Word is Driving Me Crazy!

Even though Microsoft invests tremendous resources in making each version of Word better than its predecessor, many users eventually encounter a Word feature or behavior that doesn’t work as they would like or that becomes downright exasperating.

This chapter details a number of annoying things that prevent many users from enjoying and using Word as the makers intended. Some of the settings and behaviours here are defaults; others get turned on by accident. Some require you to dig a little deeper to find out what makes Word tick. What the annoyances covered in this chapter have in common is that they can be tamed or turned off. If some things about Word are giving you a headache, this chapter is your aspirin.

Automatic Annoyances

Word makes certain text and formatting changes automatically by default. These automatic changes might work for you—or not. This section shows you how to reclaim your ability to create your text yourself.

Bullets, numbers, boxes, and borders

Word sometimes senses that you’re typing a bulleted or a numbered list and uses its AutoFormat As You Type feature to help you. For example, if the insertion point is at the beginning of a new paragraph and you press Tab, type an asterisk (Shift+8), and press Tab again, Word converts the asterisk to a bullet and applies the List Paragraph style to the paragraph. Similarly, if you press Enter after a paragraph, type a number of underline characters, and press Enter again, Word converts your underline characters into a border line beneath the paragraph.

You can tell Word what to AutoFormat and what not to.

1. click file d options d proofing.

2. click the autocorrect options button. The AutoCorrect Options dialog box appears.

3. click the autoformat as you type tab. See Figure 4.13. This tab controls auto- matic corrections. The AutoFormat tab’s settings, on the other hand, apply when you display and use the AutoFormat command. For more about the differences between these two features, see “AutoFormat versus AutoFormat as You Type” and “Working with the AutoFormat Command” in Chapter 11, “Cleaning Up with AutoCorrect and AutoFormat.”

4. click to check and uncheck features as needed. For example, under Apply as you type, you can uncheck the Automatic bulleted lists and Automatic numbered lists check boxes to have Word stop automating those types of lists.

5. click ok twice to close both dialog boxes.

You can enable or disable more than a dozen AutoFormat Actions.

Capitalization

Word makes some automatic corrections to capitalization that may not be what you want. For example, it assumes you want the first word in every sentence to be capitalized and caps it if you fail to do so. This might not be what you want in all circumstances, such as if you’re writing poetry or typing in a list of parts or products that you want to appear in lowercase. You also can turn off this behavior in Word:

1. click file d options d proofing.

2. click the autocorrect options button. The AutoCorrect Options dialog box appears.

3. click the autocorrect tab if needed. See Figure 4.14.

4 Chapter 4: Zapping Word’s Top Annoyances 4. click to check and uncheck the second through sixth check boxes as needed. For example, clear the Capitalize first letter of sentences check box if you want to control sentence capitalization.

5. click ok twice to close both dialog boxes.

You can enable or disable automatic capitalization on the AutoCorrect tab.

Mouse selection

Have you ever tried to use the mouse to select everything in a paragraph except for the paragraph mark? Perhaps you want to replace what’s typed but want to keep the current paragraph formatting and style. But when you use the mouse to try to leave the paragraph mark unselected, Word jumps right past that last character and selects the paragraph mark as well.

You can make this behavior stop:

1. click file d options d advanced.

2. at the top under editing options, click the use smart paragraph selection check box to clear it.

3. click ok.

With a more precise optical mouse, common today, it is possible to omit the paragraph mark even when smart paragraph selection is turned on. Another workaround for smart paragraph selection is to press Shift+left Arrow to nudge the selection one character to the left after selecting with the mouse. Smart paragraph selection applies only to selection using the mouse.

Cut and paste sentence and word behavior

Have you ever copied a sentence and then pasted it at the end of another sentence and ended up with no space between the period and the beginning of the pasted sentence, and too much space at the end? Smart cut and paste deals with this problem, by inserting a space between the period and the beginning of the pasted sentence automatically. However, if you’re accus- tomed to compensating for the missing space yourself, Word’s automatic behavior can be a nuisance, and you can turn it off.

1. click file d options d advanced.

2. Scroll down to display the cut, copy, and paste options.

3. Beside the use smart cut and paste check box, click the Settings button. The Settings dialog box shown in Figure 4.10 opens.

1 You can fine-tune smart cut and paste behavior in this dialog box.

4. click the adjust sentence and word spacing automatically check box to clear it.

5. click ok twice to close both the Settings and Word options dialog boxes.

Graphics bugbears: