Chapter 11: Editing in Special Situations

Hocine bibo aut in eum digitos insero? (Do I drink this or stick my fingers in it?)—Henry Beard, Latin for all Occasions

Software and reference links for all versions of Word

This Web page contains instructions on the following subjects:

Changing the creator's or reviewer's name for a document

Inserting symbols

Inserting text from a file

Keystroke shortcuts for typing special characters (PDF file)

Macro to change the color of HTML tags

Remove color applied to HTML tags

Right Angels and Polo Bears blog

Turning off the Asian character grid

Changing the creator's or reviewer's name for a document

To change the name recorded as the creator of a document, open the "File" menu and select "Properties":

Select the "Summary" tab, and then enter a new name in the "Author" field:

To change the name that will be associated with any tracked changes, open the "Preferences" palette and select "User Information":

Enter a new name and initials that Word will use to identify all subsequent tracked changes:

Inserting symbols

To insert a symbol, open the "Insert" menu, and then select "Advanced Symbol":

From the "Symbol" palette, you can select symbols and special characters from any font, insert them, or define an AutoCorrect entry (see Chapter 10 for details) or keyboard shortcut (see Chapter 3 for details) for the symbol:

Inserting text from a file

In the Ribbon's "Insert" tab, open the Object icon's menu and select "Text from file":

Macro to change the color of HTML tags

Copy the text of this macro into Word's macro editor following the instructions in Chapter 10:

Sub ColorHTMLtags()

' ColorHTMLtags Macro

' Macro recorded 2/9/08 by Geoff Hart

'

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.Font.Color = wdColorGray25

With Selection.Find

.Text = "[<]*[>]"

.Replacement.Text = "^&"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = True

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

End Sub

If you prefer a lighter or darker color for the tags, change the "25" in "wdColorGray25" to a larger or smaller number (greater than 0 and less than 100).

Remove color applied to HTML tags

If you've applied a color (e.g., light grey) to the HTML tags so you can edit the document with less risk of damaging the tags, you may also want to remove the color when you're done. To do so, first turn off revision tracking. Next, select the whole document (Command+A). Select the Ribbon’s "Home" tab, open the menu beside the font color icon, and then select “Automatic” to restore the colors defined by the paragraph and character styles:

Right Angels and Polo Bears blog

Adrienne Montgomerie's Right Angels and Polo Bears blog provides an ongoing series of useful articles on editing, including onscreen editing. Adrienne also offers courses in editing PDF files.

Turning off the Asian character grid

If you have not installed support for Asian languages and still want to turn off the document grid, try the following macro (see Chapter 10 for details on how to copy and use macros):

Sub TurnOffGrid()

‘ TurnOffGrid Macro

ActiveDocument.PageSetup.LayoutMode = wdLayoutModeDefault

End Sub

To install support for east Asian languages, consult Microsoft's article “Turn on East Asian language features in Office for Mac”.

If you have installed support for Asian languages and need to turn off the grid that is used to align Asian characters, open the "Format" menu and select "Document":

Select the "Document Grid" tab, select the "No Grid" checkbox, and under the "Apply to" menu, select “Whole document”: