The Year is Fleeting

I hope your Christmas was wonderful and that you were able to share love and gather memories.

Hot on the heels of any Christmas is the end of another year. In just a few days, 2025 will be just a date in the history books and we will face the dawn of2026. Today we are heading south, toward Texas, to visit with some of my family. We weren't able to visit for Christmas, but will be there to celebrate the New Year.

Wherever you find yourself at the dusk and passing of the year, I trust that you will have an enjoyable and safe time.

I'll see you in 2026!

—Allen

WordTips (ribbon) for 27 December 2025

Converting Citations from Chicago to APA Style

When doing formal writing, it is expected that the author will adhere to one style guide or another. If you need to convert from one style to another, the process can be arduous. This tip looks at why this is the case and provides a pointer or two that may be helpful.

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(Thanks to Michael Avidan (MVP) for contributing to this tip.)

Changing the Document Inspector's Comment Name

The Document Inspector can be a great tool when you want to prepare your document to be shared with others and you want to preserve a bit of anonymity in the markup in the document. If you want to use a different name than the default comment name used by Document Inspector, it will require a bit more work than you may expect.

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Journal Your Life

Journals go by many names--diaries, sketchbooks, or simply blank books. Regardless of the name, though, journals provide a way for you to record, track, create, dream, and illustrate your life. Journals make it not only possible, but easy. Check out our complete line of high-quality, convenient journals today!

Creating Unnumbered Endnotes

Endnotes are indispensable in some types of writing. You may want to create endnotes, however, that don't follow the normal endnoting pattern used by Word. Here's how to create endnotes that are outside the pattern and that don't use numbering at all.

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Listing the Settings in a Template

Templates allow you to define and collect many formatting settings that control how your documents appear. Getting a report of what settings are stored in a template is not an easy task, however.

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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: Using Background Printing
We click the button to print our document and seldom think of what is happening behind the scenes. Word prints documents, by default, in the background as we continue to work. This Quick Tip shows how you can change this behavior.

New video: Calculating Average Word Length
Word keeps track of many statistics about your documents. The problem, it seems, is getting exactly the statistics you need in a way you can readily use. This Quick Tip looks at how you can use the statistics to calculate an average length of the words in a selection or in the document.

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.

Bookmarking Headings as a Default

I regularly convert legal briefs prepared in Word to PDFs for electronic filing, and court rules require all headings to be bookmarked in the PDFs. Occasionally I forget to set the options to bookmark the headings. Is there a way to set this option as a default within Word?
—Ann Draper (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)

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