what's your favourite feature of word

  • Thread starter Thread starter JulieD
  • Start date Start date
Yeah, it's such a bummer that the only way that you can get to WordPerfect
is by starting Word and then pressing Exit

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
 
I have two favorite features of Word 2002:

1. Using the Clipboard to have multiple copies and being able to paste them
at will. I believe this started in Word 2000 and increased in Word 2002. I
don't use it every day, but it is a Godsend when you are doing certain types
of documents.

2. My all time favorite is the ability to Create Auto Text. I see so many
people retyping the same stuff with almost every document. By making an
Auto Text entry one time, you get to use the text over and over by simply
typing the first four letters of the word.

I have shown the Create Auto Text feature to a number of co-workers and I
can see them looking in awe at how easy it is to do and then they are
thinking of the numerous ways in which they can use the Auto Text!!
 
I've never gotten in the habit of using the Office Clipboard, but your post
reminds me that I ought to try it out. And if you think AutoText is awesome,
you should investigate AutoCorrect (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/ExploitingAutoCorrect.htm)

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
I've regarded the multiple clipboard as an annoyance as opposed to a
benefit. It pops up when pasting something even though I'm only
pasting a single item. Readily admit that I don't know how to use
it, and it's not enough of an issue to spend 30 mins. reading all
about it in Word's help files.

It would be a good thing if you were to write a succinct "How-to"
and "Why you'd want to use this feature" for the terrific Word
MVPs web site. You could enlighten many of us. Thanks.
 
While I am not a contributor to the Word MVP site, since I was the person
who, I believe, initially posted my fondness for the Clipboard, let me
explain how and why I use it.



Firstly, I too find the Clipboard task pane an annoyance most of the time. I
chose not to have it staring at me for most of my work, so I simply hide the
Task Pane or have a different part of the Task Pane visible.



A recent job I undertook was to work for a school district and take all of
the curriculum guides that had been typed, handwritten or on diskette and
put them all onto the template that the curriculum committee wanted. This
work was for a high school in Massachusetts and all of the guides had to
conform to state standards with a huge amount of educational jargon on each
page. Some of the guides for just one course totaled over 100 legal size
pages, but the actual content from the teacher was relatively tiny, with the
bulk of the text coming from the state standards on



Framework Strands

Framework Standards

Assessment

Performance Rubrics

Instructional Standards

Student Performance Levels, etc., etc., etc.



Most of this was extremely repetitive. Each page might have had only a tiny
input from the teacher, and the rest was how that tiny item related to the
state standards.



Leave it to the state to take a simple two page summary of the year and turn
it into a 100 page behemoth! But these guides had to be done that way in all
subjects!



When the teachers did the guides, they were using many of the same text
entries on page after page.



It certainly would have been possible to copy one and then paste it, copy
another and then paste it, go back and copy the first one and then paste it,
etc.



What I did was copy them all and paste them onto the Clipboard in Word 2002.
Now as I was looking at the teachers handwritten notes, or as I was looking
at his typed file where he had put in the number of the Strand, Standard,
Rubric (or whatever), I would take that item from the appropriate place on
the Clipboard and simply paste the full entry into the right section. With
24 entries available, I was all set for that particular subject. When I was
doing another subject, I would have to copy the items that applied there so
I could use them later.



Each item on the Clipboard displays three lines of the entry so you can
easily tell one Clipboard entry from the other and pick the right one.



This one job took me almost 200 hours. Having the Clipboard available made
things so much easier.



As happens almost always, you could find other ways of doing the same thing.
But for my way of working, the Clipboard was my tool of choice.



In short, I would not bother with the Clipboard for a routine letter, memo,
etc. But for doing other types of jobs, Word 2002 more than paid for itself
by having this feature available!!
 
OK, thanks, Steven. I have a much clearer view. We agree that
it's not particularly advantageous if one is merely pasting the
occasional clipboard entry. I can appreciate how multiple
clipboard entries helped you.

You also gave us a view inside dysfunctional educational
systems. A two-page summary turning into a 200 page
monster. No wonder people don't want to teach anymore.

Thanks again.

Uncle Joe
 
AA said:
*> First off, what's up with all the double posts in this forum? e.g
The


I'm not seeing them. Are you sure they are different posts or i
your
newsreader picking them up twice? *
Click to expand...

This isn't a news reader. This is Internet Explorer (version 6). An
the double posts also happen on my Firefox web browser at home. Fo
example, Suzanne's post above starting with "The double posts seem t
be coming from WordForums.com." is repeated 3 times, no less. And i
other threads, you could see a string of posts (2 or 3 posts one afte
the other) repeated in order 2 or 3 times as well. It gets highl
repetitive and a little annoying. Especially as these posts quote othe
posts and 2 entire pages in the thread are taken up by these repeatin
posts.

Currently, this thread takes up 3 pages, but would probably only tak
up 2 if the posts didn't keep on repeating themselves.

I'm not sure why you're not seeing double, but I am...

Edit: I've just gotten the idea that a lot of people here actuall
browse these threads using a news reader, and not a web browser throug
www.wordforums.com, so yes, it could be a bug in the forum scripts
 
I'm not sure why you're not seeing double, but I am...
I think I did see a few double posts, but they're not there anymore.
I'm thinking my offline reader, Virtual Access, might vanish the
duplicates and the only reason I saw a few was that I had the folder
open when I was retrieving messages.
 
Virtually 100% of MVPs (and most of the other sophisticated users who are
permitted to) do use a newsreader rather than any type of Web portal
(Google, Microsoft Office Community, WordForums, etc.). Of all the Web
portals, WordForums is the worst from the standpoint of propagation (seeing
your own post appear and seeing replies to it in a timely fashion). If you
view the newsgroups with an NNTP newsreader pointing directly to
msnews.microsoft.com, propagation is instantaneous.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
view the newsgroups with an NNTP newsreader pointing directly t
msnews.microsoft.com
Click to expand...
You're kidding, so all the anti-MS BS I've posted is now immortalise
on their servers. Oh well, those guys need to hear a dose of realit
every now and then. Yes, their software truly does have horrible bug
(from a user point of view) which never ever get fixed.

I'll see what I can do about using a news reader though. The last tim
I used one was on Unix way back in my Uni days (mid to late 90's).
actually thought UseNet was dying out considering the proliferation o
web-based forums, but I suppose it's still going strong
 
What you've written is not immortalized on Microsoft's servers, on which
posts are removed after 30-90 days, but they are, as Graham points out,
archived by Google. There is no guarantee or even likelihood, however, that
anyone from MS reads any of them.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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