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onscreen editing --> Errata/additions in the
3rd (2016) edition
Errata in and additions to the 3rd (2016) edition
of Effective
Onscreen Editing
All corrections and additions to the book
will appear on this page. If
you find an error or problem that isn't included
in this list, please
report the problem to me so I
can fix it. Comments and suggestions for improvement
(including new material) are also welcome!
This page contains the following topics:
Miscellaneous points
Chapter 3: Writing and editing are human endeavours
Chapter 4: Personalizing your software
Chapter 5: Moving around and selecting things
Chapter 7: Inserting text, deleting text, and commenting
Chapter 8: Using the search tools
Chapter 9: Developing style sheets
Chapter 10: Spelling and grammar checkers
Chapter 11: Automating your edits
Chapter 12: Special situations
Chapter 14: Internet research
Chapter 16: Proofreading
Appendix I: Backups
Appendix III: Troubleshooting Word
Miscellaneous points
- Word 2010 guide: If you're still using Word
2010, have a look at Office
2010: The Real Startup Guide, which is published by the experts at Woody's
Office Watch. Note that there's a discount for subscribers to their excellent
free newsletter, so it's well worth your while to subscribe.
- Keyboard keys stopped working? A while back, two sets of keys on my new Microsoft keyboard stopped working: the function keys (F1 to F12 at the top of the keyboard) and the keys on the numeric keypad used to enter the four-digit Alt codes used to enter special characters. In the first case, the problem was that I'd inadvertently pressed the "F Lock" key at the right end of the group of function keys; this toggles between activating and inactivating the keys, so a second press restored the functionality. In the second case, I'd inadvertently pressed the NumLock key at the top left side of the numeric keypad; this toggles between using the keypad to enter numbers and perform simple calculations and an older mode in which the keypad emulates navigation keys (e.g., left arrow, Home) that don't exist on certain keyboards (e.g., old laptops). Pressing the NumLock key re-enabled the entry of the four-digit codes.
- Annotating Web sites in your browser: Microsoft's new "Edge" browser will apparently allow you to annotate Web sites from within the browser.
- Provide feedback about Word to Microsoft: Microsoft now provides a forum in which you can provide feedback about Word to Microsoft. I'm not convinced that important points will be detected amidst all the noise, but it can't hurt to try!
- Using the eBook: I've provided a document entitled "Using
eBooks in PDF format" that provides
tips to help you use the book more efficiently.
- Need to run Office in your browser? You can do this for free using Office Online.
- Turn off automatic updates of Word: Although Microsoft has a pretty good record with Windows updates, Word updates often significantly screw up the softwrae. Fortunately, you can turn off Office Updates. (Scroll down to the heading "If you're using Windows [your Windows version number]" for the simplest method.) This approach lets you install updates only after the consensus in the online community is that they're safe. Of course, before you do any major updates, back up your Word templates and other customizations!
- Free online version of Word: If you need access to Word on the go, try Microsoft's Free Office Online Apps, which you can run in your Web browser. If you're using a tablet computer such as an iPad, try using the free Office Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows) tablet editions. They won't be as feature-complete as your desktop version, but should be enough to get you by. You'll need to establish a Microsoft account if you don't already have one.
- What if one key on your keyboard breaks? When my current keyboard is getting old, I buy a new one—but I keep the old one as a backup in case the new one breaks. But what can you do if you're in the middle of a job, one of the keys on your keyboard stops working, and you have no backup? You may not have time to run to the nearest computer store to buy a replacement. But you can use various built-in tools provided by your operating system that let you enter the problem character using your mouse. In Windows, try the "onscreen keyboard". On the Mac, try "Show input menu in menu bar" and use the character viewer. If it's going to take a while to replace the physical keyboard, you'll probably find it more efficient to create an AutoCorrect entry (see chapter 12 for details). For example, if you can't type the letter "e", select an existing example of the letter in a Word file, and with that letter corrected, create the shortcut ]ii that, when typed, will type the letter. Alternatively, use a placeholder character such as * everywhere that you need to type the letter, then use search and replace to change that character to the missing letter. (Of course, you'll need to copy/paste the letter into the "replace with" field, since you can't type it from the keyboard.)
- Word versions on the Mac: To learn what version of Word you're using, open the Word menu and select "About Microsoft Word". Word 2016 will have a version number that begins with 16.16; Word 2019 his a version number that begins with 16.19. Infer what you will about the fact that the prefix (16.) doesn't differ between the versions.
Chapter 3: Writing and editing are human endeavours
- Collaborative editing via DropBox: The DropBox cloud-based storage service now offers their "Paper" tool for real-time editorial collaboration over the Web.
- Collaborative editing via WordPress and GoogleDocs: If you want to collaborate on a blog post, try a collaboration add-in for WordPress.
- Collaborative editing using Microsoft Teams: I haven't had time to play with this software, but Microsoft Teams seems promising. In summary, you create a "team" of people who have access to a workspace where you can upload files and edit them interactively. The software is designed to integrate simultaneous changes from multiple team members, so you shouldn't have to check out and check in documents to allow editing. I'll try to test this out when it's time to create the 4th edition of the book.
- Project management: There are many ways to predict project times and manager your projects. ClickTime's "project cost estimation: templates, tools, and more" provides some helpful insights.
- Don't trust "the cloud": Cloud-based computing services such as Microsoft's Office 365 and OneDrive are lovely concepts, but they're still suffering from "version one-itis". That is, they're very useful and surprisingly functional, but tend to disappear or develop problems with little warning. Always have a plan B: back up your data somewhere that isn't on the cloud, and ensure that you have a way to work locally (e.g., with a copy of Word installed on your computer) if you lose access to the cloud version of your software.
- Recovering lost Word files: Every now and then, you'll save a file in the wrong location or Word will glitch. If you notice this fairly soon after the problem occurs, the best way to recover the missing file is to use the "Recent Items" feature under the File menu. (Chapter 4 describes how to set the number of items preserved in this list. I find that this should be at least 10 files, but the amount will depend on how many files you work with daily.) Alternatively, go digging in your hard drive using your operating system's file manager utility (My Computer or File Explorer in Windows; the Finder on the Mac). Display files in list view, and then sort them by date. One of the folders at the top of the list (i.e., the most recently modified folders) is likely to contain the file. If you've lost the file due to a Word crash, try looking in the AutoRecovery directory. (Again, Chapter 4 describes how to learn the location of this directory and how to customize the frequency of creating these files.) If you think you may have accidentally deleted the file, look in the Windows Recycle Bin or the Macintosh Trash Can. If you find the file, but it doesn't contain your most recent changes, try this (Word 2013 and 2016 for Windows): Open the File menu, select Info, then click the menu arrow on the Manage Documents icon. Select "Recover unsaved documents". One of these files may contain the missing text. If all else fails, use your operating system's "find file" utility to search for temporary files (search for *.tmp). Try opening all .tmp files created around the date and time when you lost your file and that have a size greater than 0. One of them may be your missing file.
Chapter 4: Personalizing your software
- Complete listing of Word 2010's commands: The kind and diligent souls at the Office Watch newsletter have compiled a complete and searchable list of Word 2010's command. Many of these commands (probably most) will also be valid in previous versions of Word.
- All Word's options: Dian Chapman, one of Microsoft's "Word MVPs", has provided a utility that lists all the options settings available to you in Word. The utility is available in both Macintosh and Windows versions.
- Moving your quick access toolbar to another computer: If you have a customized toolbar that you want to use on another computer, you can do this easily enough. In Word 2010, copy the file Word.OfficeUI and move it to the other computer. To find this file, use the system's search tool; make a note of the location so that you can place the copy of the file in the right location.
- Protecting styles against modification: If you want to send a file to a colleague and prevent them from modifying the styles, you can do this via the "Manage Styles" dialog box in Word 2010. First, from the Home tab of the ribbon, display the Styles pane: click the arrow at the far right side of the line that contains the word "Styles" (not the arrow beside the "Change Styles" icon) Next, click the "Manage Styles" button. Select the "Restrict" tab, then select the style you want to protect. Click the "Restrict" button to prevent changes, or the "Permit" button to allow changes. Unfortunately, you can't restrict changes to the "Normal" (body text) style. In other versions of Word, you can instead protect the file to prevent changes. For Word 2007, see the Microsoft article "Help protect your document against unwanted changes and comments". For Word 2008, open the Preferences and select the Security settings; click the "Protect Document" button to gain access to the settings.
- Word 2013's "all caps" tab names in the ribbon: If you don't like the fully capitalized tab names in the ribbon, How-to Geek describes "How to change the capitalization of Office 2013's ribbon bar". It's not a major issue, but we editors are bothered by such things.
- Can't use Alt+Shift to define a keyboard shortcut? (Windows) If you're trying to create a keyboard shortcut that uses Alt+Shift followed by another keystroke, and Word won't let you do this, the problem is in the language settings: by default, pressing Alt plus the left Shift key tells Windows to change between languages (if you have any languages other than your primary language installed). You can disable this keyboard shortcut in the Language control panel: click Advanced Settings, and under "Switching input methods", click the link "Change language bar hot keys". In the dialog box that lists the installed languages, select any language that uses this shortcut, and click Change Key Sequence to change it. Change both settings to "Not assigned", or create your own keyboard shortcut (e.g., Control+Alt+Shift+L). Voila! The functionality of Alt+Shift should be restored. Thanks to Microsoft MVP Jay Freedman for reminding me of this point.
- Customizing Word's built-in commands: From the WordTips site, Editing Word's built-in Commands. Not for the faint of heart, but reasonably safe if you make a backup copy of Normal.dotm beforehand, just in case you mess something up.
- Editing the style gallery: The default style gallery (the place that lists your available paragraph and character styles) is remarkably badly designed, but you can at least edit what styles it displays.
- Displaying (or not) "smart tags" (Word 2013): The "smart tags" feature offered by Microsoft Word automatically recognizes certain elements of a document and provides a list of options for what you can do with those elements. When this feature is enabled, you will see a reddish-purple dotted underline below the text that Word has recognized. For example, if Word recognizes a person's name and address, you can move the cursor over the underlined text until the Smart Tag Actions button (a small circle with an i inside it) appears. Click the button, and then select "Add to contacts" from the popup menu to add the person to your Outlook address book. If you don't use this feature and want to disable it, whether completely or partially, open the the File menu and select Options. In the Options dialog box, select the Proofing tab, click the AutoCorrect Options button, and then select the Smart Tags tab. To completely disable this feature, deselect the checkbox for "Label text with smart tags". To disable only specific groups of options (e.g., Address recognition), deselect the checkbox for that group. To restore these features, re-select the relevant checkboxes.
- Creating keyboard shortcuts: Gizmodo provides advice on how to "Create your own keyboard shortcuts to do anything on Windows and MacOS".
- Creating systemwide shortcuts: On the Mac, the Keyboard preferences panel lets you add useful shortcuts to your computer that will work in all programs. First, the Text tab of this preference panel lets you define abbreviations and short phrases that the system will replace with longer phrases, much like Word's AutoCorrect. Second, the Shortcuts tab of the preference panel lets you add and delete various shortcuts. The Services group is particularly useful because it lets you edit the "context" menu that appears when you right-click or control-click in the Finder.
- Customizing the screen display:Tidbits offers an excellent article on customizing the screen display for optimal reading. Though written for iPads, much of the advice can be followed on a desktop computer too, with a little digging to find the right settings.
- Faking the old toolbars in Word 2016 for the Mac: Microsoft eliminated the classic toolbars and replaced them with the Ribbon. Although you can add various functions to the Quick Access Toobar of the Ribbon, there's not a lot of room and the results can become quite cluttered. A better approach would be to customize the ribbon by eliminating and replacing any icons you don't need or rarely use.
- Entering accented characters: Alan Wyatt's WordTips offers additional ways to enter accented characters.
- Customizing keyboard shortcuts without taking your hands from the keyboard: In Windows, hold downControl+Alt and then press the "+" key on the numeric keyboard to display the Customize Keyboard dialog box. On the Mac, hold down Control+Option and then press the "–" key on the numeric keypad. If you prefer to create your own shortcut, follow the instructions in this chapter: select the category "All Commands", then scroll down to the command "ToolsCustomizeKeyboard".
Chapter 5: Moving around and selecting things
- Word 2010 and 2011 keyboard shortcuts: Microsoft offers useful guides to keyboard shortcuts forWord 2010 for Windows and Word 2011 for the Macintosh.
- "Find next" in Word 2011 for the Mac: The search function in Word 2011 is still badly damaged even after the 4th maintenance patch for the software (January 2012). One example is that the "find next" feature does not work reliably. But there's a simple workaround: First, open the search and replace dialog box (Edit-->Find-->Advanced search and replace) instead of using the search field at the top of the document window. Because this dialog box is treated like any other window, you can use the OS X "switch to the next window" keyboard shortcut (Command + `) to change the focus from the dialog box to the document window after you find the search term. Make any necessary changes, then press this shortcut to switch back to the dialog box. Pressing Enter will find the next instance of the search term. Repeat as necessary.
- Restoring the old search dialog box in Word 2010/2011: If you don't like the sidebar that opens when you press Control+F in Word 2010 (Windows) or Command+F in Word 2011 (Mac), there's a way to restore the old dialog box. It's still there, but you'll have to use the "customize keyboard" settings to get at it. (See Chapter 4 for details.) In Word 2010, look for the Home tab under "Categories", and "EditFind" under the list of commands. (I'm not using Word 2010, so I can't test this, but the tip comes from a usually reliable source.) In Word 2011, look for All Commands under "Categories", and "EditFindDialog" under the list of Commands.
- Keyboard shortcuts in the Word 2011 search dialog box: Windows users have it easy; pretty much any option in a dialog box can be selected from the keyboard by pressing the Alt key and then typing the underlined letter in the name of each option. Not so on the Mac. However, there are a few useful keyboard shortcuts that work inside Word's search dialog:
Command+E opens the Special menu
Command+G switches to the "Go to" tab
Command+I toggles the "Highlight all items found in..." option
Command+M (more options) expands the dialog box to show the advanced options, and shrinks it again
Command+O opens the Format menu.
Command+P switches to the "Replace"
tab
Command+S toggles the option "Sounds like"
Command+U toggles the "Use wildcards" option
Command+Y toggles the setting to find only whole words
- Searching the Web from within Word: In Windows versions of Word (2003, 2007, 2010), there's a cool utility that will let you search the Web (currently, Google, Wikipedia, and an acronym lookup tool, plus three translation tools) directly from inside Word: the simuSearch utility. With this utility installed, all you need to do is select a chunk of text and click the appropriate toolbar icon; simuSearch copies the text, sends it to the search or translation tool you selected, and then automatically displays the results in your Web browser. That's a saving of several keystrokes each time you need to look something up; for me, that would save dozens of keystrokes per manuscript (as many as hundreds in some manuscripts) during my editing. Sure, you could kludge together a solution using MacroExpress or QuicKeys, but why bother when this software works so well? Best of all, it's free.
- Using the F2 key (Windows only): If you want to move things from the keyboard, start by selecting the text that you want to move. Press F2 to tell Word that you want to move the text, then use the arrow keys to move the text to its new position. Press Enter when you're done.
- Copying without using the clipboard: In both Macintosh and Windows versions of Word, you can copy text without using the clipboard. To do so, select the text, press Shift+F2 to copy it, and wait for the message "Copy to where?" to appear in the status line at the bottom of the window. Move the cursor to the location where you want to paste the text, and then press Enter. (Because this uses a different storage system than the more familiar clipboard, it's particularly useful for a one-time copy/paste when you don't want to affect the contents of the clipboard.
- Switching to the desktop in Windows: If you want to move to the desktop (what Microsoft calls "switching focus to the desktop"), there are two helpful keystrokes you can use. Windows key+M or Windows key+D will minimize all Windows (move them to the status bar) and move the focus to the desktop so that any new keystrokes (e.g., typing the name of a document to select that document) will apply to the desktop; repeating that keystroke will return you to the window you were using before you left to visit the desktop.
Chapter 7: Inserting text, deleting text, and commenting
- Actionable comments: I've repeated this advice as a reminder that wherever possible, your comments should tell the author what to do about a problem. A comment that only describes the existence of a problem is rarely helpful.
Chapter 8: Using the search tools
- Keyboard shortcuts for Find Next/Previous: Strictly speaking, the keyboard shortcuts Command/Control plus the PageUp/PageDown key invoke Word's "object browser". As a result, they will find the previous or next instance of whatever object you most recently browsed. If that object was found through the Find dialog box, then these keys will repeat that search. If, instead, you used the object browser to find the next table, graphic, section, or other object, using these keystrokes will find the previous or next instance of those objects instead.
- Scripted find and replace: Paul Beverley has designed the (free) FRedit macro that lets you enter a series of find and replace operations in a Word document then run this "script" to implement those operations in a single step. C.K. MacLeod provides an example of how to use this macro.
- Removing text boxes: Alan Wyatt's WordTips provides some good suggestions on how you can find and remove text boxes.
Chapter 9: Developing style sheets
- Techscribe Term Checker software: The software has now been updated to version 6, but is no longer free. It is a paid product, with a free trial version.
- AECMA Simplified Technical English: The correct name should be ASD Simplified Technical English.
Chapter 10: Spelling and grammar checkers
- Change the spellcheck and grammar check colors: [Windows only] If you don't like the way Word uses color to display spelling and grammar errors, Microsoft provides guidelines on how to change the colors. In summary, you must edit the Windows Registry, so if you're not comfortable doing this, ask a geeky friend to help. Caution: Always make a backup of your Registry before trying to edit it. If Murphy's law happens, you can at least restore your system to its working state before you tried the change.
Chapter 11: Automating your edits
- Word 2011 macro bug: Installing support for Asian languages may cause some of your macros to stop working. This problem had not been fixed as of October 2014. I have not yet confirmed whether uninstalling this support solves the problem.
- Can't use Alt+Shift to define a keyboard shortcut for a macro? (Windows) If you're trying to create a keyboard shortcut that uses Alt+Shift followed by another keystroke, and Word won't let you do this, the problem is in the language settings: by default, pressing Alt plus the left Shift key tells Windows to change between languages (if you have any languages other than your primary language installed). You can disable this keyboard shortcut in the Language control panel: click Advanced Settings, and under "Switching input methods", click the link "Change language bar hot keys". In the dialog box that lists the installed languages, select any language that uses this shortcut, and click Change Key Sequence to change it. Change both settings to "Not assigned", or create your own keyboard shortcut (e.g., Control+Alt+Shift+L). Voila! The functionality of Alt+Shift should be restored. Thanks to Microsoft MVP Jay Freedman for reminding me of this point.
- A note about QuickParts as Building Blocks: One advantage of creating a building block as a "QuickPart" is that it will appear at the top of the QuickParts menu. If you create many of these shortcuts, this can save time compared with having to dig through the poorly designed Building Blocks dialog box searching for your QuickParts.
- Print a list of your AutoCorrect entries? A quick way to get a listing of your Word AutoCorrect entries is to use the macro provided by WordTips. Print this list in PDF format both to save paper and make the list searchable. If you haven't followed my suggestion to store this information in a separate Word file, you can copy the PDF text into Word to create that file as a backup.
- Backing up your customizations:Paul Beverly, author of the wonderful free book "Macros for Editors", has also provided a free Word template that contains macros that will help you back up your own macros, both for Mac and Windows. See the Youtube video "Automatic macro/keystroke backup system" for an explanation of how this works. The actual macros are provided in his book.
- Moving building blocks: WordTips provides instructions on how to find the templates that hold your building blocks ("Building blocks.dotx" and "Built in building blocks.dotx" are the default templates used by Word). You can't move these files to a different folder, but you can create your own template (e.g., "Geoff's blocks.dotx") to store them. You can move that template wherever you want, including into the directory or folder that holds your other templates.
Chapter 12: Special situations
Chapter 14: Internet research
- A large source of corpuses (corpora): Brigham Young University now offers several large corpuses (corpora) for a fee. Not cheap, but if you need this kind of information, it's worth a look.
- Google search modifiers: Google seems to keep tweaking or modifying how the search modifiers work. For example, adding "–" before search terms used to reliably exclude pages that contained those terms, whereas adding "+" used to only include pages that contained those terms. (Now, – only works sometimes and + confines search to Google+. Dumbass decision, but there you have it. Nonetheless, it's worth trying the – modifier, since it still seems to work sometimes.) There are other modifiers worth trying. For example, placing double quotes (") around a search term will still generally turn up pages that have that exact spelling. Adding an asterisk (*) inside quotes tells Google to include results with any word or words between parts of a phrase; for example, "Don't * evil" should turn up pages that include "Don't be evil". (Probably none of them on Google's own site.) If you add a tilde (~) before a word, Google will also include the word's synonyms in the search, which is useful if you don't know the formally correct word for a concept but do know a synonym. You can use a double period (..) to indicate a range; for example, May 1..15 would find pages with dates from 1 to 15 May. The "site:" modifier, added before a site name such as Google.com, will restrict searches to that site—very useful for finding help topics that are stored as Web pages rather than hidden in a database. The "related:" modifier is a cousin of the "site:" modifier that looks for sites that are related in some way (e.g., linked) to the site you specify.
Chapter 16: Proofreading
Appendix I: Backups
- Backing up your Word customizations: The good folks at Woody's Office Watch are offering their Office Backup Handbook, which goes much further than the brief summary in my book. Subscribe to their very useful newsletter to receive a significant discount (nearly 50%) on the book.
Appendix III: Troubleshooting Word
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