| TECH TOOLS YOU CAN REALLY USE: MS WORD
I really hit a soft spot when I blithely suggested adding a table of contents to a Word document in a recent newsletter. I received several requests...and one demand: how do you do that?
Microsoft Word is one of those software programs that is both a joy and pain. The pain first...it is an enormous program—with far too many, and far too varied, features and actions than any one person can handle. For example, making a form and having a restricted list of possible entries. Or, express a mathematical equation just like in your old math books from high school or college.
On the other hand, it can help streamline your work by relying on your own templates, form letters, and auto formatted documents. Plus, it is really easy to add features such as a table of contents and even indexing. Alright, indexing is not quick, but is often just what you need.
Template and Stationery Files
I
really like templates for my own projects because I get to determine the format, the text and information that doesn’t change, and use XXX for the part that does. I can quickly change what needs to be changed, and then send it off. I use this for standard proposals, letters of agreement, new client welcome letters, just about anything where most of the material is the same, and just a bit needs to be changed.
To make your own templates, take one of the documents you’ve already used, change out the personal info/data to XXX or something you will be sure to see, and then “save as”. This is the very important part...when the save as box comes up, look toward the bottom and see the area that says Format: Word Document.
Drop down that selection box, and then choose Word Document Stationery.
Choose a place to save it, a good name that indicates what template it is, and click on the save button. If you have the preference set to show the Word icon on saved files, you’ll see it is yellow, not white. When you next open it, it opens an untitled document, which will force you to save as, and you won’t overwrite the template. The magic of electrons.
Table of Contents and Styles
To insert a TOC you need to have text that has a Style. Note the capital S.
If your Formatting Tool bar isn’t visible on your screen, open it by clicking Toolbars on the View drop down window. This toolbar lets you set the font, size, and styles of the text, as well as many other text formatting features. On the far right is a drop down box that probably says Normal. Open the box, and reveal the other styles already entered.
A Table of Contents is developed from Headings. By formatting the sections of your document with Headings, 1, 2, 3 and so on and so on, you are also setting up the levels for a TOC.
Of course, you can re-format the various headings in Styles, found under the Format drop down window, to enhance your document or reflect your branding or business image.
When you’ve finished with the document, or just want to check the structure of what you’ve written, click your cursor at the top of page one. Choose Index and Tables from the Insert drop down window, and stand back. As you’ll see, this feature lets you index a number of features, as well as insert a table of contents.
Click on the TOC tab, choose your format, number of levels to show, check the preview for leading characters, and click okay.
The fun part of this? If you click on the page number in the TOC of the section you want to see, it will take you right to it.
The pain? You have to use styles.
Using Tables of Content with Information Gathering
I use this a lot when I am drawing info off the web. It not only catalogues the topics/articles/findings you have in each document, but you can print just the TOC on hard copy and know where to find the info you have on your hard drive.
Open a new Word document, and leave the first page blank, except for the header and footer. Insert the Topic you are researching in the header, just double click the top of the page, and page number and date. Add the page number from AutoText in the Header/Footer tool bar.
Open the footer by double clicking on the bottom of the page. Then choose File Name and Path, also on the Autotext tool bar. This adds the file name of the document and where you have stored it on your computer. If you later change where you have stored the file, the reference will change also.
Save the page in the appropriate content folder on your hard drive.
Close the header/footer, add a page break, and start adding info.
Copy the url of the info site to the top of each Info Page. Add a descriptive title, and use Heading 1 from the style drop down menu to format it.
Copy the info, including, or making any secondary headings as wanted throughout the text.
Add a hard page break at the end of the info, and repeat.
When you’ve finished with the topic, or just had enough, go back to the first page, and add the TOC.
Hard learned lesson—save early and save often! I’ve lost pages of research by not saving these kinds of files.
Print the first page to add to your hard copy notes, with any additional notes about important info you think you might be wanting to track.
Word—Not that Difficult, Just Complex
See what kinds of other tools you can find to make your business run more smoothly, save you time, and decrease your hassle factor. Start checking with the Help function when you want to do something. It will be there. If you can’t find it when you search, try a synonym.
The more proficient you get with the software tools you already have means less time getting things done, and less hassle doing the tasks you need to do.
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Patricia Wiklund Ph.D., author, consultant, and coach works with 1Person Business owners who want to grow their businesses by getting and staying focused, maximizing their sales and marketing efforts, and delivering premier services to their target markets. Information on her coaching services and on-line product catalogue can be found at www.1PersonBusiness.com You may contact Pat by email at
Pat@1PersonBusiness.com
An electronic version of this article is available if you wish to reprint or repost it. Please contact Dr. Pat Wiklund for permission to reprint, and to see if there is a royalty required for reprint. If permission is granted, we request a hard copy of the publication in which the article appears. We request you include Pat's bio at the end of the piece, along with contract information, and preferably, a photo. Both high resolution (for print) and low resolution (for the web) photos are available at
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Reprinting and
Reposting
An
electronic version of these articles is available if you
wish to reprint or repost one of them. Please contact Dr.
Pat Wiklund for permission to reprint, and to see if there
is a royalty required for reprint.
If permission is granted, we request a hard copy of the
publication in which the article appears. We request you
include Pat's bio at the end of the piece, along with
contract information, and preferably, a photo. We'll happily
supply a 5x7 black and white or color photo if you can use
it.
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