Navigating your way through your word document

You’ve probably used the double arrow buttons to go from page to page, but did you ever wonder what the circle was for?  If you hover your mouse over it, it will say “Select Browse Object”

If you click on it, you’ll see a number of pictures

Each of them gives you a different feature that comes in really handy at different times.

The first button, the arrow pointing right will give you a “Go to” dialog box that you can also get by hitting Ctrl G. 

The binoculars will open up the find dialog box (which is also the replace dialog box on the other tab).

The pencil will allow you to browse by edits.   So when you click on the double arrows, it will go from edit to edit.  Now if you don’t remember where you’ve edited, you might think the button is drunk or not working correctly.

The Browse by Headings is helpful if you’ve used styles.  This is especially great if you have a long document and have the headings to go from one to another.

Browse by Graphic.  This of course will take you from picture to picture.

Browse by Table, so if you have a number of tables in your document, you can go from one to another quickly and easily.

Browse by field.  No this is not a corn field or any other produce.  This is the different merge fields in your document.

The next two, browse by End Note and Footnote are two sides of the coin. 

The yellow guy is browse by comment.    If you’ve inserted comments, searching for them can drive you nuts, and this guy will help keep you sane.

The two pieces of paper with the arrow is for browsing for when you change paper direction.  You do know that your Word document can have pages going in different directions or even  different sizes, like having the envelope and the letter in one document.

The last one is the one we’re all familiar with, browsing by page. 

Now go out and give the other buttons a chance. 

My kingdom for a Tab stop…well maybe just my document for a tab stop

Tabs are very useful things especially since we are all using proportional type (there is space in the width of a w for five letter I’s). In the very old days, you could get away with using spaces instead of tabs. On a typewriter you could put in a tab, but they only justified on the left.  Word’s tabs can left justify, center, right justify, decimal tabs and even draw a vertical line down your text.

Word’s default is to set a tab every half inch.

If you know the measurement for your tab stops (I want one at .5, 2.25 and 7”) then you can easily use the tab setting in the paragraph menu.

Once you click on the tab button in the lower left, you’ll see

This is where you will type in the measurements for the tabs that you want.  Below is a sample of what each one of the five options gives you for settings:

The top of each column tells you what type of tab it is except for the bar tab. It’s the three vertical lines. With a bar tab, you just set it and anytime you type a line, it will insert a vertical bar in your data.

You also have the option of leaders (those dots between the text and page number in a table of contents).  Most times you will probably choose none, but having the other three choices is handy. To set these, click on the tab you want to change to one of the other types.  Left and none are the default choices. Also here’s where you can clear all the tabs. It only does it in the section that you’re working in.

For me, most times I don’t know what measurements I want, I just want to set a tab. To set a tab and be looking at your data, you need to make sure that your ruler is turned on. It should be located on the view menu. Here’s the s on the ruler for the previous sample:

Notice the L (left tab) the three short vertical lines are where my bars are. The upside down T is a center tab. This one will allow you to center text over a column or some other data instead of the center of the line. The backwards facing L is the right tab, where everything is justified on the right side. The last one is the decimal tab which is the upside down T but with a dot in the upper right corner. To change from one type of tab stop to another, on the far left side of the ruler, you will see the L for a left tab. Just keep clicking until you get the one you want.

There are two more icons on here, the upside down triangle and the rectangle.  The upside down triangle controls the first line of your paragraph. You were probably taught to tab to indent a paragraph; you’re showing your age!!!   If you are planning on writing a document with the first line indented, set this guy to how far you want the line indented, and all of the paragraphs that you type will be the same.  Now if you’ve done your document in block style (everything to the left), and now you want each first line of a paragraph indented, select all the paragraphs, and once you have the first line indent chosen on the far left, you can click where you want all the paragraphs indented. If you’re careful, you can grab the downward facing triangle on your ruler and drag it to where you want, but remember only the very tip of your mouse pointer is the active part.

The other icon is the rectangle, and it controls all the other lines in your paragraph. This is used when you want a hanging indent, for example when you want 1. Tab and text, and you want the 1 to be hanging to the left of the rest of the paragraph. This is set the same way as the first line indent.  To me this is very interesting, because if you were just using the icons on the ruler, you would want to grab the upward pointing triangle and drag it for the remaining lines indent.  The rectangle below it will move both the first line and the rest of the paragraph indent together as a pair.

One thing really nice about tabs, and using the ruler, is if you find out that your data is longer than the space you had set, you can select your text and then drag the icon to where you want it to be now. The text will automatically move as you’re dragging the icon around.

Page Numbers

Page numbers can be the bane of many a person's Word document.

There are so many choices. Do you just want the page number? Do you want the Page of So Many Pages? Do you want the Roman numbers (iii) and then have it change to Arabic numbers? (3)

Word can do all of these. It's just figuring out how to get it to behave.

When you choose insert page numbers, Word will ask top or bottom, and then where do you want the number to be positioned. There are more choices the later the version of Office you have. Once you have made your choices, you'll find that Word has put your page number into a footer or header. Why is this a good thing? If you are going to be making edits to the body of the text, Word will automatically keep track of the where the page numbers should be, and make sure they are there.

Now you have page numbers, but you wanted Roman numbers. To change to Roman or if you wanted to add the word Chapter or some other prefix to the number (Section 45 – Page 3), you would do that with Page numbers formatting. Go back to where you choose page numbers, and you will see a number of choices

The number format is where you can choose what page number format you want to use.

Notice how you can include a chapter number. Notice that it asks what style your chapter starts with. One of the lessons coming up soon is styles. Styles are a set of formatting and items that Word needs to keep track of for things like table of contents.

The next option in Page Number formatting is whether to continue from previous section or start at. The main purpose that I have used this is when I want to switch from Roman to Arabic numbering. You would normally keep the page number continuing from the previous section.(Sections are important items when you want to change your paper layout; when you want to go from one column to multiple columns and back again; and any other items that Word absolutely needs to obey.

Sections can also get you in trouble. I was working on a document that had been touched by a number of volunteers. Somehow, they had the document going from page 5 to page 7.No page 6.The material wasn't missing anything; just the page number was missing. The culprit was Sections, and a "don't copy from previous section" in the footer. Once I killed that (a 10 second action), the problem was solved.
One thing that I've noticed on 2010, and don't remember in 2007, is that they now have a remove page numbers.

Give it a try and let me know if you have any questions or problems.
Lexi