Tag: Word

  • Paste text without formatting

    I recently had a long term collaboration with a number of colleagues, where part of what we did was produce, edit, and agree upon finalized versions of text. We applied various formatting such as color, cursive, and bold to track the status of specific text blocks. At the end of it all, we needed to…

  • Outlook: Mail merge

    I have previously written about one of my many responsibilities; contacting users whose login credentials have shown up in breach lists. While the pertinent results of the breach files are delivered to me in a flat file, I use Excel’s Text to Columns feature to separate logins (usually email addresses) from the password. While this…

  • MS Office: Pin items

    Many companies, my employer included, uses spreadsheets on a more or less consistent basis in order to track such things as vacation planning and KPI reporting. For me, as an employee, keeping track of these spreadsheets can, from time to time, be a bit annoying. Much to my surprise, at some point in the past…

  • Word: “Track changes” shows up as “Author” instead of author name

    A user called in, reporting that Word’s Track changes-function tagged her as “Author”, instead of her name. I opened a remote session, and started out by confirming that everything else was working correctly, and that her name had been set as the author in the settings for Microsoft Word. Stalling for time while I researched the issue, I…

  • Change author name and initials in Word

    A while back, a user called in, asking me how she could change the name and initials that Word used when filling in Author and when showing who had made a comment. Not having had to do that for some time, I quickly researched it, finding it was simple enough to do. In order to…

  • Hiding the scroll bar in Word

    So, you’ve minimized your menu ribbon. Now, let’s get rid of that pesky scroll bar. You’ve got a perfectly good scroll wheel on your mouse, and just don’t need it. It’s simple; here’s how: Go to File > Options In the Options for Word dialog box, go to Advanced Scroll down to the Display section…

  • Resolving problems opening Word documents from Windows Explorer

    If you have a problem opening Word documents from the Windows Explorer, the problem probably lies in how the document files are registered with the operating system. The first thing to try in correcting the problem is to unregister and reregister Word with Windows. From the command line, use the following command:   “C:\Program Files\Microsoft…

  • Unable to open Excel documents from Windows Explorer

    Over the last year or so I’ve had at least fifteen users complain that when they double-click an Excel document in Windows Explorer, Excel opens, but no workbook. They then have to open the document manually in Excel.   Here’s how to resolve this problem:   Open excel, then open a blank workbook Go to…

  • Microsoft Word – generating a new normal.dot-file

    I recently had a user call in with a problem; whenever she’d open a word-document, word would flash an error message, then to open in safe mode.   Normal.dot is the default template file in Microsoft Word. Because it contains a lot of customization settings, it is prone to corruption. Thus, many problems experienced while…

  • Fatal Error when starting Microsoft Word 2007

    My employer is slowly but surely implementing Microsoft Office 2007. One of the errors we’ve encountered has been a fatal error. It seems to be caused by one of the following two things:   Default printer driver has become corrupted. Normal template has become corrupted.   To fix this problem, try the following, in order:…