Did you know you can cut and paste with Microsoft Spike? Probably not! Word has a hidden feature that most people do not know about to collect text on the clipboard from multiple locations and then paste it in to your document all in one go! Most Word users are familiar with using the clipboard to copy and paste text, but Spike works in a slightly different way.
Highlight the paragraph of text you would like to cut
Press CTRL+F3
Select the next paragraph of text you would like to cut
Press CTRL+F3
Continue cutting text from your document in this way. The paragraphs do not need to be next to each other, you can cut from anywhere in the document to move them to the clipboard.
Once you have finished cutting, you can paste all of the paragraphs in the order that you cut them into another part of the document,
Press CTRL+SHIFT+F3, OR
Type spikeand press F3
This clever piece of functionality utilises the Quick Parts feature in the background and is a useful trick to remember next time you are formatting a long document.
Hands up if this applies to you. You’ve spent hours working on an awesome document, typing and formatting like a mad thing, switching from one window to the next when suddenly….ahh! You’ve accidently closed the document you were working on without saving. *Cue lots of colourful language and crying*. Fortunately, Word 2013 allows you to recover your unsaved documents.
Click File to go to the backstage area
Click Info
Click the Manage Versions drop-down arrow
Click Recover Unsaved Documents
Select your document and click Open
A yellow warning message will display across the top of the document.
Click Save As
Save your document as normal
Tip 2: Edit a PDF in Word 2013
If there is one thing sure to infuriate me, it’s receiving a form or document that I need to complete in PDF format! For years, PDF was the ‘go to’ file format if you wanted to prevent others from editing your document. Well not anymore! In Word 2013, you can easily edit and make changes to a PDF document. You can almost hear the sound of Microsoft users everywhere rejoicing!
Click the File menu to go to the backstage area
Click the Open tab
Navigate to the correct folder and select the PDF file
Click Open
A dialogue box will appear informing you that your PDF file will be converted to an editable Word Document. It is worth noting that if your document contains a lot of images or graphics it might not look exactly like the original PDF and may need some ‘tweaking’.
Click OK
Tip 3: Preserve your eyeballs and switch to Read Mode
Read Mode is a great option to use if you find yourself spending time reading or checking long documents. Also, if you are like me and find it easier to read text on a darker background, you can switch the background colour and give your eyeballs a well needed break from black on stark white. All of the document review options you know, love and need are still available in Read Mode.
Click the View tab
Click Read Mode
The document layout will change to an easy-to-read, two page per screen format.
Click the grey arrow to move to the next two pages
To maximise the ‘real estate’ on the page, you can hide the toolbar by clicking the ‘Auto-hide reading toolbar’ button in the top-right corner
To change the background colour of the page
Click View
Select Page Colour from the menu
Select Sepia or Inverse
Tip 4: Replying to comments
Collaborate smarter on documents by utilising Word’s reply to comment feature. This is an inline option that enables you to directly reply to any comments added by colleagues ensuring a smoother workflow.
Ensure that you have comments showing
Right-click on the comment icon within the comment
Select Reply to Comment from the menu
Add your reply comments. These will appear slightly indented underneath the original comment and will display under your name.
Click on any colleagues name in the comments section to directly IM, Call, Video Chat or Email without leaving Word.
Tip 5: Permanently delete cropped areas of a picture
This was something that I didn’t discover until recently. Did you know that if you crop a picture in Word and then send that document to a colleague, they can see the full, uncropped picture and restore it to the original? Imagine the embarrassment of cropping out a company logo or sensitive information only for it to re-appear again with a simple click of the Crop button by a ‘Word savvy’ colleague. Don’t be an amateur, ensure you permanently delete all cropped areas before sending.
Select a picture in your document
Click the Picture Tools contextual ribbon
Click the Format tab
Click Crop
Select Crop from the drop-down menu
Drag the handles to select only the part of the picture you would like to retain
Click Crop again
Once the picture has been cropped ensure that you permanently remove the cropped section so that it cannot be restored by a colleague.
Select the picture
Click Compress Pictures
Place a tick in the ‘Delete cropped areas of picture’ tickbox
Click OK
Tip 6: Touch/Mouse Mode
In an increasingly mobile world it is becoming extremely important to be able to access and work on documents and files ‘on the go’. Mobile devices play a huge role in this with more and more people working from Smartphones and tablets. The new Touch/Mouse Mode in Word (available across all Office applications) optimises the spacing between commands for use with a mouse or a touchscreen. Yes, Microsoft have developed a solution to ‘fat finger’ syndrome. Hoorah!
Select the Touch/Mouse Mode icon on the Quick Access Toolbar
Select Touch
Tip 7: Border Painter Tool
This new feature in Word 2013 enables you to fully control your border style and placement in a table. Go crazy with your painting and decorating and really make those tables stand out!
First, setup the colour, weight and line style for the border
Select the table
Click the Design tab under the Table Tools contextual ribbon
Set the desired Border Style, Pen Colour, Line Weight
Click Border Painter. The curser will change to a paintbrush
Paint over a border of the table to apply the new style
Tip 8: Adding online video
Have you found a really awesome video on YouTube or Bing that you would love to be able to insert into your Word document to really make it come alive? Utilise Word 2013’s Online Video feature to search and add any video into your document.
Click the Insert tab
Click Online Video
Select Bing Video Search, YouTube video search or paste the video embed code directly.
Select a video
Click Insert
The video will be inserted into your document.
Click the Play button
You can also share the link to the video on social media from within the Word document.
Click the Share icon
Select a social media service to share the link on.
Microsoft have to please over a billion users of Office so there will always be some elements that people aren’t so keen on. You can tell we’re being diplomatic here can’t you? I must admit I stayed with the Windows Classic start menu when I used Windows Vista back in the day.
I had a question from a user at Land Securities during an Office demonstration session. The person was working on a small device and the Word print preview in Office 2010 and 2013 only shows the document in half the window. He missed the old print preview dialogue box where he could view the document as full screen.
When features of Office are deprecated, some of them remain in the product but are moved into the background. This is one of those features. To access the old-style Print Preview window you need to customise the Ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar. Let’s use the Quick Access Toolbar for our example. To add commands to the toolbar, click the arrow to the far right. As the command in question is not in the common commands list, select More Commands….
This will show the Customise Quick Access Toolbar page in the options window. Click on the dropbox and select All Commands to display an alphabetical list of all the Word commands; a surprising number of them.
Scroll down in the list until you see Print Preview Edit Mode. Double-click the command to add it to your Quick Access Toolbar.
And now you have the Office 2007 style Print Preview window at the touch of a button.
Whether it will still be there in the next version of Office is anyone’s guess of course, so caveat emptor or another suitable Latin phrase for be careful when using old Office commands.
