Site Search | Site Index

Word Tips to Make Your Life Easier

Updated Feb. 23, 2007.
Prepared by Mary Whisner & Cheryl Nyberg for Library Lifesavers.

Microsoft Word is a complex and powerful application. This guide does not come close to covering all the tricks – there are whole books for that, not to mention Word’s own help screens (Ask the paperclip!) and Support Knowledge Base. Instead, this guide just gives you some of our favorite tips.

The authors of this guide use Word on PCs running Windows. Some of the tips might not work on Macs.

Paste Special

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to cut and paste from LexisNexis or a website into your Word document without all the formatting?  You can! Go to the toolbar, click on Edit, click on Paste Special, click on Unformatted Text. 

But that’s a lot of mousing. You can set up a keyboard shortcut.

Microsoft gives you instructions to make CTRL-V be your shortcut for Paste Special. But then you can’t use CTRL-V for those occasions when you want the other formatting. So I set it up so that CTRL-V is the regular paste and ALT-V is Paste Special. Here’s how:

How to create a macro so ALT-V is Paste Special
  1. On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Macros to display the Macros dialog box.
  2. In the Macro name box, type PasteUnformattedText.
  3. Make sure that All active templates and documents is displayed in the Macros in list, and then click Create. The Microsoft Visual Basic Editor is displayed. [This looks like programming, but don't worry about it.]
  4. Directly above the End Sub statement in the PasteUnformattedText subroutine [your cursor will be right here], type the following:
    • Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
  5. On the File menu, click Close and Return to Microsoft Word.

Now you need to instruct Word to run the PasteUnformattedText macro each time you press the ALT+V keyboard shortcut.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Customize.
  2. Click the Keyboard button.
  3. Make sure the Save changes in box displays Normal.dot.
  4. In the Categories list, click Macros.
  5. In the Macros list, click PasteUnformattedText.
  6. Click in the Press new shortcut key box, press ALT and V at the same time. The Press new shortcut key box displays Alt+V.
  7. Click Assign.
  8. Click Close and then click Close again.

Section Sign (§)

Long way:

  1. Click on Insert.
  2. Choose Symbol.
  3. Click on Special Characters tab.
  4. Choose §.
  5. Click on Insert.
  6. Click on Close.

Short way: Use a keyboard shortcut.

To set up the keyboard shortcut:

  1. Click on Insert.
  2. Choose Symbol.
  3. Click on Special Characters tab.
  4. Choose §.
  5. Click on Shortcut Key.
  6. Enter ALT-8 (or whatever you’ll be able to remember).
  7. Click Assign.
  8. Click on Close.

Tracking Changes

Turning it on: Tools, Track Changes (or: CTRL-SHIFT-E).

Important: After you are through editing, you need to get rid of those tracked changes, or else anyone who gets your document as an attachment will see them. Microsoft has a very helpful article that explains it.

Organize Your Files

Instead of saving all your documents in the My Documents folder with short, blah file names like “Letter,” “Memo,” and “Draft 2,” consider some of the following ideas.

Create a new folder for each class or major project

Use descriptive file names

Use dates in file names for notes or minutes

Add a word or two to help with retrieval later

Turn Off Automatic Formatting

Word is set up to do a lot automatically. For instance, if you start a line with a number, it assumes that you want the next line to be numbered too. But that can drive you crazy if you don’t want it.

  1. Go to Tools.
  2. Choose Autocorrect Options.
  3. Choose AutoFormat tab.
  4. Uncheck what you don’t want (e.g., Automatic Bulleted Lists).

I like to uncheck “Ordinals (1st) with superscript,” because I don’t like  1st Cir., 9th Cir., etc. (The Bluebook also doesn’t like it.)

Using AutoCorrect & AutoText

Word automatically corrects some common typos. For instance, if you type “acheive,” Word corrects it to “achieve.” This is a good thing – unless you’re trying to write about someone whose name is “Moeny” and Word keeps changing it to “Money.”

You can take words out of the AutoCorrect list.

  1. Go to Tools.
  2. Choose Autocorrect Options.
  3. Choose AutoCorrect tab.
  4. Scroll through the list, highlight the problem replacement, and click Delete.

You can also add words to the AutoCorrect list. For instance, I often type “appeallate” for “appellate” and “Wetlaw” for “Westlaw.” So I’ve added those problem words to my AutoCorrect list.

Similarly, you can add phrases to the AutoText list. For instance, if you type “personal jurisdiction” or “W.H. (Joe) Knight” a lot, you can set it up so that when you start typing the first letters, Word will give you prompt for the whole thing and all you have to do is press Enter.

  1. Go to Tools.
  2. Choose Autocorrect Options.
  3. Choose AutoText tab.
  4. Type in the word or phrase you want to add.

Hyperlinks

Most Word users have already discovered how easy it is to copy and paste website Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) into Word documents. A link in the document appears in blue (or another color of your choosing) and can be activated by using the Control + Enter combination.

Did you know that you can embed hyperlinks in a Word document? Embedding the link allows the text in the document to flow naturally and avoids the disruption caused by those mostly unreadable URLs.

To embed a hyperlink:

  1. Highlight the word or phrase that you want to turn into a link
  2. Click on the globe icon
    OR
    Select Insert > Hyperlink
  3. Paste the URL

You can also:

What about creating links in a Word document to cases, law review articles, and other items on LexisNexis and Westlaw? Copying and pasting a link resulting from a search may not work because the contents of databases change. Both services provide options for creating stable URLs to retrieve documents.

LexisNexis

When you have retrieved the desired document in LexisNexis, you can use the Copy w/ Cite feature.

  1. Highlight the citation, a sentence, paragraph, or whatever part of the document that you want to insert into your Word document
  2. Click on the Copy w/Cite link.
  3. Review the contents of the pop-up block to verify that you have selected the text you want.
  4. Confirm that the box labeled Copy Reference as Hyperlink is checked.
  5. Click on .
  6. Paste the selected text (with its embedded hyperlink) into your Word document.

You can read more about this feature in the LexisNexis for Law Schools Knowledge Base.

Westlaw

Westlaw's Law School website describes a software program called WestCiteLink "that automatically finds the legal citations in your word-processing documents and links them to the full text documents on Westlaw." This free program works with Word 97 and newer versions (as well as several versions of WordPerfect).

After you download and install the program on your computer, a (Auto-Mark Citations) icon will appear in your word processor toolbar. To use WestCiteLink:

  1. Open the document that contains the citations to which you want to link.
  2. Click on the  icon.
  3. WestCiteLink will
    1. scan your document for legal citations
    2. create a table of authorities of recognized citations in a grey box at the top of the document (along with the page numbers on which the case citations appear)
    3. embed hyperlinks to those documents on Westlaw

You can even bypass the the sign-on page! Consult the User Manual for more information.

LexisNexis offers a similar service--called LEXLink--in its Citation Tools package. Consult the Knowledge Base for more information.

Headings

You can use Word’s built-in headings to make a mass of notes (or a long paper) easier to navigate.

Suppose you have a lot of notes:

You can change those regular-font headings to Word headings by using the drop-down menu:

Already your document is looking better. But there’s more!

Using Headings to Create a Table of Contents

Now move the cursor to the start of your document and choose Insert >  Reference >  Index and Tables … and then choose the Table of Contents tab. Based on your headings, Word will produce something like this:

That Table of Contents is a little outline in itself. And each of those entries is a hyperlink, so you can go right to the section of your notes that you need.

Bulleted or Numbered Lists

Bulleted or numbered lists can help you organize your notes and thoughts. For example:

Or, if you prefer a more traditional outline:

To start a new line without a new bullet, press shift-return (instead of return).

To use bullets or numbers, click on one of these icons:

To increase or decrease the indenting, use these icons:

Word also offers several keyboard shortcuts for working with lists.

To turn off Word’s automatic bullets and numbers, choose Tools > Autocorrect Options … >  Autoformat tab. Then deselect Automatic Bulleted Lists.

Using Tables

Tables can help you organize your notes (and your thoughts). For example, if you are trying to review a quarter’s worth of cases, you might create a chart like this:

Word makes it easy to sort tables in different ways. For instance, by choosing Table >  Sort you can sort by topic (and within topic, by year):

or by case name:

Some useful options:

  • When you set up your table, choose AutoFit to Contents. That way, the columns with lots of text will be wider than the columns with little text.
  • When you have a top row with headings, move your cursor to that row, then choose Table, Heading Rows Repeat. That way, if your table is longer than one page, you’ll have the headings on each page.
  • If you don’t want a line or two of text to be at the bottom of one page with the rest of your comments on the top of the next page, choose Table, Table Properties, Row, and uncheck Allow row to break across pages.
    •

    Other Sites Offering Word Tips

    Legal Andrew, Harness the Power of Word Cross-References for Mammoth Documents

    Microsoft Office Word, with help and tips for multiple versions (Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 & Word 2007). Select your version and then search for "hyperlinks" OR browse the version-specific Help and How-to section for "Word and the Web," then look for the Hyperlinks heading.

    Are you aware of other good sites with word tips for the legal community? Send a suggested link to the reference librarians.

     

    ©2007, M.G. Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington