Legal Practice Pro» Office Technology

How To Diagnose Formatting Problems In Word Documents

Deborah Savadra — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:10:37 +0000

Have you ever had a joint submission due in court (or some other document you were collaborating with another attorney on) and gotten a draft Microsoft Word document from your co-counsel that was an absolute train wreck? I’m not talking about legal arguments, but formatting that looks like someone’s two-year-old typed it.

If you’re working in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010, here are three formatting diagnostic tools you need to know about:

Show/Hide Formatting Marks

This button (the one that looks like a paragraph symbol in the Paragraph section on the Home tab) is Microsoft Word’s version of WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes. Clicking on that button to enable this feature shows you codes like:

Hard returns at the end of lines (¶)
Spaces between letters or words (•)
Tabs (→)

Here’s what a typical paragraph looks like without Show/Hide turned on:

And here’s what that same paragraph looks like with Show/Hide:

This feature comes in handy when diagnosing spacing and justification issues.

Status Bar

See that long thin horizontal bar at the bottom of your Word screen? You probably just have the current page number showing on the left-hand side of it. But you could get so much more information about your document on that bar.

Just right-click on the Status Bar to get this contextual menu:

You can pick as many options as you like by placing a check mark to the left. At the very least, you’ll want the Section and Page Number (useful for diagnosing headers/footers that mysteriously change mid-document), since importing old WordPerfect documents has the unfortunate side effect of embedding random Section Breaks in the Word version of the document.

Reveal Formatting

The Reveal Formatting pane (which can be accessed with the SHIFT-F1 key combination or via a button on your Quick Access Toolbar for easy mouse access) shows you exactly how the selected text is formatted: fonts, paragraph settings, and sections.

The hyperlinked features (shown above in blue underlined text) allow you to go directly to the relevant dialog box for a quick fix, and you can even compare the formatting between two sections of text to see, for instance, why one paragraph isn’t indented quite like the one before it. Just select one set of text with your mouse, check the “Compare to another selection” box, then select the second text to compare the first text to.

While diagnosing text formatting problems in Word takes a bit of practice, the tools above can help pinpoint exactly how to fix a problem paragraph. Take a few minutes to set up your Status Bar and experiment with the Reveal Formatting pane, and the next time you get a mess of a document, you can say, “No problem!”

Deborah Savadra specializes in helping law firms use Microsoft Office applications. Her blog http://legalofficeguru.com features video tutorials on solving common Microsoft Office dilemmas like diagnosing and fixing formatting problems. You can follow her on Twitter at @legalofficeguru.

More Ninja Moves: Quick Parts in Word and Outlook

Deborah Savadra — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:00:27 +0000

You’ve probably got boilerplate texts that you use over and over and over again. (Don’t think so? Consider certificates of service, various signature blocks (contract, pleading, etc.), notary acknowledgment – you could probably compile quite a list.)

Rather than rifle through your files, pick up a prior document and copy a sample (and risk forgetting to edit “him” to “her,” etc.), set up a Quick Part in Word 2007, then use it to insert a generic version of that text whenever you need it. (This feature is very similar in Word 2010.)

Setting up a new Quick Part

Let’s just take a simple corporate contract signature block as an example:

You’ll notice this has been “genericized” so, when it’s dropped into the next document, it can be updated with client-specific information.

First, block/highlight the text with your mouse (hold down the left mouse button and drag it down until all text is selected) or with the keyboard (click just before the first letter, hold down the SHIFT key, then press the DOWN ARROW key until all text is selected).

Go to the Insert tab:

Over to the right, there’s a section called Text. Within that section, there’s a button called Quick Parts. Click on it.

At the very bottom of the Quick Parts menu, select “Save Selection to Quick Parts Gallery.”

Up pops a dialog box:

Word’s going to try to guess the name of the Quick Part. If you like it, leave it alone; if not, change it to something that makes more sense.

Another option I like to tweak: I usually change the “Options” at the bottom to “Insert content in its own paragraph.” That way, the block becomes a stand-alone paragraph. However, if the text you’re looking to insert needs to appear within the existing paragraph, leave this as the default “Insert content only.”

Click OK, and that sets it up!

Using your saved Quick Parts

The next time you need that block of text, go back to the Insert tab, click Quick Parts, scroll down to the right selection, and click to insert into your document.

Saving your Quick Parts permanently

Whenever you install a new Quick Part, the next time you exit Word, you’ll be prompted to save any additions to the Building Blocks (the feature Quick Parts is in) to your template.

Just click “Yes” and exit normally so you don’t lose all your work!

(This same trick works in Outlook as well, so if you have blocks of text you use repeatedly there, too, open a new email, go to the Insert tab, and follow the same instructions above.)

How many blocks of text could you save in Quick Parts in Microsoft Word and Outlook? Let us know in the comments below.

Deborah Savadra specializes in helping law firms use Microsoft Office applications. Her blog http://legalofficeguru.com features video tutorials on solving common Microsoft Office problems. You can follow her on Twitter at @legalofficeguru.

Three More Outlook Ninja Tricks: Before You Hit the “Send” Button

Deborah Savadra — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:00:38 +0000

As a follow-up to three right-click tricks in Microsoft Outlook, here are three more for message options you may want to use before hitting the Send button. (Note: all instructions are based on Microsoft Office 2007, but all features except “Flag for Recipient” are available in versions 2002 forward.)

Have Replies Sent To. Say, for instance, you’re sending out an email to a group asking for feedback, but you want your assistant to keep track of the responses instead of you. Use the “Have Replies Sent To” feature to re-direct any replies to your assistant’s email inbox instead of (or even in addition to) yours.

1. Open a new email window.

2. On the Message tab, click the down-arrow on the lower right-hand corner of the Options section to bring up the Message Options dialog box.

3. In Delivery Options (near the center of the box), check the box next to “Have replies sent to:” To add or substitute someone else’s email, click the “Select Names” button and highlight the name of the person on the Global Address List (if you’re on Exchange Server) or your Contacts list, then click the “Reply To” button. You can add more than one name if you wish.

4. Click OK to finish adding names, then click Close on the Message Options dialog box.

When your recipients hit the “Reply” button, the message will be directed to the person(s) you selected to have replies sent to.

Do Not Deliver Before. Ever wanted to hold an email to send later (reminders, etc.), but didn’t want to forget to actually send it? Use “Do Not Deliver Before.”

Follow steps 1 and 2 above, then:

3. Under Delivery Options, check the box next to “Do not deliver before:”, then specify a date and time for the email to be sent. You’re not limited to the values in the drop-down boxes – you can type in a specific date or time (for example, if you want to send an email at 5:15, you can just type in “5:15 PM” in the time drop-down).

4. Click “Close” to finish.

Flag for Follow-Up. It’s not always enough to send someone an email. Sometimes you have to remind them to respond. (Or maybe you need a little reminder to follow up.) Outlook’s “Flag for Follow-Up” feature lets you do both.

1. If you haven’t already, open a new email window.

2. In the Options section on the Message tab, click the drop-down arrow near “Follow Up,” then click “Flag for Recipients” at the bottom.

3. Outlook will allow you to set a flag and reminder for yourself and also set a flag and reminder for your recipient(s).

When you’ve set all the appropriate options, click OK to finish.

Where can you find uses for these features in your practice? Let us know in the comments below.

Three Quick Ninja Moves For Using Microsoft Outlook

Deborah Savadra — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:00:58 +0000

Here are three quick maneuvers you’ll want in your Outlook email bag of tricks to make managing email easier:

Right-click an email to make a Rule. If you’ve got an email in your Inbox that you always move to another folder, forward to your assistant, or do some other repetitive action with (and you don’t want to go to the trouble of creating a Rule from scratch as we discussed before), just right-click your mouse on the email as it appears in your Inbox and choose “Create Rule …” from the menu. Outlook will bring up the Rules Wizard, with several suggested rule conditions (such as the sender’s name or the email’s subject line or body content).

That makes it easier to plug in Rules as you come across emails that are good candidates for automated handling from that point forward.

Right-click an address to add it to your Contacts. Once you’ve opened an email, use this shortcut to add the sender to your Contacts: right-click on the sender’s name and choose “Add to Contacts.”

You can fill in other information for the sender (snail mail address, phone, etc.) while you’re at it. Or … not. Either way, it’s an easy way to store new email addresses for future use.

Right-click a Contacts entry to start a new email. Don’t start an email the long way by going up to the New Item drop-down, choosing New Message, opening a new mail window, and clicking To to find the email address in your Contacts. Instead, right-click on the Contact’s name and choose “New Message to Contact.” You’ll automatically get a new message form with the Contact’s email address pre-filled in.

You can also use this technique to schedule a meeting (“New Appointment with Contact” or “New Meeting Request to Contact”) or assign a task to him or her (“New Task for Contact”).

What other “one-click tricks” do you use to make short work of tasks in Microsoft Outlook? Share ‘em in the comments below.

Image credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ (Flickr)

Microsoft Word Hack: Taking Keyword Shading Out of Westlaw Printouts

Deborah Savadra — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:00:26 +0000

My boss was really frustrated. He’d spent all this time doing research in Westlaw, but when he’d saved his work in Word as a Rich Text File (with the extension .rtf), the keywords were still highlighted.

Except … they weren’t. At least, not in the conventional Microsoft Word sense.

He couldn’t get that highlighting off, no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to use those printouts in another context, but the highlighting had to go.

Legal Office Guru to the rescue!

I used the Reveal Formatting pane (instantly accessible via SHIFT-F1) to diagnose the problem: Westlaw had used Shading (rather than Highlighting) to put that bright yellow background behind his keywords. (Since Westlaw is producing a generic RTF file, this is not surprising, since whatever they produce has to be compatible with various word processors.)

We’re working in Word 2007, so here’s what I did to remove the persistent yellow background:

1) Go to the text that has the unwanted background and select it with the mouse (hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse cursor across the word or phrase until it’s selected).

2) Go to the Page Layout tab.

3) In the section called Page Background, click Page Borders.

4) Go to the Shading tab in the Page Borders dialog box.

5) Click the drop-down arrow under Fill to access the Colors box and choose No Color at the bottom. You may also want to double-check the Fill attribute to ensure that it is Clear.

6) Click OK to finish.

What other formatting challenges do Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, or other research portals’ downloadable files pose for you? Let us know in the comments below.

How Outlook’s Out of Office Could Keep You Out of Trouble

Deborah Savadra — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:06:11 +0000

The Age of the Crackberry has created a global expectation that everyone is available by email all the time. So I cringed when I read about a federal judge who banned an attorney from practicing in her district because he missed two hearings in her courtroom noticed via email. (The attorney has moved for reinstatement, pleading a death in his immediate family, followed immediately by his own cardiac scare.)

I can’t tell you how to handle these things procedurally. But here are some tools that can help ensure emergencies don’t catch you (and your practice) unaware.

Autoresponders: Microsoft Outlook’s Out Of Office Feature

At a minimum, if you’re out of the office, email senders should be notified that you’re not able to check messages. Here’s a basic tutorial on how to set up the Out of Office autoresponder in Microsoft Outlook:

1) In Outlook, go to Tools, Out of Office Assistant.

2) Fill out the AutoReply box with the text for your notice.

3) Click the radio button next to “I am currently Out of the Office” then OK to activate.

Now, each sender will receive your Out of Office message once during your entire absence. When you return, come back to this dialog box and click the radio button next to “I am currently In the Office” to deactivate it.

Autoforwarding

But just announcing your unavailability or even an alternate contact isn’t always enough. If you get an electronic notice of an upcoming hearing or deadline while you’re hospitalized, who’s going to deal with it?

Here’s where autoforward rules (either via Rules & Alerts or Out of Office) to send incoming mail to another address come in really handy. But there are wrinkles:

Exchange Server restricts autoforwards to outside email addresses. If your office is running Outlook on an Exchange Server (ask your IT person), they may need to tweak a setting to allow you to automatically forward emails to an outside address (like your Gmail account). By default, Exchange Server does not allow Rules and Alerts to automatically forward emails to an address on another email domain.

Forwarding all emails is hit-and-miss. I’ve noticed that, while forwarding emails based on criteria (sender’s address, etc.) works fine, if I set Outlook to forward every single email to another address, some emails get missed. This is a known flaw in Outlook, but there are inexpensive third-party add-ins that can handle that task. If you want to send all your email to another account, type “Outlook autoforward add-in” into your favorite web search engine to see some examples of what’s available, then talk to your computer vendor for some recommendations.

Remember: Emergencies don’t come with warnings. Plan ahead now for those times when you’re unavailable. Your clients and the courts will thank you.

Image credit: danielsamama (Flickr)

How And Why To Use InSync For Your Law Firm

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:02:24 +0000

I recently started using Insync, a free (at my level, at least) application in the Google Apps Marketplace. If you’re looking for file synchronization, online and offline access and more, you owe it to yourself to watch this video.

Protect Your Documents From Prying Eyes With Privacy Settings

Deborah Savadra — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:00:24 +0000

Nobody wants to go back to drafting documents on electric typewriters. But we’ve made a potentially costly trade-off: now, we’re sending out lots more information than just the text of the document.

Yes, I’m talking about the infamous metadata.

Rather than bore you with technical explanations of what metadata is, I’m going to show you some ways to minimize the amount of potentially confidential information that goes out with your Microsoft Word documents. (These tricks are also available, with slight variations, in the other Office applications except Outlook.)

Get warnings about Tracked Changes. Unfortunately, it’s possible for you to edit a Word document with the Track Changes feature turned on … and not even realize it.

Fortunately, it’s also possible to fix that.

1) Go to the Office Button in version 2007 and click Word Options (or in version 2010, go to the File tab, then choose Options)

2) Click Trust Center.

3) Click the Trust Center Settings button on the right.

4) Go to Privacy Options.

5) See that section in the center called “Document-specific settings”? Make sure that at least the “Warn before printing …” and “Make hidden markup visible …” boxes are checked.

6) Click OK until you’ve exited Word Options completely.

This will prompt Word to notify you if a document you are working on is tracking your changes (a potentially damaging source of metadata, particularly for documents sent outside your office). You might also want to turn on the Track Changes notification in your Status Bar as another precaution.

Run Document Inspector before sending files out. You can take advantage of another level of protection by running the Document Inspector tool on any document just prior to emailing or otherwise transmitting it to third parties. Document Inspector is in the same section as the Privacy Options noted in step 5 above – just click the button to open the Document Inspector window:

Document Inspector will warn you of any potentially compromising metadata and give you an opportunity to remove it.

Other protective measures. These features in Word offer basic protection from accidental metadata disclosure. There are lots more options, however. Google the phrase “metadata cleaner” (or “metadata scrubber”), take a look at the many add-ins available, and talk to your IT/computer person about what extra precautions may be necessary for your law practice.