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THE OFFICE LETTER
STANDARD EDITION
Tips, Tricks, Tools, and Techniques for Microsoft Office
Volume 4, Number 20 November 1, 2004
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IN THIS ISSUE
1) Reader Feedback: Shortcut for Replacing Formatting
2) Word: Formatting Index Entries
3) Excel: Shortcut for Entering Formulas in Multiple Cells
4) Premium Edition Bonus: Free ActiveWords Software
5) Review: SurfSaver 6
Premium Edition Extra:
Word: Marking Index Entries Automatically
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1) READER FEEDBACK: SHORTCUT FOR REPLACING FORMATTING
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In issue 16 (October 4, 2004) we described a method for changing
all occurrences of a word to a different format -- we explained how
to change every occurrence of The Office Letter to display in
italics. We said you should use the Edit/Replace command, and put
Office Letter in both the "Find what" and "Replace with" boxes.
TOL reader Claudio Faria wrote with a correction to those
instructions.
To do what you describe, you do not need to fill in Replace with
box. If it's empty, only with formatting applied, whatever is in
"Find what" will get that formatting applied. It's easier,
especially if you will be italicizing a number of titles in your
document. Just remember to leave "Replace with" really empty; a
single space and your titles will be gone. You can even have
just formatting in both Find what and Replace with boxes, say,
if you have many different items italicized that you'd like to
change to bold, non-italic.
And if the formatting you want to apply is one you know a
shortcut for, use it. With the cursor in Replace with, press
Ctrl + I to apply italics. Press Ctrl + I again to turn italics
off; you can also use this in the "Find what" box to find
whether some formatting is missing. Pressing it a third time
will clear italic from the box. Use More/Format/Font for
complex cases, e.g., font size or color.
By the way, don't forget to clear all formatting from
Find/Replace boxes before you do a different replacement. Use
Ctrl + Spacebar for that.
Thanks for the tip, Claudio. If you have a tip you'd like to
share, write us at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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2) WORD: FORMATTING INDEX ENTRIES
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Last week we discussed how to create an index entry for a word or
phrase in your document.
To recap, select the text you want, then use the keyboard shortcut
Alt + Shift + X. Enter the index entry values in the Main Entry and
Subentry fields, choose "Current Page," and click on Mark.
That's the simple version. As you probably noted when you tried
these instructions, the Mark Index Entry dialog offers additional
options. We explore these -- and more -- this week.
CROSS-REFERENCES
We've explained in a previous issue how to create a cross-
reference. In a document, you can use a cross reference to guide a
reader from the current location in a document to, say, another
page. With indexes, cross-references are designed to add additional
entries to the index without repeating page-number references.
For example, suppose our index has one entry so far, pointing to
page 24:
Office Letter, 24
We want to add an additional index entry for "TOL" that will point
to the Office Letter entry. (If Office Letter had sub-entries, we
don't want to repeat the sub-entries, either.) In other words,
after we're done, our abbreviated index will look like this:
Office Letter, 24
TOL. See Office Letter.
Of course, as the index grows, the "Office Letter" and "TOL"
entries in our index will be separated by several other entries.
Here's how to create the cross-reference:
1. If you haven't already, create an index entry for the main
reference; in our case, that means creating an entry for Office
Letter.
2. Click anywhere in your document. I prefer to click at the first
index reference for the term (Office Letter) in my document, but
this isn't strictly required.
3. Press Alt + Shift + X to display the Mark Index Entry dialog
box. In the Main Entry, enter the cross-reference entry (TOL in our
example). In the Options section, be sure the "Cross-reference"
option is selected, then enter the original reference (Office
Letter) after the "See" text. (See illustration in our online
edition)
4. Press the Mark button to add the cross-reference to the index.
Note: You need add only one cross-reference entry per document. In
fact, if you entered an identical cross-reference twice, regardless
of whether these cross-reference entries are on the same or
different pages, you would end up with this in your index:
TOL. See Office Letter. See Office Letter.
FORMATTING AN INDEX ENTRY
When entering text in the Main Entry and Subentry fields, you can't
use the standard formatting toolbar buttons. For instance, you
can't enter "Office Letter" in the Main Entry box and click on the
"I" button to change the entry to italics. You can, however, use
the editing keyboard shortcuts.
Enter your main or subentry text, then select that text and use one
of these shortcuts:
Ctrl + Shift + F Change the font
Ctrl + Shift + P Change the font size
Ctrl + Shift + > Increase the font size
Ctrl + Shift + < Decrease the font size
Ctrl + ] Increase the font size by 1 point
Ctrl + [ Decrease the font size by 1 point
Ctrl + D Change the formatting of characters (same as
Format/Font command)
Shift + F3 Change case of letters
Ctrl + Shift + A Capitalize all letters
Ctrl + B Make bold
Ctrl + U Add underline
Ctrl + Shift + W Underline full words but not spaces
Ctrl + Shift + D Add double underline
Ctrl + I Make italic
Ctrl + Shift +K Make letters all small capitals
Ctrl + = Apply subscript formatting
Ctrl + Shift + PlusSign Apply superscript formatting
Ctrl + Spacebar Remove manual character formatting
ENTRIES THAT INCLUDE A PAGE RANGE
In most cases, an index entry refers to a single page on which the
word or term can be found. However, sometimes you want an entry to
refer to a range of pages. For example, if our guide discusses the
Standard Edition from page 12 through page 14, we have several
choices:
1. Include just the first page number (page 12) in the index. You
assume that readers will find the section and keep reading.
2. Include each individual page number in the index:
Office Letter
Standard Edition, 12, 13, 14
Premium Edition, 19
3. Include a page range in the index:
Office Letter
Standard Edition, 12-14
Premium Edition, 19
Options 1 and 2 are easy: simply mark as many terms in the full
document as necessary. To accomplish Option 3, you'll need to take
an intermediate step.
First, delete any individual index entries already created for
"Standard Edition" between pages 12 and 14.
Next, mark the body of text discussing the Standard Edition (begin
on page 12, end on page 14) and create a bookmark for this text.
For instance, I could call the bookmark Std. (To create a
bookmark, select the text, then use the Insert/Bookmark command,
enter the bookmark name, then click on Add.)
Now, create the index entry for Standard Edition: select the text,
enter the Main Entry value (Office Letter) and Subentry value
(Standard Edition), and choose "Page Range" in the Options section.
Choose the bookmark name (Std, in our example) from the pull-down
menu. Click Mark.
TO REMOVE AN INDEX ENTRY
Last week we explained how you can change the index entries by
editing the XE field code directly. Likewise, to remove an index
entry, simply remove the entire XE field itself, everything between
(and including) the curly braces.
CREATING THE INDEX
Now, with everything marked, it's time to create the actual index.
We'll discuss the steps next week.
-- James E. Powell
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3) EXCEL: SHORTCUT FOR ENTERING FORMULAS IN MULTIPLE CELLS
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If you find yourself entering the same formula into multiple Excel
cells, you probably do what I do -- edit/copy the formula, then
edit/paste it into the current cell.
Here's a slightly faster way.
Select all the cells that you want to contain the formula. For
non-contiguous cells, press and hold the Ctrl key as you click the
cells.
With the cells selected, type the formula you want (you can also
type a fixed value, such as a constant).
Press Ctrl + Enter.
Excel will adjust the formula using relative references -- meaning
that unless you use absolute addresses, Excel will adjust the
formula for each of the cells you've selected.
-- James E. Powell
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for a limited time we're offering a free copy of ActiveWords SE, a
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To subscribe to the Premium Edition, visit:
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Here's a closer look at ActiveWords:
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5) REVIEW: SURFSAVER 6
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Web pages can be fleeting -- many sites change daily, if not
hourly. I do lots of research in preparing The Office Letter, and
frequently I would like to save a copy of a Web page so I can refer
to it later. I don't want to clutter my favorites with the page's
URL, and I want to capture the page as I see it, in case it might
change. I used to print out Web pages, but that's not efficient,
especially since some sites don't print properly in portrait mode.
SurfSaver 6 ($19.95 through 12/31/04; upgrades $9.95) lets you save
all or part of a single page (or save multiple levels of an entire
site), lets you organize the pages into folders, then retrieve or
search through them later. It's like a souped-up Web Archive tool
because it can save not only text but graphics and a site's layout.
Since SurfSaver is integrated with your browser (it sits in your
browser's toolbar as a button, which, when clicked, opens as a
panel to the left of your main window), you don't have to hassle
with launching a separate utility.
SurfSaver lets you create folders and subfolders to store Web pages
and sites, and you can add keywords and notes (see illustration in
our online edition). If you want to save an entire site, you
specify the number of levels to capture and the maximum number of
pages to store. It can even save pages that open to Acrobat PDF
files.
Searching is flexible. SurfSaver lets you look for words within
the saved pages, then lists the matching pages and (optionally)
highlights the terms found on each matching page. I would have
liked an option to take me to the first match on a page, not just
highlight it and force me to scroll to find the highlight. You can
also look for terms in the keywords or notes you assigned to the
page, search by the date you saved the page(s), and by URL.
SurfSaver supports Boolean, wildcard, and proximity searches, and
the program always saves the results of your last search (though it
doesn't retain the results once you close IE).
Overall, SurfSaver works as advertised. Its simple,
straightforward interface makes learning the program easy. Saving
sites and searching for terms is fast and efficient.
SurfSaver works with Windows 95 and above in conjunction with IE
5.5 and later. A 30-day free trial is available at
http://www.surfsaver.com/.
-- James E. Powell
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----------- THE OFFICE LETTER ----- www.officeletter.com ----------
Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Office - Published Weekly
Copyright 2004 Masterware, Inc. All rights reserved
Now In Our Fourth Year - ISSN: 1543-5768
Editor in Chief: James E. Powell
Contributing Editors: Jim Boyce (www.boyce.us)
Dick Archer (www.diseno.com)
