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RSS FeedMarch 10th, 2010
Outline numbering in Word 2007
You are writing a professional grade long document consisting of many sections, subsections and whatnot. You would like the sections, subsections and subsubsections to be automatically numbered, you know, like 1, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3. You don’t want to have to put the numbers yourself, which will be ugly and hard to maintain as the document takes shape over next few hours. Rather, the software should handle this for you. So, how do you manage? The solution is the “outline numbering” feature in Word.
Some of my coworkers continue to struggle with this feature and curse Word (which is a bit justified since the software should be easy to use), but I have not yet seen them do one web search on this phrase: Outline numbering in Word 2007. I think it results in more than 2007 hits. 
. Here is my quick version anyway.
- Place the cursor on any heading 1.
- Make sure you are on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon, and find the “Multilevel List” in the “Paragraph” button group – typically, this is the third button in the group.
- Select the multilevel list that shows grayed out “Heading 1″, “Heading 2″, etc. after the numbers (see the image).
Enjoy.
September 3rd, 2009
Microsoft Word and LaTex/BibTex
MS Word 2007 is the first version of Word that I have seriously considered for scientific publishing. Up till now, I have relied on LaTeX for all publications. There is a lesser known XML feature in References section of Word 2007, that can be used to import BibTex files, but quite clearly, a converter would be required for that. I am currently reviewing the converter aspect of it, and will post my findings.
September 21st, 2008
PowerPoint 2007 does not support hyperlinks on diagrams
Very interesting to note that PowerPoint 2007 version does not support hyperlinks on diagrams, a feature that was supported in 2003 version.
Since all in all, the 2007 version is a real “upgrade” of 2003, I am not really sure why this support was taken away, but I believe this could be due to security reasons. Anyhow, if I find more about this, I will post it here. If anyone has an idea on this, please leave me a note.
June 20th, 2008
My favorite Word 2007 peeve
Considering that Word 2007 is such a popular software application, I used to think that Microsoft’s Office development team should have implemented every single feature they could think of and justify. Isn’t that logical to believe – this team has access to huge budget, and is under pressure from competition (including online document management tools), so really, if they can think of a good feature, they should implement it, right?
How about this one:
When you try to update the “Update Table of Contents” feature, it gives you this option:
So, what does this option mean – why is it even presented? I can think of two reasons: (i) for efficiency, updating the page numbers is easier and faster than updating the entire table, or (ii) if the user deliberately does not want to add new sections into the ToC (this happens, I know).
The basic problem with this feature is that it does not allow setting of a default, so it always pops up, and assuming it is 99% of the case, when user wants to update the entire table, the user has to select the right choice and click OK. Disgusting.
Let us focus on efficiency for a minute – how long would it take to update the entire table anyway, if the document is 10 pages long? For short documents, the efficiency gain is simply meaningless and not worth the hassle of this dialog. With faster computers, I think unless the document is more than 40 pages long, the time to update the entire ToC would still be less than 3 seconds, so not really worth this extra option.
So, how about Word 2007 do this instead:
- Allow a checkbox on this option dialog, that allows user to always update the entire table, unless the Alt key is down or the document is too large. Then, if it is a small document (say up to 100 pages), update the entire table. If it is a large document, show this option anyway.
- If the Alt key is down, show this option.
Ok, now that I have shown you my pet peeve, let me also present two partial solutions to it:
(i) Keyboard Shortcuts – My fingers are programmed to: Right click key, U, Alt E, Enter. This basically selects the “Update entire table” option and hits enter.
(ii) Using a macro – You can program a macro to do the same thing, I use Ctrl-R (for refresh).
What are your least favorite Word 2007 features?