Ask the Word Guru

By Betty Faulkner

As you read the questions below, notice how many of the solutions are found in the Tools | Options dialog. This little dialog is a treasure trove of useful options and settings. I encourage you to explore it a little and experiment with different settings. If you have upgraded Word and find it difficult to adjust to the new interface, remember that as a general rule, anything that used to be available probably still is (if you know where to dig) and anything new (and annoying) can almost always be turned off. The Options dialog contains many of these “backward compatible” settings.

Printing Colored Text as Black

Q: My file has colored text that looks great in a PDF, but comes out gray on my black and white printer. Making a copy of the file and stripping out all the color by hand is very time consuming. Is there any way to just make the colored text print as straight black?

A: Yes, there is an easy way to accomplish this without putting your document through a lot of processing. Go to Tools | Options and select the Compatibility tab.

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Scroll down to the “Print colors as black on noncolor printers” option, select it, and click OK.

Restoring Word's Default Styles

Q: How can I get back to the default styles that Word shipped with?

A: The default styles that came with Word are stored in the “Normal.dot” template. If you have modified this template, Word can automatically restore it for you. Simply close Word, delete Normal.dot, reopen Word, and the template will be regenerated in its original condition (I have tested this with Word 2000 and 2002). To locate the Normal.dot template, select Tools | Options and display the File Locations tab. Under File Types, select User Templates and click the Modify button to open a dialog that defaults to the templates folder containing Normal.dot. If you are nervous about deleting the Normal.dot file, record the location and copy it to a temporary folder. Also, if you have styles in Normal.dot you wish to preserve, copy them to another template first.

Printing a Range Across Sections

Q: Someone once showed me how to print certain sections of a document, but I can’t remember how to do it.

A: If your document has section breaks, you can print specified sections. To print all the pages in a section, Select File | Print and enter the section number preceded by an “s” in the Pages field (in the Page Range frame). For example: “s4” will print all the pages in section 4. You can also print ranges and noncontiguous sections using commas and hyphens. For example: s4, s6, s8-s10. To print pages within (or across) specific sections, combine the section and page notations (page numbers come first). For example: p20s2, p21s3-p24s3.

Tips and Tricks

Word 2002 (XP) and Word 2003 have an undocumented feature called the Style Separator. This is a hidden mark that creates a special break so that two or more paragraph styles can be used in the same paragraph. To learn about the uses for this feature and how to implement it, I recommend Jack Lyon’s article on the subject (Jack’s website and newsletter about Word, The Editorium is a great resource).
If you are inserting numerous graphics into a Word document, it can get tedious to select Insert | Picture | From File and then navigate through several layers of folders multiple times. You can save time by changing the folder that this dialog opens to by default. Select Tools | Options and display the File Locations tab. Select Clipart Pictures and click the Modify button to open the Modify Location dialog. Browse to your graphics folder and click OK.
The Style Area is a useful tool for keeping track of paragraph styles in a document. Select Tools | Options and display the View tab. In the Style area width field, enter a value of about one inch and close the dialog. A margin will appear on the left side of the page (in Normal and Outline views) with the style listed to the left of the first line of each paragraph. You can go back and adjust the width as needed to fit the length of your style names.

Send your questions, comments, and tips to askthewordguru@yahoo.com. Be sure to include the version of Word (and operating system) you are using.

(Reprinted with permission from June/July 2004 issue of Sound-Off, newsletter of Puget Sound chapter of STC. Betty Falkner is a technical editor working with Microsoft and a member of the Communications team for the Puget Sound Chapter of STC. She is also an independent consultant and workshop instructor in editing and business writing.)

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