MS Word 2007–Few Basic Tips

6. Create a master document

If you’d like to collate a whole bunch of smaller documents into one, easy to read document, you can create a Master Document. A Master Document doesn’t merge files, rather it links to existing separate files, and makes it look like they’re part of the one document. The advantage is, whenever you update one of the smaller files, (since it’s live-linked) it will also update in the Master Document.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to create page numbers and so on in the header and footer of the Master Document, not the individual smaller documents, or managing your page numbers could become very difficult to handle.

Change to Outline View by clicking the fourth icon on the bottom right next to the zoom controls in. The view will change, and the Outline toolbar will appear.

1.Type in a heading in the document to represent the file you want to import
2.Now click the Show Document button, then the Insert button, and choose the file you want to link to
3.The process is the same for all subsequent documents. Save the Master Document to a unique file name
4.You can compress the Outline view to just the linked locations of the files by clicking the Collapse Subdocuments button
5.You can view the entire live-merged document by making sure the Subdocuments are expanded (by hitting the same button as above), and then selecting any of the other page views
6.You can edit the individual linked files by double clicking on the torn page icon next to the Subdocument, listed in the Outline view of the Master Document.

7. Stop Spell-Check

Speed up spell-check by preventing Word from grammar-proofing your documents.
To disable it, click on the Review tab , click the Spelling & Grammar button, and then hit the Options button. Deselect both “Mark grammar errors as you type” and “Check grammar with spelling”, then click OK.

8. Prevent Word 2007 to put horrible spacing

By default Word 2007 inserts a trailing space after every carriage return, and makes things a little more spread out. To return this to normal for every document:
1.Click the Home menu, then click on the small Line Spacing button (it’s the fifth from the left in the Paragraph section)
2.Select Line Spacing Options
3.Under the Spacing section, set After to 0 pt (by clicking small up arrow), and set “Line spacing” to single
4.Click the “Default” button, It’ll show you a warning, click Yes.

From now on, all new documents will now use proper spacing.

9. Make Word 2007 save to .doc by default

Word 2007 uses a highly incompatible .docx file format for saving files, making it difficult to share with friends and colleagues who don’t have the same version (2007).

To change this:
1.Click the Office button.
2.Click the Word Options button
3.On the left-hand side, select Save
4.Change the Save files in this format drop down box to Word 97 – 2003 Document (*.doc)
5.Click OK.

10. Customizing Quick Access toolbar

Word 2007 has very handy new feature of Quick access toolbar with one click shortcuts of different command or functions same as in Windows Taskbar.
By default you have only 3 options of “Save, undo and redo”.

But you can customize this toolbar, with the commands you use most frequently.

To customize:

1.Click the Office button in the top left
2.Click the Word Options button
3.On the left-hand side, select Customize.
4. Choose the options (from left menu) and Click “Add” button in middle to add those commands to quick access toolbar.
5. Click OK to see the changes.

11. Recent Documents

One of the most handy features of MS Word for quickly accessing your most recently used documents.

Best part is that you can “pin” your most important documents or documents you don’t want to slide down the menu or disappear as the new documents open.
To pin the documents, simply Click Office Button, and press the Small pin in front of each document to “pin” it permanently.

By default Word allows you to keep 17 Most recent documents in the list.

But you can increase or decrease the number of documents to be placed in the list.

To change the number of documents to show:

1. Go to the Word Options.
2. From left-hand side, select “Advanced”.
3. Scroll down to the middle of the right screen that opens.
4. Under “Display” Section, find “Show this Number of Recent Documents”.
5. Change the number you want.
6. Click OK.

There are so many other options to explore in “Word Options” beside these.

Like if have tired of same default Blue color of MS Office, and wanna change it.. you can !

To change the color scheme:

1.Click the same Office button in the top left
2.Click the Word Options button
3.On the screen that comes first, find “Color Scheme” drop down box.
4. And change it to Black, Silver, or Blue.

Remember:This will not only change the color of MS Word but it’ll also change color scheme of all MS Office Products installed on your system.

If you want to know how to make MS Office documents uneditable or password-protected?
You can learn here

If you any problem regarding these MS Word 2007 tips, do tell me.

Thanks.