How-to – Margie Beilharz

Add a custom tab to your Word ribbon

I gave an informal talk today to science editors about using macros, but it was my very first tip that generated the most excitement. You can add a your own customised tab to the Word ribbon! I gave an informal talk today to science editors about using macros, but it was my very first tipContinue reading “Add a custom tab to your Word ribbon”

Create a table of contents using Word Styles

Creating a table of contents (TOC) is super easy if you have applied styles to your headings. If you are new to styles, start at my introductory post What are Word Styles and how do you use them?

Use Word Styles for navigating around and restructuring your document

Word Styles offer more than simply and consistently formatting text; they give you lots of power in organising your whole document. For those new to using Styles, you might want to check out the introduction in my previous post: What are Word Styles and how do you use them? In the next few posts I’llContinue reading “Use Word Styles for navigating around and restructuring your document”

What are Word Styles and how do you use them?

You can easily format text in Microsoft Word with the options you can see in your Home ribbon. You can choose your font, font size, colour, bold and italics (character options) and also paragraph options like bullet points, alignment, indenting, spacing between lines and paragraphs, and lots more.

What Word style is your text is formatted in?

Here are six ways to check what Word style your text is in (the last two are my favourites):

Microsoft Word skills for editors: basic to advanced

Many editors prefer the features and power of Microsoft Word – especially when copyediting – over Google Docs and other online and collaborative programs. So, even though the latter are increasingly being used for writing and producing documents, Word remains the standard program for editing documents. Nowadays it’s pretty much assumed that writers and editors haveContinue reading “Microsoft Word skills for editors: basic to advanced”

Tips and tricks: A better way to print out your PowerPoint presentation

I recently found something better than PowerPoint’s usual ‘print Notes Pages’ format for printing out a presentation’s slides and notes together. As far as I can see, however, it seems to be only available in the PC version. I don’t use PowerPoint often, but did a couple of months ago for my presentation at theContinue reading “Tips and tricks: A better way to print out your PowerPoint presentation”

Tips and tricks: Using your screen’s hot spots

There are a couple of neat tricks you can use, but (naturally) they vary somewhat between PCs (I’m using Windows 10) and Macs (I’m still on OS X El Capitan – delaying my upgrade to Mojave because it will render my Word 2011 inoperable). Snap your windows in Windows To open your document or windowContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Using your screen’s hot spots”

Tips and tricks: Opening your Word document in multiple windows

It can be really useful to look at your Word document in two separate, independent windows. And it’s very simple, but unless you’ve played around with the menu options you may not be aware of it. To see how it works, first open up a Word document. On my PC, I then go to theContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Opening your Word document in multiple windows”

Tips and tricks: Summarising tracked changes in Word

A few months ago, I wrote about having trouble getting an author to see my tracked changes in Word (and showed a solution for that problem in PDFs). Since then, I’ve come across some solutions in Word too. I wanted my client to see my tracked edits, but they seemed to not see the editsContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Summarising tracked changes in Word”

Tips and tricks: Transcribing interviews

The time-consuming task of transcribing can be speeded up with technology or by outsourcing – as long as, in both cases, the quality is good. Rachel Smith (of jobs list service Rachel’s List), shared her interviewing and transcribing process in a blog post in 2017. She explains the services she uses for recording interviews andContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Transcribing interviews”

Tips and tricks: Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks

Let’s say you’ve created or edited a report – it’s all nicely laid out and you will be saving it as a PDF file. Before you do, take some time to think about PDF bookmarks. With a bit of forethought, you can make the document much more user-friendly than a long, unstructured PDF. For oneContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks”

Tips and tricks: Search all your open browser tabs or bookmarked pages

You’ll thank me for this one! As we know, writing and editing can involve checking a lot of facts, and the number of open tabs on my browser window can quickly spiral out of control. Then it can be hard to remember which of the open pages had a particular piece of information or topic.Continue reading “Tips and tricks: Search all your open browser tabs or bookmarked pages”

Tips and tricks: Google My Business

Have you noticed that when you google a search term you’ll often get a box with a summary of relevant information on the right of the screen? This is the knowledge graph (like this one here for editor and author Sophie Cunningham), which contains information grabbed from various sources on the internet.

Tips and tricks: Post to your blog directly from Word

I’m insanely pleased to have discovered this, even though I don’t actually blog very often. But I could have used it in jobs I’ve had in the past, and may even be tempted to blog more now! Did you know you can post to a blog directly from Microsoft Word? This is exciting for aContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Post to your blog directly from Word”