Hair on Fire

It's been a rough two weeks, for more than one reason.

I told you near the end of April that we were moving in the near future. Well, the near future has arrived, and we moved out of our home at the first of this week. Today, however, we are at a family reunion in Texas. Then, tomorrow we high-tail it back to Wyoming so we can close on the sale on Monday.

Well, about a week or ten days ago, the hosting company for the Tips.Net websites decided they absolutely HAD to do an upgrade for security reasons. They took about 12-14 hours, during which the sites were down, and when they finished they said "check it out and let us know of any issues."

There were, of course, issues. Like email not working. Like commenting not working. Like back-end processes not working. Like database access not working. Like FTP not working. On and on and on. And they were quite slow in getting things fixed.

The bottom line is that if you tried to email me a solution to last week's Help Wanted questions, there's a good chance I didn't get it. Because I wasn't getting anything! All in the middle of trying to pack up the house and a business.

As everyone knows, there are only 24 hours in a day. Sometimes a perfect storm happens, and you still need to try to get through everything in those 24 hours. There were days I was no fun to be around, I know.

I'm hoping, at this point, that things are pretty well back to normal, at least as far as my hosted servers are concerned. I guess that only time will tell, but this go-round all the hair-on-fire issues will be happening as we move into our new house this next week.

I honestly mean it when I say that I hope you've had a good week. I hope you also enjoy the tips in this week's newsletter.

—Allen

WordTips (ribbon) for 6 June 2026

Applying the Correct Table Style to All Tables in a Document

If you need to apply table styles to a lot of tables in a document, then this tip may be helpful. It shows how to use a macro to evaluate the length of your tables and apply a table style based on that length.

Read this tip »

Accessing the Source of a Document Link

If you have information linked into your document, you may want to display the source of that linked information. Word provides several ways you can access the source, as described in this tip.

Read this tip »

Macros! Macros! Get Your Macros Here!

WordTips: The Macros has all the information that you are ever going to need to help you learn the best ways to create and effectively use macros for Microsoft Word. Discover how powerful macros really are and how you can use them to make Word do your bidding. Get your macros here...

Beginning a Mail Merge

Performing a mail merge can be intimidating to some people. It needn't be; Word provides a handy step-by-step wizard that will lead you through the process.

Read this tip »

Controlling Names of Backup Files

Want to control the name and location of your document backup? Here are some ideas that may help.

Read this tip »

WordTips YouTube Channel

Do you like to learn visually? Make sure you check out the WordTips YouTube channel. New videos are added weekly. (I typically try to add them on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

New video: Adding a Hyperlink
Adding a hyperlink to a text selection is easy to do in Word. All you need to do is make a couple of clicks and specify the target for the link.

New video: Creating Non-Printing Text Boxes
Text boxes can be helpful for segmenting information from your main document and for creating unique page layouts. What if you don't want the text boxes to print with your document, however? This Quick Tip demonstrates a couple of ways you can suppress the printing of text boxes.

Help Wanted

This section is for those having problems making Word behave. If Word is giving you fits, feel free to submit your own Help Wanted question.

If you have a solution for the problems below, click the link after the problem to send us your answer. (All responses become the sole property of Sharon Parq Associates, Inc., and can be used in any way deemed appropriate.) If your response is used in a future issue, you will be credited for your contribution to the answer.

Generating a Markup Report

Our team uses Track Changes and comments while developing documents. It would be handy to generate a report that indicates information about the changes, such as how many changes and comments there are, when the first change was made, when the last change was made, etc. Is there a tool that will provide this sort of analysis?
—Hillary Ross (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)

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