Choose your Style

• Select Tools/Options from the menu bar, then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.
• Click the Settings button, and remove or add any of the more than 20 options you find there. If, for example, you don't think clichés are like a red rag to a bull, click to remove the check mark from Style-Clichés.

Call off the Grammar Police
By default, Word 97 corrects your spelling and grammar as you go. If you find this irritating and would rather have the program check only when you request it to do so, select Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar from the menu bar, and click to remove the check marks from the "Check spelling as you type" and "Check grammar as you type" boxes.

Add to AutoCorrect
Fed up with having your unusual (but proper) spellings corrected? Just right-click anything Word tries to correct that you want to keep the same, and then select Add from the shortcut menu.

Write by Committee
Want to keep versions of collaborative documents intact, complete with comments by each author? In a new document, select File/Versions from the menu bar, and check the "Automatically save a version on close" box. As you and your colleagues save a document, Word will keep track of each incremental change. You'll be prompted for comments each time you save a new version; type a brief message to let subsequent users know what you've been doing. By selecting File/Versions from the menu bar on a document after it has made the rounds, you'll be able to read the comments and follow the editing trail, free of revision-mark clutter.

Review Everyone's Changes
Word 6.0/95 contained a nifty feature called Revisions that let you track changes made by various people in a collaborative project. Revisions made by different people showed up in different colors. Word 97 has renamed and improved this feature. Now called Track Changes, it lets you see who made each change simply by holding the cursor over the edited text--a text box containing the editor's name pops up.

To track everyone's changes, select Tools/Track Changes/Highlight Changes from the menu bar, and check all the boxes in the Highlight Changes dialog box. To review a document's changes, right-click any toolbar, select the Reviewing toolbar from the shortcut menu, and click the Next Change icon.

Reject Dumb Edits
Sometimes editors make mistakes. If you want to reject tin-eared revisions, just right-click in the edited text, and select Reject Change from the shortcut menu. (If you want to accept a good suggestion, right-click in the edited text, and select Accept Change.)

Express Yourself
When reviewing a printed document, many people like to scribble comments in the margin or add a "sticky note" on top. Word 97 lets you place electronic sticky notes on documents as you go. Select the text you wish to comment on, select Insert/Comment, type your remark in the window that appears, and click Close. The text appears highlighted.

To review comments, click the Next Comment icon in the Reviewing toolbar (right-click any toolbar and select Reviewing to bring it up.) Hold the cursor over the highlighted text, and a box pops up with your comment inside. Note that online comments, previously called Annotations, let you see the reader's comments in place, without having to open another window.

Save Keystrokes
Don't let bulleted or numbered lists slow you down--let Word make them for you. To start a bulleted list, just type *, a space, and your sentence. When you press Enter, Word automatically replaces the asterisk with a bullet, indents the information, and places a bullet on the next line. When you're done with the bulleted list, just press Enter twice, and Word will end the list and return the cursor to the left margin.

This same technique works for numbered lists, too. Type 1), a space, and a sentence. When you press Enter, the indention will be adjusted, and the new line will be ready with the next number. As with bulleted lists, pressing Enter twice ends the list and returns the spacing to normal.

Smarter AutoCorrect-ion
If there are words and phrases you use over and over, Word's AutoCorrect feature can save you time. Once you add a word or phrase to AutoCorrect, you can simply type an abbreviated version of the word, and Office 97 will fill in the rest. For example, if you frequently include the word e-commerce in your documents, you might set up ec as the AutoCorrect abbreviation. As soon as you type ec followed by a space, Office 97 will replace it with e-commerce.

To add a term to the AutoCorrect list, select Tools/AutoCorrect, and make sure the AutoCorrect tab is showing. Place a mark in the "Replace text as you type" check box to turn the feature on, then fill in the fields under it as follows:

• In the Replace box, type the abbreviated version of the word.
• In the With box, enter the version of the word that you want to replace the abbreviation.
• Click OK.

The additions you make to AutoCorrect are available to all Office 97 programs, so an entry in Word will provide the same AutoCorrect functionality in Excel.

Adding a Watermark
A watermark is a faint background image that shows up behind the text or other images in your document. You can watermark your documents with your name, company logo, product-specific brand, or some other icon:

• Select View/Header And Footer to open the Header And Footer toolbar.
• Click the Show/Hide Document Text button on the Header And Footer toolbar. (This step is not mandatory, but seeing the full page, without the document's text, may be useful.)
• Select Insert/Picture to get a selection of graphics choices. Office 97 provides some clip art and word art options, or you can insert an image that you've created or saved in your own files.
• Once you've selected the image you want to insert and clicked OK, use your mouse to drag the image to the place you want it to appear on the page. Remember, the image will fade into the background once you exit the Header And Footer screen, so don't worry if it appears too bright or bold.
• Click Close on the Header And Footer toolbar. Your document now has a watermark that will appear on every page.

If you want to edit or move the watermark, select View/Header And Footer to redisplay the Header And Footer screen, and make your changes.

If you use clip art or import an image, you may find that wherever the image extends into the document, the document text wraps around it rather than overlaps it. To correct this, display the Header And Footer screen, right-click the image, and select the Format item option from the menu. From the dialog box that opens, choose the Wrapping tab, and select None from the top row, then click OK. The image should now appear under the text instead.

Using the Conversion Wizard
The Word 97 Conversion Wizard takes the headache out of converting a large number of files to a new format. Using the Conversion Wizard, you can convert files from one version of Word to another or to HTML, Lotus1-2-3, Excel, Outlook Address Book, Rich Text Format (RTF), Personal Address Book, or text (TXT) formats, to name a few. You can also convert files from a variety of supported file types back to Word.

Here's how to use the Conversion Wizard:

• Using the Windows Explorer, put the files you want converted into one folder, like C:\convert. All the files need to be of the same type.
• In Word, choose File/Open.
• Navigate to the Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office/Macros folder. Change the Files of Type listing to All Files (*.*.)
• Double-click the convert8.wiz file.
• If a warning box appears, click Enable Macros. The Conversion Wizard box appears and asks you what kind of task you want to perform.
• Select "A batch conversion of files."
• Follow the Wizard prompts to select the files and formats to be converted.

Formatting AutoFormatting
You may have noticed that Word creates actual hyperlinks (complete with blue text and underlining) as soon as you add a space after typing a Web address. This is a function of Word's "AutoFormat as you type" feature. While this is sometimes handy, it can also be annoying. Here are two ways to disable the underlining.

Turn off "AutoFormat as you type"

• Choose Tools/AutoCorrect, and select the "AutoFormat as you type" tab.
• Deselect the "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks" check box in the "Replace as you type" group.
• Click OK.

Toggle underlining on a case-by-case basis

• As soon as Word underlines the URL, either select Edit/Undo or press Ctrl-Z to remove the underline.
• If you want to reapply the AutoFormat underline, you can place your cursor at the end of a URL at any time and press the spacebar once.

Multilingual Spell-Check
If your documents include non-English text, your standard spelling checker won't be much help when you try to inspect those sections. Luckily, Word 97 allows you to designate selections of text to be checked by different dictionaries. For example, you may have included a quote from a French philosopher. To make sure that it will be spell-checked using a French dictionary, select the text and choose Tools/Language/Set Language. Pick the appropriate language from the list, and click OK. When you spell-check your entire document, you'll be running a smarter, more effective, multilingual check.

Note:
To take advantage of this feature, you do have to have the appropriate supplemental dictionaries installed. If you have problems, try reinstalling Word with all the dictionaries you plan to use selected.

Changing Cases
As you are probably aware you can change the case of text that is typed by clicking on <Format/Change Case.>. From here you can select: sentence case, lowercase, uppercase, title case and toggle case. Some people prefer to use keystrokes instead of clicking through menus. Here is a shortcut using keystrokes. Before doing this, make sure that the text is selected that you want to change. Press <Shift+F3> and the text will modify. For instance if you had your caps lock on by mistake, it first time you press <Shift+F3> the text will change to lowercase. If <Shift+F3> is pressed again, it will change to title case. If <Shift+F3> is pressed again, it will revert back to uppercase.