Turning Off the Automatic Help that Word Offers

Word has a lot of tools that are invoked automatically based on what you are doing in the program. If these tools interfere with how you want to use the program, you'll want to become familiar with the Word Options dialog box.

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(Thanks to Thomas Rogers, Aprile Morgan, Ron Solecki, Deborah Chapman, and Niki White for contributing to this tip.)

Emoticons in Word

Like to add a smiley or two to your writing? Word makes it easy through creative use of the AutoCorrect feature.

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Find what You Need, then Replace It

Find and Replace is the most powerful tool in Word's editing arsenal. Discover how you can use this tool to zero in on just the portion of your document that you need. From simple searches to complex patterns, you can use and master Find and Replace.

Duplex Printing from Multiple Trays

Printing in duplex has not always been easy in Word, particularly when you want that printing to be controlled by a macro. Throw multiple paper trays into the mix and things can get dicey. Here's an idea of how you can solve the printing problem, however.

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Last Document Saves Not Saved

Click the Save button and you expect your document to be saved, right? What if you later discover it wasn't really saved? There could be a few snafus at play in such a situation, as addressed in this tip.

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Adding Half Spaces to Punctuation

Want a little more space just before some of your punctuation characters? You can add that spacing in a variety of ways, as recounted in this tip.

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(Thanks to Robert Monson for contributing to this tip.)

Moving Building Blocks

Building blocks are a sort of "extended" AutoText introduced in Word 2007. As you work with building blocks, you may wonder how you can move them from one template to another. This tip explains what you can do and how you can do it.

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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.

Moving All Headings Down One Level

I created four documents using Word's built-in heading styles, Heading 1 through Heading 3. Now I need to combine the four files into one quite long document, so each file will represent a chapter. This introduces the need for a higher-level heading at the beginning of each file. How I can I quickly change the levels of the current headings (move them all down one level, to Heading 2 through Heading 4) so that I can add the new Heading 1 headings at the beginning of each file as I do the combining?
—Fakhruddin Bakri (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)