't as obvious. There are a couple of ways to create white space to the left (or right) of a table, like dragging the outer vertical border away from the margin or even enlarging the margin itself, but these methods aren't the best. The former will affect your second column and the latter affects text below the table. Perhaps the best way to move a table from left to right is to display the ruler and then click and drag on the Move Table Column icon. (When you're looking at the ruler, it's the little box just to the left of the table's "indent" buttons.) When you click and drag right on that Move Table Column icon, the whole column moves to the right, and the width of all columns remains intact as well. A word of caution: If you use this method to move your table, keep an eye on that right side so that you don't drag the table off the page. |
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| Freestyle Typing | |
| By default, Word is configured to format documents
while you type. Specifically, if Word detects that you're typing
what looks like a heading or a bulleted or numbered list, Word will
assume it's okay to format that text accordingly. For most Word users,
that default behavior is preferable to formatting text manually.
After all, Numbering lists manually takes much longer than letting
Word do it for you.
However, there are instances in which automatic formatting can actually waste more of a user's time than it saves, in terms of the time required to undo unwanted formatting. For example, suppose you want to bold a word or phrase to set off a section of your text but don't necessarily want that word or phrase to show up in your table of contents. When automatic formatting is enabled, Word will apply a heading style to a bolded line of text, whether or not you want that style applied. To turn off some or all of Word's automatic formatting options, go to Tools | AutoCorrect | AutoFormat As You Type and then deselect any or all of the options in the Apply As You Type section. For example, deselect the Headings option to use bold words or lines without affecting your table of contents, while leaving the options for automated numbered or bulleted lists active. |
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| Squeezing Text | |
| You printed a 12-page document, and the last page
has just two lines on it--hardly worth a whole page. If you hate
it when the last page of your Word document contains only a small
amount of text, you have a couple of options. You can widen your
left and right margins to pull that small amount of text back up
onto
the previous page, or you can
adjust the font size used. However, Word's Shrink To Fit feature
can, in most cases, save both an extra sheet of paper as well as
the time it takes to reformat. Word compacts the printout by reducing
every font by a small amount,
such as a half a point or a full point. To use the Shrink To Fit feature, go to File | Print Preview and then click the Shrink To Fit icon (the one that shows an image of two sheets with an arrow pointing to a single sheet) on the Print Preview toolbar. After printing, you may want to undo Shrink To Fit. To do this, in Print Preview mode, go to Edit | Undo. If you exit Print Preview mode, you can still undo Shrink To Fit changes if you haven't resaved the document. |
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| Rotation Effects | |
| When you're designing your own greeting cards,
posters, or marketing material, wrapping text around all four sides
of a rectangular object is one eye-catching design element at your
disposal. The result of this effect is that the reader must rotate
the document to read the text as it flows around the object's border.
How can you do this in Word?
If you use a table, you can change text orientation in a cell. Alternatively, you can place text boxes on each side of your rectangular object and then rotate the text. The problem with both approaches is that they only allow you to apply text to three sides of a rectangle--left, top, and right sides--but not the bottom. Neither approach allows you to place text upside down, or "facing up" from the bottom of the rectangle. Fortunately, there's WordArt. The Free Rotate tool, located on the Drawing toolbar and on the WordArt toolbar, lets you change the orientation of the WordArt text so that it appears completely upside down on the page. If you want to wrap a continuous string of text around a rectangular object, break that text up into four WordArt objects. Start by choosing the appropriate font and size for your WordArt objects, then place one on each side of the rectangle and rotate the objects on the left, right, and bottom sides so that the text "faces" the rectangular object. |
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| Fast Pasting - Macro | |
| If you're like most Word users, you frequently
paste into your documents text that you've copied from Web pages
and other external sources. If you want to paste just the text, and
not the formatting, you could go to Edit | Paste Special and choose
the Unformatted Text option. That approach pastes "clean" text
into your document, but it's a little time-consuming.
Speed up the process with a macro that summons the Paste Special
dialog box and selects the Unformatted Text option for you. To
do this: 2. Assign the new macro to a toolbar or to a keyboard shortcut. 3. To begin recording the macro, go to Edit | Paste Special |Unformatted Text and click OK. 4. When you're finished recording, click the macro recorder's Stop button. If you prefer to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, assign the "paste special unformatted text" macro to the Key combination [Alt]M. The [Alt]M key combination by default has no specific functionality assigned to it, it's easy to reach, and there are no main-level menu options that use M as the hot key in combination with the [Alt] key. |
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| Line Pointers | |
| Have you ever needed to draw directions on top
of a map graphic? There are a couple of ways to do this with Word,
but one in particular will give you a clean, uninterrupted line.
First, display the Drawing toolbar, click either the Line or Arrow tool, then click and drag to draw the first segment of the journey. Next, rather than using multiple line objects to draw the rest of your path, simply expand this first line by right-clicking on the line and choosing Edit Points. Now when you mouse over the line object, the cursor will change to a crosshair with a circle in the middle. Click on the line and drag in any direction to bend the line in a new angle. If you want to add a new segment, right-click on the line and choose Add Point. When you do, Word will add a new bending point to the line object. Then you can click and drag on that point to create yet another segment, and you're guaranteed that all of the individual segments will be connected in an uninterrupted fashion. |
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| Troubleshoot Fields | |
| Do you provide telephone support for Word users?
Here are some troubleshooting tips that can come in handy, no matter
which version of Word you support.
If the customer complains that previously normal looking text
has disappeared and been replaced by braces and strange looking
text, chances are the user has inadvertently toggled Word's Field
Code setting. There are two ways the user could've done this: 2. Or, the user could've right-clicked on the text returned by a field and chosen the Toggle Field Codes option from the context menu. In either case, the fix is simply to press [Alt][F9] again. If customers call for assistance finding and reviewing field codes
in a document, there are a couple of ways you can help: 2. If the user's document is long and contains curly braces within the normal text, ask the user to press [Ctrl][Home] to move to the top of the document, and then press [F11]. Each time the user presses [F11], Word moves to and highlights the next field in the document. To move to the previous field, press [Shift][F11]. The [F11]/[Shift][F11] shortcuts work whether field codes are toggled on or off. |
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| Table Cell Addresses | |
| You can do much more with Word tables than simply
store information in them. For instance, you can compose fairly complex
and useful equations with Word's built-in table functions.
Word's cell addresses work just like those in an Excel spreadsheet: 2. In cells A1 and B1, enter any two numbers. 3. Click in the third cell (C1) and go to Table | Formula. 4. In the Formula field, enter =MAX(A1:B1), and click OK. When you do, Word will display in C1 the larger of the values from table cells A1 and B1. There are two things to remember when you use table cell references in formulas. First, if you change the value in one of the cells referenced by the formula, you must update the cell that contains the formula by selecting it and pressing [F9]. Second, Word table cell references are always absolute. For example, if you insert a new column on the leftmost edge of your table, your formula =MAX(A1:B1) will remain unchanged, so that Word will look at the value in the new column A. In Excel, on the other hand, if you insert a new column A, a formula like =MAX(A1:B1) will automatically become =MAX(B1:C1). |
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| Charting Trends | |
| You don't have to be a spreadsheet wizard to create
eye-catching charts. If you can create a Word table, you can use
Microsoft Graph Chart to create a visually appealing chart based
on that table.
First, you need a table with at least two rows. In the first row, enter descriptive labels for your data. In the rest of the rows, enter the data you want to chart. If you like, you can enter row-level text labels in the leftmost column of your table. If you do, the charting tool will ignore the first cell in the top-level corner of the table.
Once you have a table, it takes only a few mouse clicks to create
a chart: 2. Go to Insert | Object, click the Create New tab, and select Microsoft Graph Chart. Click OK. 3. Two new objects will appear: the chart itself and a Datasheet window. At this point, you're free of the constraints of the Word table. 4. In the datasheet, you can add columns, change column and row labels, and update the values you want to chart. Your chart will automatically reflect the changes you make. 5. When you finish fine-tuning the data, click the Datasheet's close box. (You are now free to delete the original Word table.) 6. To edit the values on which the chart is based, right-click on the chart, choose Chart Object from the context menu, and choose Edit.
If you would like to create a chart without creating a table first, begin with Step 2 above and create a chart from scratch. |
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| Watermark Tips | |
| When you add a watermark to your document, you
typically repeat the same text or picture on every page. For instance,
common watermarks include the words "Confidential" or "Draft," or
a watermark-style version of the company logo. But you don't have
to use the same watermark on every page. Word makes it easy to create
a different watermark for each page in your document, if you like.
Here's how to create a watermark that will appear on only one
page: 2. Click on the image to select it. If the Picture toolbar doesn't appear, go to View | Toolbars | Picture to display it. 3. Click the Picture toolbar's Text Wrapping button and choose Behind Text from the list of options. 4. Move the picture where you want it to appear on the page, and resize it if necessary. 5. Click the Picture toolbar's Image Control tool and select Watermark from the list of options.
That image will appear as a watermark behind the text on the current page. If you want to create a traditional watermark that appears on every page, first go to View | Header And Footer. Then follow the same five steps listed above. This time, the image you add will appear on every page of the document. |
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| Fine-Tune Images | |
| If you use Word to create newsletters, marketing
copy, or other print documents that include images, there's one picture-editing
tool that can make the difference between publishing an image that
works and one that merely takes up space: the Crop tool. For instance,
instead of publishing an image that shows a very small person in
the middle of a lot of wasted space, you can use the Crop tool to
zoom in on the important part of the image.
You can demonstrate how this tool works by copying any graphic image from a Web page and pasting it into your Word document, or insert an image from the clip art gallery by going to Insert | Picture | Clip Art. Next, click on the object. If the Picture toolbar doesn't automatically appear, go to View | Toolbars | Picture to display it. Now, float the mouse over one of the square sizing handles on the image's corners. By default, clicking on one of those handles and dragging it inward shrinks the entire image. To tighten the image by eliminating wasted space, find the Crop tool (the icon that looks like an upside-down letter "V" superimposed onto another "V") and click on it once. When you do, a copy of the Crop tool icon will appear under your mouse. With the Crop tool, when you click on one of the sizing handles and drag inward, the picture shrinks, temporarily erasing that part of the image. The Crop handle also lets you expand the image and redisplay any sections you previously cropped. |
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| Managing Versions | |
| Some Word users mistakenly assume that the only
way to store multiple versions of a document is by going to File | Save
As and saving separate copies of the file. Manually saving
different versions of a file works well enough, as long as you don't
lose, accidentally delete, or overwrite any of the document copies.
Word offers a way to track different versions of your document that makes it almost impossible to lose the old versions. To use this method, go to File | Versions and click the Save Now button. When you do, the Save Version dialog box will appear. In the Comments On Version field, type notes to yourself or to future reviewers regarding this version--such as why you're saving it or what is significant about it compared to other versions--then click OK. If you haven't previously saved the file, Word will prompt you to save the document. You can repeat that process for as many versions of the document as you like. When you need to review an earlier version of the document, go to File | Versions. In the Existing Versions section, you'll now see a row corresponding to each version of the document that has been saved. That information includes the date and time when each version was saved, the user ID of the person who saved the version, and the first few characters of the comments. Click the View Comments button to see all of the comments entered. When you double-click on any of the versions listed in the Existing Versions section of the Versions dialog box, Word opens a brand-new window and shows you the document as it appeared when that version was saved. You can make changes to this version of the document, but if you try to save the file, Word will force you to give the file a new name. The only way to delete a version from a document is to go to File | Versions, select the version, and press [Delete]. |
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| Copy That Format | |
| When beginning users discover Word's abundant
formatting options, they layer on the options until they've crafted
the perfect paragraph. Then two questions arise: How do I save this
style for future use, and how do I apply it to existing paragraphs?
To save settings quickly, select the paragraph, then click in the Formatting toolbar's Style field, type the new style name, and press [Enter] to save the style. Later, you can go to Format | Style and modify the new style if you need to.
Here are three ways to copy or apply that style to another paragraph. - Select the text to be reformatted, and then select the appropriate style name from the Formatting toolbar's Style list. - Select the text that contains the formatting you want to copy, click on the Standard toolbar's Format Painter, and then click-and-drag to select the text you want to format. - For users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse, select the text that contains the formatting you want to copy, and then press [Ctrl][Shift]C. Next, select the text you want to format and press [Ctrl][Shift]V. |
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| Use This Macro to Find Things Fast | |
| A time-honored trick used by many word processing
operators is to use an asterisk [*] to mark each place in a boilerplate
document where users need to insert new or custom information. It's
a low-tech trick that's easy to use. Press [Ctrl]F to summon the Find
And Replace dialog box, type an asterisk, and press [Enter].
After you close the dialog box, the asterisk will remain selected,
and you can delete it by starting to type.
There are a couple of ways to repeat that find. You can click the Next Find/GoTo button at the bottom of Word's vertical scroll bar, or you can press [Ctrl][Page Down]. If you'd like to keep your hands close to the keyboard when you're walking through the asterisks in a document, consider creating a macro to execute the find and assigning that macro to a keyboard shortcut. You'll want to make it a keyboard combination that you can easily remember and one that doesn't conflict with any built-in keyboard assignments that you or other users use routinely. Here's an example of a macro you could use. You can customize this macro by replacing the asterisk with whatever text you use as a placeholder in your boilerplate documents.
Sub FindAsterisk() |
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