Word: Add a watermark to all sections at once

My colleague, C, was trying to add a DRAFT watermark to her Word 2007 document. She could add it successfully to the cover page, but as soon as she tried to add it to the even page section or the odd page section, whatever she’d added previously disappeared. This document had several sections, and each section is set for odd/even pages and a different first page for the cover page. Without investigating too closely, I suspected that a combination of odd/even pages, different first page, and Same as previous settings for the headers were at play here. I suggested she start at the end of the document and work her way back to the beginning, but that didn’t work either.

However, I found what did work and that was to set a custom watermark. First, I got C to delete all watermarks she’d just added (otherwise she would get two different watermarks on some pages), then I got her to do this:

1. Go to the Page Layout tab.
2. Click the Watermark button in the Page Background group.
3. Select Custom Watermark (at the bottom of the shortcut menu).
4. Select the Text watermark option.
5. Change the Text field to DRAFT.
6. Click OK.

All sections (odd/even, and first page) had this watermark applied to them at once.

C was very happy and so was I, as it ended up being such a simple solution.

These same instructions apply to Word 2010 and possibly Word 2013.

See also:

• How to delete a stubborn watermark: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/word-remove-a-stubborn-watermark/
• Word 2003 instructions: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/add-a-watermark/

[Links last checked April 2013]

Word: Removing reviewer names

J asked:

Do you know how to turn off the name of the reviewer to make a review anonymous?

While you can’t turn off/remove an individual reviewer’s name as far as I can find out (Yes you can — see further information at the end of this post on how to do this, based on Tyler’s comment from 10 April 2013), you can remove ALL reviewers names from your document, just leaving the markup/comments, but without names.

A little bit of Googling found that you can remove ALL reviewer names from a document, but not just one. See these:

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/word-help/change-the-author-name-for-review-comments-HA010036415.aspx (see the instructions in the ‘Make reviewer names anonymous’ section).
• http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2003-word/change-reviewer-information-in-word/72b87bc8-f56d-40ff-bdee-aba4bbf3b5fb?msgId=79a7422a-aff7-4890-b3e2-0d989089c4c2

You can also change YOUR user name (Review > Track Changes > Change User Name), but no-one else’s. Be aware that making this change applies to ALL Office documents you create.

If you want to change the information about the author etc., then in Word 2010 you can go to File > Info and click Properties on the far right panel, then Advanced Properties to display the old Document Properties box you used to see in Word 2003.

Doing a File > Save As will NOT change the original author/company details; you can only change this manually in the Document Properties dialog box.

To remove a single reviewer’s name from Comments

With thanks to Tyler Moore (comment dated 10 April 2013) for enough information for me to write up this solution fully.

1. Make sure the document you are working on is in Word 2007 or later format (i.e. DOCX extension).
2. Save a COPY of this document and WORK ON THE COPY ONLY until you’re satisfied you’ve achieved what you want. If you make an unrecoverable error, you can always go back to your original.
3. Close the Word document.
4. Go to the file location of the copy of the document and change its extension from docx to zip. Say Yes to make this change.
5. Double-click the new zip file and open it in WinZip or similar. Do NOT extract the files. (I only have WinZip, so the rest of these steps relate to WinZip; your zip software should work similarly).
6. Within WinZip, double-click the word folder — there will be several XML files listed.
7. Right-click on the comments.xml file and select a text editor to open it with (e.g. EditPlus, Expression Web, even Notepad if you have nothing else though other text editor show color-coded syntax and are easier to read).
8. Once open, press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog box (if Ctrl+H doesn’t work in your text editor, find the Find/Replace tool and open it).
9. In the Find What field, type w:author=”<reviewer name>” where you substitute <reviewer name> for the name of the reviewer you want to remove; e.g. if the reviewer’s name is Joe Bloggs, then type w:author=”Joe Bloggs”.
10. In the Replace With field, type w:author=”" (i.e. no name).
11. Click Replace All.
12. In the Find What field, type w:initials=”<reviewer initials>” where you substitute <reviewer initials> for the initials of the reviewer you want to remove; e.g. if the reviewer’s initials are JB then type w:initials=”JB”.
13. In the Replace With field, type w:initials=”" (i.e. no initials).
14. Click Replace All.
15. Repeat steps 9 to 14 for any other reviewer names/initials you want to remove.
16. Save the comments.xml file. If you’re asked to update the zip file, do so (in WinZip, choose the Update zip file with changes option).
17. Right-click on the document.xml file and select a text editor to open it with.
18. Once open, press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog box.
19. In the Find What field, type w:author=”<reviewer name>” where you substitute <reviewer name> for the name of the reviewer you want to remove; e.g. if the reviewer’s name is Joe Bloggs, then type w:author=”Joe Bloggs”.
20. In the Replace With field, type w:author=”" (i.e. no name).
21. Click Replace All.
22. Typically, the document.xml file doesn’t store the initials, but to be certain press Ctrl+F and search for w:initials. If there’s nothing found, move on to the next step. If you get a match, follow steps 12 to 14, then move on to the next step.
23. Repeat steps 19 to 22 for any other reviewer names you want to remove.
24. Save the document.xml file. If you’re asked to update the zip file, do so (in WinZip, choose the Update zip file with changes option).
25. Close the zip program.
26. Change the file extension back to docx.
27. Open the Word document. If all went well, you should now have comments with dates, but no initials or reviewer names for the reviewers you removed.
28. If all is good, archive off the original document and start using the revised one.

Troubleshooting: If you get an error when opening the Word document, or you find all the comments are missing (!) it’s likely that you inadvertently removed a required space between elements in the XML file(s). How do I know? Because I did it! The solution is to rename the file as a zip file again, open the zip file, open the comments.xml and document.xml files in a text editor and look for things like w:id=”25″w:author=”" — there should be a space between the ending ” of the first part and the following w (i.e. it should be w:id=”25″ w:author=”"). Do a find for “w: (no spaces) and replace with ” w: (a space between the ” and the w). Save the changes, update and close the zip file, and rename the file back to a docx file.

[Links last checked April 2013]

Email etiquette at work

Based on a writing tip I wrote recently for my work colleagues.

*********

Brad asked:

Do you have any information on etiquette/guidelines/best practise for emails, specifically when not to CC people who may have been on an original email? I see a lot of emails that start off as a simple one-way communication, i.e. not necessarily expecting a conversation, where people are CC’ed (managers or supervisors usually) that then escalates into a back and forth discussion, not necessarily in a bad way, but where all original participants are retained.

Good question, Brad.

Below I’ve compiled a list of etiquette rules for internal email that I gleaned from several websites that deal with this question (see the links at the end). I haven’t ranked them in any particular order, and I haven’t expanded too much on any of them as they should be self-explanatory (if you need more detail, see the links):

• Begin with a simple greeting, and end with ‘Thanks’, ‘Regards’ or similar as well as your signature (set up an automated signature in Outlook 2007 by going to Tools > Options > Mail Format tab > Signatures button)
• Make sure the subject line reflects the contents of the email
• Be as concise as possible; use bullet points or short paragraphs, with just one idea per paragraph or bullet point
• Ask permission before forwarding another person’s email
• Reply in a timely fashion
• Send personal emails from your PERSONAL account, not the company’s
• All work email (even deleted mail) is the property of the company and is NOT private
• Don’t send chain mail, forwards, hoaxes, jokes, or other unprofessional emails to your work colleagues (see link below for urban legends and hoaxes)
• Before clicking ‘Send’, re-read your message and check the list of recipients. Check the recipients again – do they ALL need to get the email?
• Don’t ‘Reply all’ out of habit – ‘Reply’ is usually sufficient; if you do ‘Reply all’, check the list of recipients first and delete those who don’t need the information
• Delete any unwanted ‘threads’ in the email before replying  – only reply to what you’ve been asked; trim out the unnecessary bits of previous conversations
• Don’t send huge attachments – link to the document or folder on the network instead; typically, you can’t attach files to an email that are more than about 5 MB in total
• Use standard English and punctuation; use acronyms sparingly; avoid sarcasm and irony as they don’t translate well in words; avoid emoticons (smileys) and ‘text-speak’; curb your use of exclamation points
• Use standard fonts, font sizes, colours, and sentence case
• Use the CC line for those who need to get a copy of the email, but who aren’t the main recipient; use the BCC line for those whose email addresses you don’t want to disclose (don’t forget – assume that every email you send from the company account is NOT private, whether you use BCC or not); be judicious in who you add to the CC/BCC lists – not everyone has to see everything, and ‘reply all’ threads become very cumbersome
• If you and the recipient are in a long email chain trying to get your message understood, pick up the phone and call them, or meet them face to face
• Set up Inbox folders and learn how to use ‘rules’ to route emails into those folders (Tools > Rules and Alerts)

More information:

• How to write an internal email: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/how-to-write-an-internal-email.html  (there’s some good stuff about work etiquette in general at this website: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/)
• Email etiquette: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/email-etiquette/
• Modern Etiquette: Email etiquette at work and home: http://www.mindfood.com/at-modern-etiquette-email-etiquette-at-work-and-home.seo
• Email etiquette at work: http://ezinearticles.com/?Email-Etiquette-at-Work&id=5042388
• Email Etiquette: 26 Rules to Follow: http://email.about.com/od/emailnetiquette/tp/core_netiquette.htm
• How to Use Proper Email Etiquette at Work: http://www.ehow.com/how_2293051_use-proper-email-etiquette-work.html
• Urban legends and hoaxes (best place to find out if the email you’ve been sent about a credit card scam or similar is legitimate or is a hoax): http://www.snopes.com

[Links last checked February 2013]

Word: Stop Word from auto capitalizing the first word of bullet items

Well, I didn’t think it was possible, but it is! You CAN stop Word from auto capitalizing the first word in a bullet list item, but there’s a trick to doing it.

By default, Word has the settings for Capitalize the first letter of sentences and Format the beginning of list item like the one before it turned on (in Word 2010, both settings are under File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options, on the AutoCorrect and AutoFormat As You Type tabs, respectively). Make sure these settings are both turned on. Yes, it seems strange to keep the Capitalize the first letter of sentences turned on, but you need this on for all you normal sentences. Unfortunately, Word considers any bullet list item to be a ‘sentence’ even if it’s not, and so it automatically capitalizes the initial letter of the first word. This is a real pain if your style guide says NOT to capitalize list items that are sentence fragments, single words etc.

So, how do you stop Word from auto capitalizing the first letter in each bullet item? You have to tell Word to undo what it’s just done, and then it will ‘remember’ that choice for subsequent items in the same bullet list. Bottom line: Ctrl+Z.

Here’s how:

1. Type a lead-in sentence to a bullet list as normal (the first letter of the first word will automatically capitalize). Press Enter to go to the next line.
2. Type the first word of the first bullet item in lower case and press the spacebar.
3. Immediately after pressing the spacebar, press Ctrl+Z. This will undo the previous action (i.e. convert the automatically capitalized first letter back to a lower case letter).
4. Continue adding words to the first list item, as required. Press Enter for the next item.
5. Continue adding other bullet list items — each one should now start with a lower case letter.
6. Apply the bullet style to your list, as required.
7. Start typing the next paragraph. Notice that the first letter of the word is in lower case — you will have to manually change this one to upper case. It’s in lower case as it’s following the ‘follow formatting’ rule (and not 100% either!). But changing one lower case letter here is easier than changing many in a long list.

Unfortunately, this trick works for a single list sequence. Once you’ve switched back to the upper case letter for the start of the next paragraph, that setting will hold for the rest of the document unless you change it again. So, you’ll have to repeat the Ctrl+Z trick after the first word in any later bullet lists.   However, once you’ve got into the habit of doing it, it shouldn’t be hard to remember.

Other tips:

• To quickly change case, select the letter/word/paragraph, then press Shift+F3 (see http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/word-change-case/ for more details)
• To change the case of the first letter in a bulleted list, see http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/word-change-the-case-of-the-first-letter-of-each-bullet-list-item/ (note: this doesn’t work very well in Word 2007 and later, though it worked really well in Word 2003)

[Links last checked February 2013]

Word: Moving a table row quickly

Here’s a neat trick I learned from this post: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-tips-for-working-with-word-tables/3594

You can quickly move one or more table rows up or down a table by pressing Shift+Alt and either the up or down arrow key.

Who knew? That one was new to me, but I suspect I’ll use it quite a bit!

Word: Extracting original images from a document

It used to be that if you wanted to extract your graphics from a Word document in pretty much one step, you had to save the document as a web page. This created a folder containing the graphics. But the graphics were saved as — or converted to — fuzzy JPGs, crisp PNGs, or GIFs, depending on the original format of the images. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked — to a point.

I’ve recently discovered (via this website: http://www.indesignmag.com/Content.asp/id/tipoftheweek-2012, which I was alerted to by Chuck Green’s Ideabook.com newsletter) that you can extract graphics in their original formats from any DOCX Word document (i.e. Word 2007, 2010, etc.) by changing the file extension to ZIP, then unzipping that ZIP file.

You end up with a whole slew of folders and XML files, and in amongst them is the word > media folder, in which you will find your original graphics, in their original sizes and format.

Very neat trick!

[Links last checked January 2013]

 

PDF: Corrupted image and lost links

A work colleague called me. She’d discovered that an image in the Word document she was creating a PDF from was corrupted in the resulting PDF. She tried creating the PDF using the PDF/A setting and that worked to a degree — the image was now OK, but she’d lost all her clickable links (Table of Contents, cross-references, etc.). She needed both an uncorrupted image AND clickable links, but couldn’t get both using the ‘save as PDF’ option in Word 2007.

I remembered this document — there were a couple of images in the document that weren’t really images; they were linked Visio objects. And the ‘corrupted’ image was one of these. I suspected that’s where the corruption was coming from, especially as she told me in her phone call that she’d saved the document to her desktop for the purposes of PDF’ing it (the document and the Visio diagram normally live in the client’s SharePoint site); that made me think that the link to the Visio diagram got broken in the process of creating the PDF.

I got her to save the document under a different name (just so she didn’t mess up the one she already had), then got her to copy the (Visio) image and paste it as a picture, then remove the original Visio image. Next I got her to try saving it as a PDF as normal (i.e. not PDF/A), and everything worked! The image was no longer corrupted and all her links worked.

Finally, I suggested that she speak to the author of the document to see if he really needed the linked Visio diagram — if it was unlikely to change, a static image (like the one she’d just created) would appear to be the same and wouldn’t corrupt in the PDF creation process; however, it wouldn’t be able to be edited from within the Word document.

As an aside, it’s likely she wouldn’t have had this issue if she had PDF’ed the document from within SharePoint as the links would have worked correctly. By copying the document to her desktop, it’s likely that those links got broken.

White listing a URL in Trend Worry-Free Business Security

These instructions are for me — if they help someone else, well and good, but they are really a brain dump for me in case I have to do this again.

To whitelist/allow a URL that Trend Micro Worry-Free Security is blocking:

1. Log in to the server.
2. Open Trend Micros Worry-Free Security console.
3. Go to Preferences.
4. Select the Desktop/Server tab.
   
5. Scroll down to the URL Filtering section.
6. Type the URL in the URLs to approve box.
7. Click Add.
   
8. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
9. Click Save.
   
10. Close the Trend console and log out of the server.

It may take five to ten minutes for this new policy to cascade to the client computers.

Word 2010: Keyboard shortcut to paste unformatted text

In Word 2003 and 2007, you couldn’t easily paste copied text as unformatted text. You either had to go through several clicks in the the menus, or set up a macro and assign a keyboard shortcut to it (see this blog post for how to do this in Word 2003/2007: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/word-keyboard-shortcut-to-paste-unformatted-text/).

However, in Word 2010 you don’t have to do any of that as there’s a quick and easy way to paste as unformatted text using the keyboard. Laura alerted me to it in her 13 November 2012 comment on the Word 2003/2007 post above, and, with some more help a few days later from Xuberi, I finally got it!

To paste copied text as unformatted text in Word 2010 using the keyboard:

1. Press Ctrl+v to copy the text into your document.
2. Press Ctrl to activate the Paste Options icon.
3. Press t to select the ‘Text only’ option (pressing t is a separate action to pressing Ctrl in step 2 — DO NOT press them together otherwise it won’t work).

More detailed explanation:

What happens in Word 2010 when you press Ctrl+v (Step 1) is that you get the Paste Options icon, and it has (Ctrl) next to it, indicating that the Ctrl key activates the options (you don’t get this in Word 2003 or 2007):

So when you press Ctrl (step 2 above), the Paste Options display:

Now you press the key for the paste option you want — hover over each option’s icon to see which key activates it:

The keyboard options are:

• H — Use destination theme
• K — Keep source formatting
• M — Merge formatting
• T — Keep text only (the unformatted text option).

See also:

• How to paste as unformatted text in Word 2003/2007: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/word-keyboard-shortcut-to-paste-unformatted-text/
• Office 2010: Paste options button not displaying: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/office-2010-paste-options-button-not-displaying/

[Links last checked November 2012]

Word: Number of rows and/or columns in a table

Jeff wanted to know how to find out how many rows he had in a very long table in his Word document. Word Count doesn’t tell you — it tells you how any lines in the document, but each cell (except one) in a table is treated as a ‘line’ for Word Count purposes.

You can find out how many rows (and/or columns) there are in an individual table by checking the table properties. Here’s how:

1. Select the entire table. This selects all rows and columns.
2. Right-click on the selected table and select Table Properties from the shortcut menu.
   
3. Click on the Row tab — the number of rows selected is listed at the top of the dialog box.
   
4. Click on the Column tab — the number of columns selected is listed at the top of the dialog box.
   
5. Click Cancel to close the Table Properties dialog box.

NOTE 1: If you now select another table to check its number of rows and columns, you may find that when the Table Dialog box opens to the last-viewed tab (Row or Columns, no numbers are displayed. Just go back to the Table tab, then click the Row or Column tab again and the number will display.

NOTE 2: Merged cells are mostly treated as though the rows and columns existed as they did when the table was first created. However, if you’ve merged all the cells from several adjacent rows, the row count will reduce.