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You are here: Resources --> Errata
in the January 2008 edition of Effective Onscreen
Editing
Vous êtes ici : Ressources --> Errata
in the January 2008 edition of Effective Onscreen
Editing
The January 2008 update is now available (free!) to registered purchasers. If you haven't received a download link by e-mail, please contact me to request one.
All future 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 very definitely welcome!
This page contains links to the following updates:
In writing this book, I made a conscious decision to minimize my use of screenshots, mostly because there are far too many versions of Word out there for me to document all the possible interface variations. I recognize that in making this decision, I may have made life a bit more difficult for some readers. To accommodate your needs, I'll make such screenshots available via this page. Please contact me to request specific screenshots, and as soon as I can steal time away from work to create or obtain a copy, I'll provide access to the screenshot via this part of my site.
Pagination error in the first few sections: A numbering error appears to have crept into the file when I created the latest version of the PDF file. In the eBook itself, the page numbers at the bottom of the page are correct, and you can get to these pages with no problem via the index or by typing the page number in the "go to page" field at the top of the reader software (Adobe Reader, Apple Preview, etc.). However, if you have configured your reader software to display thumbnails (small images) of the pages at the right side of the screen, you'll see that up to the end of Chapter 2, the page numbers below the thumbnails incorrectly display with Roman numerals. This appears to be a bug in the Acrobat software, and I'm not sure how to fix it. It's definitely on my list of things to fix in a future version.
Page layout problem in the printed book: You may find that pages 187–211 and 483-490 appear closer to the gutter than to the outer edges of the book, are are therefore a bit more difficult to read. Sorry about that! I'm not sure why this happened: it looks fine on the screen. Another mystery to be resolved in the next version!
Missing Word files: For various reasons, Word files sometimes go missing in action. Microsoft has kindly provided an "official" solution on how to find missing files in Word 2003 and 2007. Most of these solutions will also work on the Macintosh, with minor modification.
Editing error on page 55, in the green sidebar: Currently, the text says "select text from the keyboard with the keyboard". Oops! You can "select text from the keyboard" or "select text using only the keyboard", and that's what it should have said. I'll fix that in the next version.
Customization cursor update: There are a few errors and additions to my description of the Customize cursor, which is obtained using the Control+Alt+Hyphen (Windows) or Command+Option+Hyphen (Macintosh) keyboard shortcuts. It appears that this cursor cannot be used to delete toolbar icons—at least, not in current versions of Word. To do that, you must still use the Customize dialog box. In addition, at least as of Word 2003, this cursor will only delete one menu item before it turns back into the regular cursor. That's an important safety feature, though not so nice as a dialog box warning you about what you're about to delete. If my interpretation is correct, the inability to delete icons is simply a bad design choice: the cursor doesn't change from a "–" to something else, such as the (\) symbol used in "no smoking" signs, when you hover it over an icon, but basic user interface design principles state that you should always change the cursor shape to communicate a change in cursor behavior (here, that it won't work to delete icons). In further testing, I noticed that on my Macintosh (Word X), the cursor sometimes erroneously changes from the "–" to a slightly different variant of the usual pointer arrow, even though it is still secretly the deletion cursor. That's an outright bug, folks. If you're using Word X on the Macintosh, beware!
Adding commands to menus: I haven't devoted any time to the topic of customizing menus, since most people won't want to do this. However, if you've inadvertently deleted a menu command using the Amazing Destructo Cursor of Doom® (better known as the Customize function), it helps to know how to undo the damage. The technique is basically the same as customizing toolbars: open the Tools menu, select Customize, select the Commands tab, then navigate through the list of commands until you find the one you want. To add it to a menu, simply drag the command out of the Customize dialog box and onto the name of the menu that will hold the command. But there's one more trick: you'll need to hold down the mouse button for a second or two until the menu opens. At that point, you can move the cursor down through the menu until you reach the desired position for the command. Release the mouse button and you're done.
Selecting a vertical column of text: Most of this chapter describes how to select contiguous text by moving the cursor horizontally within a line, then vertically to select additional lines. However, Word also lets you select vertical swaths of text while ignoring text to the left or right of the vertical column. This is useful when you're trying to clean up e-mail imported into Word, since there's often a lot of wasted space. It's particularly useful when you're working with "delimited" text, which is often the case when you receive text extracted from a database or spreadsheet, with some character (usually a tab but sometimes a comma or other punctuation) used to mark the position (to delimit) the start and end of each vertical column of information. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to select only that one column of the text? You can! Simply hold down the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac), click the mouse cursor at the leftmost position you want to include in the selection, then drag your mouse down and to the right until you've selected the final character at the rightmost edge of that column of text. You can now copy, cut, or delete the selected text.
Concordance resources: It looks like Justus-Liebig University’s Web page on concordance software is missing in action. Until such time as it returns, the Wikipedia article on concordances should serve as a useful placeholder. It's a bit skimpy, so if you have a favorite concordance resource, please pass it along!
Macintosh concordance software: The "Conc" software I mentioned in the discussion of concordances seems to have fallen into disrepair, and probably won't work anymore on your computer. Instead, you may be interested in the AnalyzeText software (a commercial product); it's not clear whether this software is still being actively developed, so it might be worthwhile contacting the author to find out. Alternatively, try the free Concorder software or the equally free Concorder Pro software. Both appear to be in "beta" (i.e., still being tested and debugged), but since they're free, it won't hurt to try them out.
Rich Adin's "wordsnSync" suite of editing tools is now available. If you need industrial-strength tools for really long jobs, have a look!
Proofreader's marks in Acrobat: If you own the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Professional (version 8 when I wrote this; not Adobe Reader), the software provides built-in tools for simulating proofreader's marks or Word's revision tracking. If you click inside a block of text using the text editing tool, and start typing, Acrobat will add a caret ( ^ ) to indicate an insertion and will then add the text in a popup note; if you select text and press the Backspace or Delete key, Acrobat will draw a red line through the text; and if you select text and begin typing, Acrobat will do both things, thereby marking the deleted text, inserting the caret to indicate an insertion, and including the new text in a popup note.
Word 2007/2008 .docx format: If you're using Apple's OS X 10.5 (Leopard) operating system, the latest version of the TextEdit software will both open and save files in the new .docx format. If you're still using an older version of the operating system, but have the most current version of the iWorks software, try the Pages word processor instead; it's also claimed to do a good job of supporting Word's document formats. How well these programs handle the new format is anyone's guess; it will be many months before I have an opportunity to try this myself. For a more professional solution, try the Dataviz MacLinkPlus conversion utility, which includes a wide range of additional format conversions. Microsoft's .docx conversion utility for Macintosh has been in beta for some time, but reports from the field suggest it works well.
Restoring Word 2003's menus in Word 2007: If you really miss the old-style menus from previous versions of Word, consider Shah Shailesh's solution, which adds the old menus to Word and other components of Microsoft Office 2007. A bit of snooping suggests this solution was implemented using Visual Basic, and if that's correct, users of Word 2008 for the Mac are out of luck. If you know of any comparable Mac solutions, please let me know! You can also restore the menus and toolbars using ToolbarToggle.
Word 2003 and older |
Word 2007 equivalent |
Tools --> Customize |
Office button --> Word Options --> Customize. |
Tools > Templates and Add-ins |
Office button --> Word Options > Add-Ins --> Manage -->Templates, then click Go. |
Tools --> Macros |
View (on the ribbon) --> Macros |
Tools --> Options |
Office button --> Word Options --> Advanced. |
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