Announcements
A Must Have For Office Users!
The American Heritage Talking Dictionary - A Dictionary that *talks* to you! We've featured this in the past and have always had a tremendous response. Lately we've been getting a lot (and I mean a lot) of requests for it, so we decided to run it as today's special.
Let me tell ya, these are *really* cool. You type in the word you're looking for and the dictionary pronounces it with a real human voice. If you've ever had a problem figuring out the pronunciation of a word, you can already see how cool it would be to own one of these CDs.
One of the things I really like is that it helps take the mystery out of words that don't look right but the spell checker doesn't flag. You know, like when you misspell the word you want, but your misspelling spells another word correctly. Embarrassment city if you don't catch it. With this software, you can hear the word to make sure you have the correct one. It's saves me on a regular basis :-)
In addition, it also features a thesaurus, maps, and pictures to go along with the definitions - all fully integrated.
What if you don't know the correct spelling of a word? Don't worry, this has several features to help you find the word you're looking for.
For example, let's say you don't have the correct spelling of a word and your word processing software catches it. However, the word processing software doesn't suggest the correct word as a replacement (yeah, we've all been there). Normally, when I can't get the correct spelling of a word through my word processor, I can get it through this program.
I've been using mine for over two years now and I don't think I could get along without it. This is especially handy if you have kids in school.
The price on this is only $12.97, and US Shipping is FREE! These have a retail price of $39.95, so this is really a heck of a deal. Check out the link below for more *lots* more info and to order:
http://www.worldstart.com/store/americanheritagedict.htm
PS - Hey, for $12.97, how can you go wrong? This is a fantastic title and one of my all time favorite programs. I highly recommend it!
MS
Office 101
An
Electronic Desk Spike?
You know, a desk spike
the metal spike on a desk that you impale papers on to keep them handy
and in place.
(Granted, I never
used one for two reasons. First, the idea of having a hole in the middle
of a page doesn't sit well with me. And second, between my lack of coordination
and my bad luck I'd probably put the thing right through my hand.)
At any rate... the
spike we're going to discuss today is in MS Wordno impaled hand
possible.
So, now that we know
this one won't require any medical insurance, the next question becomes:
what is a spike in MS Word?
Actually, according
to the MS Office Assistant, a spike is "a special AutoText entry
that stores multiple items that you've deleted."
The spike is good
when you have nonadjacent items that you wish to put together and paste
somewhere else. Word appends one item to another until you paste the contents
as a group in a new location in your document.
For exampleif
you have several documents that you need to merge you could use the spike
to cut the pieces together in their new order then paste them into the
new document.
No good luck required!
Office
Tip of the Day
Pain-Free
Spiking
Now that you have some idea of what an MS Word spike is let's get to the
part of how to use one.
- The first thing
is to highlight the text to be moved.
- Then hit Ctrl
+ F3
(At this point the text should be gone from the document.)
- Now you need to
continue highlighting all text to be moved and hitting Ctrl
+ F3.
- Each time you repeat
this process, the new text is added to the end of your spike.
- When you've got
everything on the spike, go to the new location for the text. (This
can be in another document.)
- Now hit Ctrl
+ Shift + F3.
Poof!
Your textall
of itshould appear in the new location.
When you paste the
spike contents it is emptied so you're immediately ready to repeat the
process.
At this point a logical
question does come to mind: what if you do NOT want the spike contents
emptied?
Maybe you have created
something that you want repeated in several different locations.
The way I see it,
you have a couple of different choices.
The official way is
to not use Ctrl + Shift + F3. Instead go to the Insert
menu, AutoText submenu, AutoText choice.
On the AutoText
tab you're looking for the Enter AutoText entries here box.
Scroll through the
listyou're looking to select the spike choice on the list.
(Notice the preview available in the preview box below the list?)
Click Insert.
Instantly you'll be
returned to your document where you should see your spike text inserted.
And... as an added
bonus, your spike is still intact and you're free to either repeat the
process or use Ctrl + Shift + F3.
However, if I needed
to use the spike text repeatedly, I'd use the spike to create the text
combination.
Then I'd use Ctrl
+ Shift + F3 to insert the text.
Finally, I would copy
and repeatedly paste the text into my document(s).
Whatever your choice,
the MS Word spike is a handy little tool for bringing all your text togetherno
insurance claim forms ever!
~ April
P.S. I also found
that Word would give me a preview of my spike when I typed the word spike
in my document.
(The contents are
displayed in the little bubble above the word.)
The contents were
displayed as soon as I typed the "k" in spike.
Also, if at that point,
I hit the Enter key the spike was inserted into the documentreplacing
the spike. |