Moving items easily within a document

Chapter 5 shows you how to copy, paste, drag, and drop text and images into your documents from other programs, such as the Safari web browser. Well, we’ve got good news for you: You can copy and paste and drag and drop text and images within your documents in the same way. The only difference is that you drag or copy within the Word document you’re creating rather than from another document.

Chapter 5 discusses selecting and copying text in more detail, but here’s the nitty-gritty: To move a section of text or an image by cutting and pasting, just select the item you want to move and choose Edit ⇒ Cut, or use its keyboard shortcut, ⌘  +X. Scroll to wherever you want to paste your selection and click, and then choose Edit ⇒ Paste or use its keyboard shortcut, ⌘  +V.

We've been asked many times by computer novices why the keyboard shortcut for the Paste command is ⌘  +V instead of ⌘  +P. The answer is simple: ⌘  +P is for Print, so that one’s taken. Also, similar commands for Copy — ⌘  +C — and Cut — ⌘  +X — are right next to the V key, keeping all three commands in the same easy-to-reach area.

To move an item by dragging and dropping, select it and then hold down the left mouse button (or the left side of your mouse button, if your mouse only has a single button) while dragging to the new location. If you’re using a trackpad, select the item, click and hold down on it with one finger, and then use another finger (probably using your other hand) to drag it to the new location. Release the mouse button or the trackpad and — presto! — your selection is in its new home. And to copy the selection to another location without moving the original, press the Option key before you drag.

By the way, you can also use both techniques — cut and paste and drag and drop — to move text or images from one Office document (that is, a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document) to another. The process is just as explained in the Tip a couple of paragraphs back, except that you click the document you want to move the text or image to before you scroll to where you want to paste your selection and click.

Using special Word features that make moving stuff easier

Dragging and dropping as well as copying and pasting are easy in a document that’s only one or two pages long. But when your documents are longer than a few pages, copying, pasting, dragging, and dropping can be a drag (pun gleefully intended) because of all the scrolling you have to do. Fortunately, Word offers several features that make it easier to move text or images in long documents.

Splitting a window

One useful feature when moving text or images is to split the window. As you might expect, this feature splits the active window into two separate panes, reducing or eliminating the need to scroll long distances.

You can split the active window in one of these two ways:

• Choose Window ⇒ Split to split the window into two equal parts.
• On the ribbon’s View tab, click the Split Window button.

Click and drag the resizer control (refer to Figure 6-1) and release it where you want the split to occur.

If you want the parts of the window to be different sizes, the second method is best.

In any event, you end up with a window split into two parts, each displaying a different part of the document (refer to Figure 6-1).

Click in either part to make it the active pane. When a part of the window is active, you can change its zoom percentage and scroll up or down without affecting the other part.

To unsplit a window, choose Window ⇒ Remove Split. You could also click the ribbon’s View tab, and then click the Remove Split button.

Opening a new window

Opening a new window for a document works along the same lines as splitting a window. To open a new window for a document, choose Window ⇒ New Window. In this case, rather than have one window with two parts, you have two separate windows, as shown in Figure 6-2.

The main differences between splitting a window and creating a new window are that with a new window, you can arrange the two windows any way you like on your screen, and you can have more than just two windows. To create a third (or fourth or fifth or however many you want) window, choose Window ⇒ New Window again (and again and again, if you like).

Creating a new window doesn’t create a new document; it merely creates a new view of the current document.

Each new window is independent of the other, so scrolling or zooming (see Chapter 4) in one window has no effect on another. In fact, the only thing that isn’t independent is editing, which is reflected immediately in the other window or windows. Further, each window behaves just like any other window. You click to activate the window you want to work with, and then you can drag and drop between them to your heart’s content and click the Close button to close the window, for example.

Double-checking your spelling and grammar

By default, as you type, Word uses wavy red underlines to indicate words not in its dictionary and blue double underlines to indicate suspected grammatical errors. This feature is enabled when you install Word (you find out how to turn it off shortly). When you see a wavy red or double blue underline, right-click (or Control-click) the line to see your choices for that particular error, as shown in Figure 6-3.

Figure 6-3 shows the choices Word gives you for the correct spelling of dulk. To replace this “word” with the correct one, just select it (dull, in this case) from the pop-up menu, and the misspelled word is immediately replaced with the correctly spelled one.

You can also choose Ignore All to have Word ignore all instances of dulk in this document. Or you can choose Add to Dictionary to add dulk to your personal spelling dictionary so that it isn’t flagged as misspelled in documents you create later.

If you choose Add to AutoCorrect, a submenu with the same set of spelling choices (in this case, dull, duck, and dunk) appears. The difference is that if you choose dull from this submenu, Word adds it to your list of words that are automatically corrected. Then if you happen to type dulk again, Word changes it to dull automatically.

The process is the same for grammar errors, except that they’re underlined in double blue lines instead of wavy red lines.

Having all those red and blue underlines on the page bugs some people. To turn off automatic spelling and grammar checking, follow these steps:

1. Choose Word ⇒ Preferences, or use its keyboard shortcut, ⌘  +, (comma).
2. Click the Spelling & Grammar icon to open the Spelling Grammar preference pane, as shown in Figure 6-4.

   

3. Deselect the Check Spelling as You Type check box and then the Check Grammar as You Type check box to turn off automatic spelling and grammar checking.

Utilizing Word’s built-in editor

If you don’t care to use the automatic spelling or grammar checkers, you can still check the spelling and grammar in a document by choosing Tools ⇒ Spelling and Grammar ⇒ Editor. Word inspects the entire document and displays the Editor dialog shown in Figure 6-5 when it finds possible spelling or grammar errors.

You can access Editor also by clicking its button on the Home tab of the ribbon.

You don’t have to turn off the wavy red or double blue underlines to use this dialog. If you prefer, you can just ignore the red and blue underlines and choose Tools ⇒ Spelling and Grammar ⇒ Editor whenever you want to check a document’s spelling or grammar.

The Editor tool allows you to see all spelling and grammar errors in one spot, in a pane on the right side of the document window, without the need to hunt and peck for underlines. You also see a spelling and grammar score for your document (refer to Figure 6-5), which lets you know just how elegant or how much of a mess your document is. In the Refinements section, Editor offers suggestions for areas such as clarity and punctuation. And in the Similarity section, Editor can even check the web for sources that may be similar to what you’ve written.

Click an item in a section to see what suggestions Editor thinks you should consider. For example, with Editor open, we clicked the Grammar option under the Corrections section, and were alerted to the fact that we’ve accidentally capitalized the word and in a sentence; see Figure 6-6.

In the Editor dialog, you can

• See the sentence containing your mistake.
• Click one of the suggestions to use it.
• Click Ignore to have Word move along without making any corrections.
• Click the Don’t Check for This Issue button if you want Word to ignore this particular “error” from this point forward.
• Click the Back button to return to the Editor’s main window.

Note that if an area of concern has been addressed or there are no occurrences of it, a check mark will appear to the right.

When Word says that a word isn’t spelled correctly, it doesn’t always mean that the word isn’t spelled correctly. In other words, Word makes mistakes. One of the most common is if you receive a document from someone outside the country — say, from Great Britain. In that case, you may see a word such as colour underlined as a spelling mistake because Word expects it to be spelled the American way, which is color. Neither does Word correctly flag spelled words that are used incorrectly. For example, if you type wierd to refer to something as weird, Word flags the word as misspelled. But if you accidentally type wired, which is a word (though not the word you intended to type), Word doesn’t recognize your mistake. The point is that you shouldn’t rely on these tools too much and should always proofread your work carefully. Forewarned is forearmed.

Correcting your errors automatically with AutoCorrect

The AutoCorrect feature provides another way to guard against those pesky typos that sneak in all too easily. In a nutshell, AutoCorrect watches what you type and corrects common mistakes on the fly, without bothering you with wavy underlines or dialogs.

Turning on and configuring AutoCorrect

To enable AutoCorrect, do one of the following:

• Choose Tools ⇒ AutoCorrect Options.
• Choose Word ⇒ Preferences (or press ⌘  +comma) and then click the AutoCorrect icon.

Either way, you see the AutoCorrect preference pane, as shown in Figure 6-7. If you select the Automatically Correct Spelling and Formatting as You Type check box at the top of this pane, your common mistakes are corrected automatically as you type.

AutoCorrect comes populated with dozens of useful items. For example, if you type (c), Word automatically replaces it with the proper copyright symbol (©). Or if you type (r), Word automatically replaces it with the proper registered trademark symbol (®).

You can click an entry in the list under the Replace Text as You Type option to display it in the Replace box and With box. For example, Figure 6-7 shows an AutoCorrect entry that replaces (tm) with ^TM automatically. Due to this entry, whenever you type (tm) — the letters t and m inside parentheses — Word automatically replaces it with the trademark symbol.

To add your own automatic replacement pairs, just type what you want replaced in the Replace field and type what you want it replaced with in the With field.

By the way, this function is shared among all Office apps. In other words, replacement pairs you create in Word are available also in Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, and replacement pairs you create in Excel, Outlook, or PowerPoint are available also in Word.

The AutoCorrect feature is useful for more than just symbols. Our favorite way to use it is to save time when typing long sentences that we use over and over again or when using common phrases such as

• vty for very truly yours
• iow for in other words
• imho for in my humble opinion
• ssbf for scum-sucking bottom feeder
• ofd for Office For Mac For Dummies
• tpf for the party of the first part

To add your own AutoCorrect replacement pairs like these, type the abbreviation in the Replace field, type what you want the abbreviation replaced with in the With field, and then click the Add button. From then on, whenever you type that abbreviation, it’s replaced with the word or phrase you typed in the With field.

Math AutoCorrect is much the same as the regular AutoCorrect except that it corrects mathematical functions. For example, if you type eta, AutoCorrect replaces it with a proper beta symbol (β).

We absolutely love AutoCorrect, but some users find it annoying. If you'd like to disable all AutoCorrect functions, just deselect the Automatically Correct Spelling and Formatting as You Type check box at the top of the AutoCorrect preference pane.

Hypnotic hyphenation

Word includes an extensive hyphenation dictionary, which you can use manually (the default) or automatically. To access the hyphenation tools (shown in Figure 6-8), choose Tools ⇒ Hyphenation in the menu at the top of the screen.

The thoroughly terrific thesaurus

The thesaurus, which offers alternative word choices, is one of Word’s most useful writing tools. It works just like a printed thesaurus, but it’s even better because it’s faster than leafing through pages, and it’s always just a couple of clicks away when you’re using any Office app. Besides, who uses a printed thesaurus anymore (we're a bit sad to ask)?

To display a list of suggested synonyms, follow these steps:

1. Right-click or Control-click a word for which you want to find a synonym.
2. Choose Synonyms from the pop-up menu that appears.
3. Click the word you want to replace it with from the list of suggestions, as shown in Figure 6-9.

Another way to look up synonyms is by using the thesaurus, which can be accessed by either

• Choosing Thesaurus from the pop-up Synonyms submenu (refer to Figure 6-9)
• Choosing Tools ⇒ Thesaurus to open the Thesaurus pane

The Thesaurus pane opens on the right side of your document, as shown in Figure 6-10.

To find synonyms for another word, type it in the search field at the top of the pane and press Enter.

Word keeps track of your recent searches. To see a pop-up menu displaying all words you’ve typed in the search field recently, click the little triangle next to the magnifying glass icon. Choose a word from this menu and Word looks it up immediately; you don’t have to press Return or Enter.

The online reference tools

In addition to the thesaurus, Word has other reference tools in its repertoire: Smart Lookup, Researcher, and Translator. These three tools are known as the online reference tools. In contrast to the thesaurus, you need an active internet connection to use them. If you’re not connected to the internet, you’ll receive an error message if you attempt to use these tools.

Finding and replacing text

You can use Word’s Find and Replace feature like a magic wand for making fast, document-wide text changes. For example, suppose that you've worked on a manuscript for a long time and just finished. You decide to try using the word fun instead of the word play, but you’re not sure where all the occurrences appear. The hard way to fix this problem is to read the entire document, deleting each occurrence of the word play and typing fun in its place. Can you say “boring”?

Or you can follow these steps to fix the problem all at one time:

1. Choose Edit ⇒ Find ⇒ Replace (or press ⌘  +Shift+H).

   The Find and Replace pane appears in the sidebar on the left side of the window.

2. Click in the first field and type play.

3. Click in the second field and type fun.

   Your Find and Replace pane should now look like Figure 6-15.

4. Click the Replace All button.

Using Find and Replace to make formatting changes

You’re not limited to making word replacements when you use Find and Replace. Here’s another handy use: Say that you’ve just finished the aforementioned manuscript when your editor informs you that the publisher’s in-house style sheet requires all instances of the word work to appear in bold, red, italic text. As things stand, it’s in the same font as the rest of the manuscript — plain, with no bold, red, or italic applied to it.

Using Find and Replace, making this change is no dilemma. Here’s how to fix it in a jiffy:

1. Choose Edit ⇒ Find ⇒ Find (or press ⌘  +F).

   The cursor moves to the search field on the Quick Access toolbar.

2. Type work in the search field.

   You don’t have to press Enter or Return; Word highlights matches in your document as you type.

3. Choose Format ⇒ Font, change the font color to Red, and then choose Bold Italic in the Font Style list.
4. Click the OK button.

Every occurrence of work in the document is now bold, red, and italic.

Using advanced search options to do more

One set of features available in the Find and Replace dialog can save you even more time and effort than others. These advanced search options, shown in Figure 6-16, appear when you choose Edit ⇒ Find ⇒ Advanced Find and Replace and then click the downward-pointing arrow button in the lower-left corner of the window.

As you can see in Figure 6-16, you can use a number of criteria for any find or replace operation, including:

• Match Case: Makes the find and replace operation case-sensitive. For example, if you search for the word rat and replace it with the word rodent, any time rat is found in a sentence, it’s replaced — properly — with rodent.
• Find Whole Words Only: Finds only whole words. For example, if you search for do and replace it with perform, words that contain the word do, such as dog, doughnut, or domestic, wouldn't be changed. If this option were deselected, the first two letters in each of those words would be replaced with perform, so they would be performg, performughnut, and performmestic.
• Use Wildcards: Lets you choose wildcard items, such as Any Character, from the Special menu near the bottom of the dialog.
• Sounds Like: Lets you search for homonyms. For example, searching for so would also find sew and sow.
• Find All Word Forms: Finds all forms of the word you search for. For example, if you search for show and replace it with display, this option also finds showed, showing, and shows and replaces them with displayed, displaying, and displays, respectively.

You can fine-tune your search or replace operation even further with choices from the Format and Special menus. On the Format menu, you can specify font, paragraph, highlight, style, language, and other attributes that you want to either search for or use in your replacement text. The Special menu lets you search for invisible attributes, such as tab characters, paragraph marks, column breaks, and page breaks.

You may recall the earlier example where we made all instances of the word work appear in bold, red, and italic text. Another way to resolve that situation is with these advanced search options. Note that, in Figure 6-16, the Replace operation finds work and replaces it with labor formatted in bold, italic, and red.

Clicking the Replace All button gives the same results as the four-step process described earlier in this chapter — all occurrences of the word labor would now be red, bold, and italic.

Here’s how to change every occurrence of work to labor and make every occurrence of labor then appear in red, bold, and italic type, using the advanced search options:

1. Choose Edit ⇒ Replace or use its keyboard shortcut, ⌘  +Shift+H.
2. In the Find and Replace dialog that appears, type work in the Find What field.

3. Type labor in the Replace With field.

   Make sure not to click anywhere outside the Replace With field. Otherwise, Step 4 won’t work.

4. On the Format menu at the bottom of the dialog, choose Font.

   The Replace Font dialog appears.

   The way you choose font and paragraph formatting options for the Find What and Replace With fields can be a little tricky. To specify options for the Find What field, you must first click in that field. To specify options for the Replace With field, you must click in that field. The active field is outlined in blue, as the Replace With field is in Figure 6-16.

5. Choose red in the Font Color list, choose Bold Italic in the Font Style list, and then click OK.

6. Click the Replace All button.

   All occurrences of work are replaced with labor in red, bold, and italic type.

The arrows to the right of the Find What and Replace With fields indicate pop-up menus that let you reuse recent search terms. If your last Find and Replace action replaced the word Frammus with Ding-a-Ling, those words would reappear in these fields, along with any other words or phrases you’ve searched for or replaced with since you last launched Word. These lists are cleared when you quit Word.

Use the Replace All option with care, and review your document for unintended consequences. For example, if you forget to enable the Find Whole Words Only option in the example earlier in this chapter, where you replace do with perform, you would replace the words dog, doughnut, and domestic with performg, performughnut, and performmestic.

Sometimes, using the Find Next and Replace buttons is safer — so that you can review each replacement before you make it. It takes a little longer than using Replace All, but you’ll sleep better at night knowing that all your replacements make sense.