Microsoft Word - Insert Text Trick

Nathan · April 2016

Fellow Paraplanners,

I want to share with you a tip that I picked up at one of the National Pow Wow's. This tip saves me hours every week.

I must thank Matt Clegg for sharing....

Nathan

WoollyDragon · April 2016

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing.
I will wow my fellow Paraplanners with this trick at our next team meeting!!

-WGD

ParaP · March 2018

This is the best tip ever!

I am currently creating templates and this is just making everything easier!

arongunningham · March 2018

You could save further time by placing those descriptions in the template as a 'quick part'

richardgough · March 2018

Add the insert file icon to your command bar; saves two clicks.
I've been doing this for a long time. Means you can update "standard paragraphs" easily in one document which can then be used in a variety of primary document templates.
Primary advice templates then contain a short line to indicate where a particular standard paragraph needs to go. Enables far more time to work on the actual cash flow itself and the far more important personal stuff.
If you have to key the same text into more than one report it should be part of your standard paragraph templates.

ParaP · March 2018

@arongunningham ooh i like the sound of that - how do i do this?

Thanks @richardgough ;

I am new to this, although i can just about get my round word and excel i am not the most tech savvy so anymore tips would be greatly appreciated.

Gustavo_Fring · March 2018

Years ago in my administrator days, there was a shortcut whereby you could type 'balanced risk' and it would automatically insert the balanced attitude to risk paragraph.

Does anyone know what this functionality is called and remind me how to set it up?

richallum · March 2018

@Gustavo_Fring you can do that in AutoText & Autocorrect

If you really want your mind blown and to go to a whole new level of productivity, check out TextExpander.

ParaP · March 2018

mind is blown with Auto Text Gallery! Why have i not come across this before.

My only question is, does this need to be set up on every individuals Microsoft word to work as i am creating templates for a team of 7
to use.

Clare_Weight · March 2018

Hi all,

I did a 'Complex Documents' word course this week with my local Skills and Learning (combined councils' adult learning) and found it very worthwhile, I'd recommend it as it does save time in the long run.

I agree with adding auto text, as long as there aren't too many short codes to remember, rp3 is easy enough but better methods are available for other inserts. There are around 8 methods for inserting text apart from typing and I think you have to assess them and work out which you want to use to avoid confusing users and making your maintenance more complicated.

I'm thinking hyperlinks to a load of paras at the end of the document, I'm in a new role so working out what I want to do.

Tips I can think of now are:

Save your templates as MS templates
Definitely set up and use styles, all based on normal so if normal changes, they all change accordingly
Take care as at my previous place some styles were not set to spell check, it took me ages to work out why the whole doc wasn't being picked up in spell check, it's a tick box something like 'check as English UK' (assuming this is your main spell check setting, it won't check it if these settings don't match) in your style/modify menu.
Set all headings to keep with next
Switch on widow and orphan control
(For control freaks) hide styles not in use
Use outline view to easily view the style your sections are in and to switch sections around
Show your adviser the show/hide button so they can see why the doc isn't obeying them
Train (insist!) all users use styles not manual formatting
More professional typists may wish to learn the keyboard shortcuts for switching styles
Set up all your on / see page XX as cross references (these update if a page moves)
Triple click to select a whole paragraph (also works with control held down to cut or copy multiple)
Use alt+left arrow to go back to where you just were
Split view can be useful to view different parts of same doc
Try side by side view and synchronous scrolling if you ever feel the need.
Use section breaks for landscape section or if you want the back of you cover page blank (use cover page function) check your page numbering in both case, may need to toggle 'link to previous'...

There will be much more when I get the notes from the day through.

Hope this helps.

Clare

richallum · March 2018

@ParaP When we used Word I'm sure you can set up the auto text gallery in the template on your server and control it centrally.

benjaminfabi · March 2018

Clare_Weight said:

Definitely set up and use styles, all based on normal so if normal changes, they all change accordingly

Everything Clare said underneath this bullet point should be required learning for paraplanners. It's a great list!

As someone who works on lots of different adviser's styles, I save different style sets and themes. The key to this is to use font selection properly, use Theme Fonts, don't just scroll down the list from the Home ribbon.

¶ - learn what this button shows you (in the Paragraph section of the Home ribbon) and why seeing this character on its own line in a document is to be avoided in almost every situation.

Learn how to use the 'emphasis' styles to change how certain bits of text look.
Learn how to copy and paste (if you have to) so that you don't infect your destination document with the styles from the source. If you've got a document with more than one 'normal' style in the Home ribbon you've done something wrong.

arongunningham · April 2018

@ParaP

Select the phrase, sentence, or other portion of your document that you want to save to the gallery.

On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts, and then click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery, change the name and add a description if you like, and click OK.

Note: To save a selection as AutoText, on the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts> AutoText > Save Selection to AutoText Gallery.

Suse1969 · April 2018

Guess what we're adding into next week's paraplanner meeting here :-)
I'd forgotten the auto text tool.

ParaP · April 2018

thanks everyone! massive help!

Andy_Schleider · April 2018

benjaminfabi said:

Clare_Weight said:

Definitely set up and use styles, all based on normal so if normal changes, they all change accordingly

¶ - learn what this button shows you (in the Paragraph section of the Home ribbon) and why seeing this character on its own line in a document is to be avoided in almost every situation.

I know what this is - can I ask why you should avoid it on its own line?

Andy_Schleider · April 2018

Separate tip so new comment - do you ever type something and suddenly realise that you're USING CAPITALS? Highlight the words and hit shift-f3. It toggles the word(s) between all capitals, all lower case and all first letter caps

benjaminfabi · April 2018

Andy_Schleider said:
I know what this is - can I ask why you should avoid it on its own line?

This is a good article to explain it, with links to further references about how to alter your use of word. It's old, so the practical methods aren't going to always work, but mostly the theory remains sound.

arongunningham · April 2018

is it officially called a 'back-to-front p'?!

Microsoft Word - Insert Text Trick

Comments