Word to the Wise: Try These Useful Tools

Microsoft Word is the most popular word processor on the market. But it’s loaded with features most of us never use simply because we don’t know how. Here are some of the most useful Word tips.

There are printers that can print on both sides of a page, but they are expensive. Word lets you print on both sides of a page by creating a simple work-around. Click on File and then on Print. In the Print dialogue box, click on the down arrow just to the right of “Print: All pages in range.” Select “Odd pages” and click OK. Now place the printed pages back in the printer so that the blank side of the pages can be printed. Repeat the procedure from before, but this time select “Even pages.” The result is two-sided printing without an expensive printer.

If statistics are your thing, Word keeps information on open documents. Click on Tools and then on Word Count. The Word Count statistics box opens to display the number of pages, words, characters including spaces, characters with no spaces, paragraphs and lines used. If you find these statistics useful, click on Tools and then on Options. Click on the Spelling & Grammar tab and click in the box that appears to the left of “Show readability statistics.” Click OK. Word now will present these statistics every time you spell-check a document.

When text is highlighted, you can cut, paste, copy, bold and underline it.

To highlight a word, place your cursor anywhere in that word and double-click. By default, Word will highlight the entire word. If you need to highlight a single character, click on Tools and then on Options. Click on the Edit tab and then click on the check mark to the left of “When selecting, automatically select entire word.”

To highlight a single line, place your cursor to the left of that line. Your cursor will change from a vertical line to an arrow. Now click once to highlight that line, or double-click to highlight the entire paragraph.

To highlight a large area of text, place your cursor at the beginning of the text and click once. Now hold down the Shift key, scroll down to the end of the text you wish to highlight, and click once.

You can highlight an entire document by placing your cursor anywhere in the document, holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the “A” key.

In long documents, Word lets you go to a specific page. Double-click in the lower left portion of the document where the current page number is. On the Go To tab, highlight Page and then enter the page number you want in the “Enter page number” box to the right. You also can move back and forth by using the plus and minus keys. For example, entering “+4” in that box will move you forward four pages from the current page. Entering “-3” will move you back three pages from the current page.

To create page numbers in your document, click on Insert and then on Page Numbers. You can select the position (top or bottom of the page) and the alignment (right, center or left). There also is a check mark that lets you turn page numbering on the first page on or off.

Word lets you make an envelope part of your document. Click on Tools and then on Envelopes and Labels. Click on the Envelope tab and then fill in both your return address and the address of the recipient. Click on the Add to document button to make the envelope part of the document. An added benefit is that there is much more flexibility in making changes to the font and layout of the envelope once it has been made a part of the document. Check your printer manual for instructions on how to manually feed a single envelope.

Jeff Levy hosts the “On Computers” radio talk show from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on KFI-AM (640).