How to Restart Style-Based Numbering

The most reliable way of creating numbered paragraphs is to use paragraph styles to apply the numbering. This makes all paragraphs with the same numbered style belong to the same numbered list, and numbering is continuous through the whole document.

Aldis, Margaret. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Information Design>Microsoft Word

How to Safely Update a Document's Styles from its Template Without Using the Organizer

If you want to update the style definitions of a document with the style definitions in its attached template, you can manually select Tools + Templates and Add-ins, check the box which says 'Automatically update document styles', click OK; and then, because that setting is sticky (and most of the time, undesirable), immediately select Tools + Templates and Add-ins again, deselect the 'Automatically update document styles' box, and click OK.

Rado, Dave, Margaret Aldis, Ian Sharpe and Beth Melton. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Style Sheets>Microsoft Word

How to Save Yourself Hours by Using Outline View Properly

Word's Outline View is wonderful for long documents and – used properly – can cut the time taken to write a typical report, proposal, thesis, or dissertation by as much as 50%.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

How to Set Up a Document with Front Matter Numbered Separately

Publishers call the preliminary pages in a book the 'front matter.' They aren’t always numbered separately—some books start with the title page as page 1 and are paginated continuously throughout—but when there is a significant amount of front matter, it’s conventional to number it using lowercase roman numerals.

Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word

How Word differs from WordPerfect

WordPerfect considers a document to be a 'type stream.' If you picture WordPerfect sitting on the end of the printer cable, sending characters one-by-one, and every now and again inserting a COMMAND to change what the printer is doing, you'll get the idea. For example, WP sends the commands for 'Arial' font and 'bold'. It then expects the printer to print every character that way until it tells the printer to do something else. Word, on the other hand, considers a document to be a 'container.' Within this container are more containers and, within them, still more. Into each of these containers, Word inserts objects. The objects can be bits of text, or bits of pictures, or complete files created by other applications.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

I Have a "Name" Column Which I Want to Split Into "FirstName", "LastName": How Can I Do It?

Word's sorting capability is fairly rudimentary, especially for those migrating to it from WordPerfect (though it's surprising how many people don't realize Word can sort paragraphs, not just tables – or maybe not so surprising, given where the item is in the menus! The ability to sort on word 2 in field 3 would certainly be very useful (in Excel as well). But there are various things you can do in the meantime.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Databases>Microsoft Word

I Want to Include the Chapter Number with the Page Number in the Header

If you insist on doing this – and if you do, don't say I didn't warn you! – then the best procedure is as follows.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word

Is there life after "Reveal Codes"?

There is nothing in Word directly comparable to Reveal Codes in WordPerfect. There is a very good reason for this. WordPerfect can be thought of (and I understand is) basically a text stream with codes interspersed (for more on this, see John McGhie's article on Word vs. WordPerfect). This is what you see when you Reveal Codes. You have codes or markers that turn on and off certain formatting characteristics. Word, on the other hand, is a series of nesting containers, characters inside words inside paragraphs inside sections inside documents. The formatting of these is by styles and by pointers at the beginning and end of the document.

Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Making Your Mail Merge "Intelligent" by Using IF Fields

Almost any mail merge will work better if you use IF fields, as the frequently used scenarios discussed below attempt to illustrate.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Databases>Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word 2004 Document Corruption

If your problem manifests with just one document (or a specific subset of documents), but not with all documents, it is probable that you’re suffering from document corruption. Symptoms may include weird page numbering (drag the thumb down the right vertical margin and watch the page number counter – it will go crazy when you pass a corruption) infinite repagination, incorrect document layout and formatting, unreadable characters on the screen, hangs or crashes when you load or view a particular file. Such corruption is generally carried in the very last paragraph mark in a document, which is the marker for a hidden container in which Word stores all document properties including formatting information.

McGhie, John and Beth Rosengard. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

"Page X of Y" Gives Wrong Numbers

If you have applied the latest service release for your version of Word, and you still have the Page X of Y problem, any of the solutions mentioned below will work for you.

Rado, Dave and Suzanne Barnhill. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Positioning Floating Objects

Word 2000 can be a nightmare when it comes to positioning shapes – Word 97 was much more predictable.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Ruler of All You Survey: How to Make the Best Use of Word's Rulers

If you work for a company of any size at all, then simply getting your staff to use the ruler properly will save them many hours every week, and significantly increase your company's profitability.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Running a Macro Automatically When a Document is Created, Opened or Closed

If you want a macro to be fired whenever any document is opened, regardless of which template the document is attached to, the simplest way is to write an AutoOpen macro and store it in Normal.dot.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word

Some of the Most Useful Word Shortcuts

This list doesn't attempt to be comprehensive, but is a list of the shortcuts which save me the most time.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Strait and Narrow: Using Columns

When you open a new blank document in Word, you begin typing at the left side of the screen/page and continue typing to the right margin, where Word wraps your text back to the left so you can start again. All your lines of text are full width. But sometimes you need to divide your text into two or more columns.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Troubleshooting Word 2004 for Macintosh

If you have no clue what is causing your problem with Word, work through The Basics and all the General Troubleshooting topics. Beyond the basics, probably 70% of the problems in Word are caused by a corrupt Normal template or corrupt Preferences.

Word MVP Site, The (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Turning Word into a Pseudo-Database by Using Mail Merge Query Options

Purists might argue that the power it gives ordinary users isn't necessary because they should use Access queries for this sort of thing and link the merge to the query. But in my experience, many people who are very comfortable working with Word and Excel find Access (or any full-fledged database application) very difficult to work with, and can get the job done far more quickly and easily using a combination of Word and Excel. At the end of the day, getting the job done is what matters. The vast majority of the world's databases (in terms of number of databases, rather than in terms of amount of data) are stored in Excel spreadsheets.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Databases>Microsoft Word

Typographical Tips from Microsoft Publisher

In one form or another, Word is ubiquitous. If you buy a new computer, chances are good that it will come with some version of Office or Works Suite (which includes Word) installed. Word is a powerful word processing program that incorporates many of the features of a page layout application, but there are times when a page layout or desktop publishing application is what is needed. If you are using the Small Business Edition of Office 97 or Office 2000 SBE, Professional, or Premium, you have such a program: Microsoft Publisher.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Typography>Microsoft Publisher

Using MacroButton Fields

The macrobutton field can be used as a text marker within a template, or, as the name implies, it can be used to run a macro.

Mayor, Graham, Jonathan West and Hak-lok Ng. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

What Do All Those Funny Marks, Like the Dots Between the Words in My Document and the Square Bullets in the Left Margin Mean?

Occasionally a new user of Word is alarmed to discover that his previously pristine document is full of strange symbols – dots, arrows, paragraphs marks, and the like. For experienced users, the usual reaction of such a user seems almost comical because experienced users know how invaluable the display of nonprinting characters can be both in formatting and in troubleshooting documents.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Why Do All the Page Numbers in my Word 2002 Document Display as 0?

Word 2002 will display 0 for all page numbers in headers or footers, and all page numbers in a Table of Contents, in the following circumstances.

Kelly, Shauna. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word

Why Does the Appearance (or Layout) of My Document Change When I Open it on a Different Machine?

Because Word is a WYSIWYG application, it will always try to represent on screen the result you will get if you print on the printer that is selected as the default. Changing printer drivers will almost always change the layout at least slightly and sometimes radically. There are a number of ways to minimize the changes.

Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word

Why Master Documents Corrupt

The complete explanation would be a book in itself. For now, it is enough to know that a Word document is a great big 'list' of objects. An object can be anything you can put in a Word document. Each of these objects has many, many 'properties' that determine how it appears and how it behaves.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Word for Windows Commands, and Their Descriptions, Default Shortcuts and Menu Assignments

Word has a built-in command ListCommands, which produces a table of all the Word commands with their current key and menu assignments. However, it does not list the commands using their actual names; nor does it include descriptions of what the commands actually do.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word