Stop the annoying horizontal line in Word

One of the most-read tips on this blog is still "Get rid of that annoying horizontal line in Word", which means that problem is still bugging people out there.

It's a "feature" of Microsoft Word, whereby annoying horizontal lines appear in your document and you can't get rid of them. The post above describes how to remove those lines, but there is also a way of stopping (some of) them from appearing.

AutoCorrect creating The Line
Sometimes they are created by Word's often useful, sometimes infuriating AutoCorrect feature. If you type a line of 3 or more equals signs, underscores, minus signs, and probably a number of other chracters, Word automatically converts this to a line running across the screen, which isn't actually a line but a border, which is why we have trouble getting rid of it. You can just about see why someone might want to use this shortcut, but it seems to have caused more confusion among Word users than anything, all things considered.

The way to stop this is simple - go to Tools -> AutoCorrect Options and select the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Uncheck the option Apply as you type -> Border lines and never see that feature again! (until you reinstall Office at a later date and forget what you changed!)

The Word LifeSaver - never lose a Word document again!

"Never lose a Word document again!" (hopefully)

If the Word LifeSaver saved your life, or at least your Word document, consider making a donation to help with the upkeep of this program. Thanks.

Download v0.3 of the Word LifeSaver here - FREE (compatible with Word 2003 - not tested with other versions, please let me know if you have tried Word 2007 or others)

NOTE ADDED: 22nd July 2008 - there is a "slight" loophole in the program - you COULD still exit Word using File -> Exit, or by clicking on the 'X' at the top right of the window. Thanks to a user for pointing that out. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way of intercepting Word's Exit 'event' (actually, there seems to be no Exit event in Word Visual Basic - help programmers!) but if I manage to work it out I will post a new version of course. So, yes, this does diminish the functionality of the program a tad, but you could still find it a LifeSaver..!

The background
You know that moment? The moment when you are exiting Microsoft Word and the program asks you Do you want to save? In your haste you automatically press NO, realising a split second later, with horror, that you DID want to save, and that you have just lost 10 minutes's/an hour's/a day's work!

Usually in this situation the document is lost for good! I know you know about this because this is the most popular article on this site!

Word LifeSaver - how it works
To stop this happening, you need the Word LifeSaver! It is a little routine which you install in Word which STOPS you from easily closing a document that you haven't saved. If you try to close a document with unsaved changes in it - and these can represent a few seconds typing, or a whole day's work! - Word will still ask you Are you sure...? If you go ahead and press NO the document will NOT close, losing all your work forever. Rather, you will be presented by this rather wordy but, I hope you will agree, useful dialogue:

This is your chance to say NO! and save your document.

If you should press YES, well - there might just be one more chance, but let's hope you don't need that, eh?

Word LifeSaver - how to install
1) Hopefully you have downloaded LifeSaver v0.3.

2) Unzip it, but DO NOT run it.

3) Open Word 2003. Go into Tools -> Macros -> Security and set the security level to Medium if it is set higher than that. You must do this - LifeSaver is written in Visual Basic and won't work otherwise!

4) Now go to Open and find the file you unzipped - WordLifeSaverInstall.dot. Open it. If you are asked whether you want to enable macros, click Enable.

5) Follow the on-screen instructions and... that's it! The rest is explained in the file, hopefully.


How to uninstall

1) Navigate via the toolbar through: Tools -> Macro -> Macros -> Organizer

2) Choose the Macro Project Items tab and look at the list in the In Normal: box, on the left.

3) You need to choose three macros from that list and delete them with the Delete button. These are:

• DoubleCheckSave
• LifeSaver
• SureCloseDialog

Once these are gone, the macro should no longer work.

Please read the instructions fully, as well as the disclaimer and the license. The program is free to use and distribute, donations are always gratefully received if this program helped you, and most of all I would love to hear if you found this program useful, or if you found any bugs in it (highly likely) - so let me know in the comments below.

Inserting non-standard characters in Word using ALT-number pad

A while back I wrote a couple of articles about inserting non-keyboard symbols in Word using the Insert Symbol function, and also by using some default shortcuts.

Now we get onto the real voodoo - using ALT and the number pad to produce some non-standard characters. You do have a number pad, don't you? That was one of the essential features I insisted on when I got my Toshiba laptop - unless you REALLY need high portability, you ARE going to miss the number pad at times...

How to use ALT and the number pad to produce non-keyboard characters
All the characters you need CAN be inserted into your document using the Insert Symbol function in Word - say the ² (squared) symbol, the µ (Mu or micro) symbol, or the ¼ and other basic fractions. But what if you use them frequently? You don't want to have to go into Insert symbol every time.

Well, this is how you do it: first go into Insert symbol and select one of the above-mentioned symbols (this is by way of example - not all the symbols are inserted this way, so choose one of those for now). Click on the symbol once, say µ . At the bottom it says: Shortcut key: Alt+0181. What's that all about?

It means:

1) Make sure the NUM LOCK light is lit on your keyboard - if not, press it once to activate the number keypad
2) Press the LEFT "ALT" key (it doesn't work with the right!) and hold it down.
3) While still holding the left ALT key, type 0181 in sequence on the number pad (it only works on the keypad too!)
4) Let go of the ALT key and... the µ symbol magically appears!

Other ALT codes
Many other symbols have these codes, and believe it or not, you CAN learn these by heart if you use them fairly regularly - you don't want to have to go back to Insert symbol every time, after all, that would defeat the object somewhat! I have a number of these codes that I use without thinking, such as the „ and ” I need in Serbian - you can't get those via the keyboard.

Here are a few more symbol ALT codes:

½ (half symbol) - ALT+0189
¾ (three-quarters symbol) - ALT+0190
÷ (division sign) - ALT+0247
† (dagger) - ALT+0134
§ (section) - ALT+0167
± (plus-minus) - ALT+0177
¥ (Yen) - ALT+0165

Oh, and I'll let you into a little secret! These shortcuts are not exclusive to Word - in fact they work in all Microsoft and most Windows programs. In fact, I used them to type the symbols here.

Thanks for tuning in to Word Tips World again, and for letting us into your inbox if you are an email subscriber. Stay tuned, for one more bit of symbol-inserting voodoo, coming soon!

Inserting symbols in Word, continued

Recently I wrote about inserting symbols in Word using the Insert symbol function. I also mentioned that there are keyboard shortcuts for some common symbols, like © (copyright symbol) (ALT+CTRL+C) and it's well worth learning them, it can really save you some time! Here are a few more:

® (registered trademark symbol) - ALT+CTRL+R
¢ (cent symbol) - bit more tricky, hold CTRL and press /, then press c whilst still holding CTRL!
° (degree symbol) - hold CTRL and press @, then press space

By the way, these can depend on what keyboard you have - mine is not an English one, so to get @ I have to press shift too!

But we still haven't got onto those symbols that are inserted with ALT+xxxx (a four digit number) - we'll leave that for next time!

How do I convert a PDF to a Word document?

In my translation business I often get PDF files which the customer wants translated and returned identically-formatted. The only way I can do this (partly because of the software we use to help us in translation) is to somehow convert the file to Word format and do the editing/translating there, and then convert back to PDF if necessary.

You probably have a similar situation, where you have a PDF file that you need to convert into a Word file so you can then continue editing the document in Word for whatever reason, and you want formatting preserved.

I have decided to test VeryPDF's PDF to Word software, one of the solutions that are out there for converting PDF files into Word documents, and see how well a product like this really works.



What I decided to do was get a PDF file and try converting it with PDF to Word to see if it really does the job. I opted for a really exciting document, the British Government's SA-100 tax form, which is full of nice formatting which ought to trip up the program. Here is a snapshot of the file (this is from page 2, click for full size):



The easy way
Of course, you could just open the file in Adobe Reader and copy/paste the text into Word. So let's try that.

You basically get an unformatted text file, like so (click for full size):


As you can see, it's next to useless - there is no formatting preserved and you would have a real job trying to reconstruct the original document from this.

Now, if Adobe Reader had an option like Save As -> Word Document... That would be nice, but they want you to buy the full Acrobat software for that, costing 100's of dollars! And having used it in the past, I was not overly impressed with its export to Word function, though this may have improved.

The VeryPDF way
I downloaded trial versions of several PDF converter programs, and they all did the job fairly well, but I eventually decided to demonstrate VeryPDF's, mainly because it offers a fairly generous trial period - 99 tries and only a 5-page limitation in trial mode. Some of the other programs (such as this one) seemed to do a good job, but obfuscated the results with asterisks and stuff. I understand they need to do to ensure sales of the full version, but it was very annoying and did not allow me to properly trial the program. VeryPDF's PDF to Word software is very easy to use so I won't go into details - all you have to do is select the source PDF and name the target Word file and in a few minutes the job is finished. And here is the result (yes, this is a screenshot of the resulting Word file!):


I am impressed - I honestly wasn't expecting it to be that good! I expected some bits of the PDF to be converted to graphical elements in Word but they were not - every bit of the text is editable, as far as I can see. And the actual formatting is perfect. The only issue is the main font, where it didn't use a sans-serif font. I guess this is because the font was not a standard Windows one, and this little glitch may be fixable through the options, though I couldn't find anything like that.

Also, of course, the results would be a lot different if the document contained scanned text. I can't show you the results of this because I tried it on a confidential document, but you should know that this program does not appear to OCR text that is in the form of a bitmap.

All in all though, these are small niggles and I was most impressed with this program. I will have to seriously consider buying the full version as it could give me a huge competitive advantage to be able to supply the customer with a translated AND fully-formatted Word/PDF document. At only $35, the product would pay for itself very quickly

Buy the PDF to Word converter here.

Symbols in Word

OK, reaaaaally simple, but it's amazing how many people do not know this. You often have a situation in word where you want to use a symbol that is not represented on the keyboard. For example ¥ (Japanese Yen), © (copyright) or µ (Greek symbol micro-).

There ARE keyboard shortcuts to get these symbols, but your first port of call will probably be the insert symbol function (just go to Insert and choose Symbol).

You will be offered this grid of symbols which are contained within the font you are currently using, though you can choose another font from the drop-down menu, e.g. one of those Dingbats type fonts:

Just double-click on the symbol you want and it will appear in your text at the current cursor position. You can also see the list of recently-used symbols below the main grid, which will probably be a quicker way to find the symbol you are looking for.

Symbols Shortcut Key
You will also notice that you can define a shortcut key by pressing the button that says... shortcut key! But most of the major symbols already have a predefined shortcut key. For example, the copyright symbol is inserted by pressing ALT+CTRL+C. However, in this example, the Yen symbol is inserted by pressing a strange looking combination, ALT+0165. If you don't know what this refers to, then stick around because we will give you a quick explanation in a future article.

Happy symbol-inserting..!

Using speech recognition in Word

WORKING speech recognition in Windows, with Dragon NaturallySpeaking! Buy now!

I have to briefly rave about this discovery, even though it's not directly related to Microsoft Word! Just watch the video and you will get the gist of it!

Must be a trick!
Amazing, huh? Now, I have been using this product, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 by Nuance, mostly in Microsoft Word, for a couple of weeks now, so I can give you a quick low-down.

Well, in short, it really does work just like in the clip! Okay, so the people you see in the video are quite proficient in using the program, but the speech recognition really does work that quickly and accurately! It has really revolutionised my use of Microsoft Word - I'm involved in the translation business and for us, time, or rather typing speed, really is money. But there is an upper limit to how fast anyone can type, especially if they are a translator, since translators are not usually professional typists. Even for those who do type quite fast, like me, the hours per day we need to spend typing at high speed really do take their toll on our finger joints.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking has drastically reduced the amount of typing I need to do and now my most common bottleneck is the actual thought process involved in writing text, rather than the limit imposed by typing speed, which is how it should be!


What's the catch?
Of course there are downsides. Although Dragon NaturallySpeaking has an exceptional dictionary, it cannot possibly cater for all possible proper nouns that one might wish to type. So for example in a historical text, you are likely to encounter the names of people, places and events which DNS simply can't cope with. You will probably need to enter those manually, though you can program in new words, which DNS then recognizes perfectly. It's just a question of whether you feel it's worth taking a few seconds (it's that quick) to train the new word, or just type it the few times it appears.

Obviously, although you can talk very quickly when using the program, you do have to enunciate quite clearly, and any time you stumble over a word (which is quite often in my case) DNS gets confused. Also, I have a cold at the moment, and this has slightly affected accuracy!

Conclusion
This is not intended to be a full-blown review, I just want to open up the possibility to you of using a speech recognition program such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Maybe you tried this program, as I did, a few years ago, and weren't very impressed. Now all I can say is, buy a decent microphone, make sure you do some of the training routines after installation, so that the programme is calibrated to your voice, and give it another try! I think you will be blown away!

For the first time, it really occurs to me that we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the keyboard as a practical data entry device! I have no hesitation in recommending this amazing software, and at $160 for the standard version, it is a bargain! In my job, the increase in productivity that it brings means it could pay for itself in less than a week!

Now you just have to think about how you are going to keep the people around you quiet while you are trying to type, or rather speak!

P.S. Oh, I forgot to mention, this whole article was written using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. With the exception of a few minor corrections and alterations, the entire text was spoken by me and recognized by DNS.

P.P.S. There are several versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Standard, Preferred and Professional. Preferred is the most popular, and the one you will probably go for. Standard is a somewhat slimmed down version that seems to be intended for family use, while Professional is a fully featured, quite expensive version, with advanced scripting facilities which you would need to know why you need. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a demo version, but I believe on-site demonstrations are available for potential corporate customers.