Useful Hacks and tricks for MS Word

Using ‘Search and Replace’

Using ‘Search and Replace’ for hyperlinks

Removing hyperlinks from everywhere in a document

Using the ‘Format painter’ tool

How to do a Mail Merge

Using ‘Search and Replace’

You can replace all instances of a particular word within an MS Word document.

Click the ‘Replace’ button in the top right and then to the ‘Replace’ tab in the box that appears.

Type the word you want replaced in the ‘Find what’ row and the new word in the ‘Replace with’ row. Make sure you haven’t left a space after your text in both rows.

Make sure you have you have ticked the ‘Match case’ tick box from the list of tick boxes that appear when you click the ‘More > >’ button.

Last of all, click the ‘Replace All’ button and the change will go through.

Using ‘Search and Replace’ for hyperlinks

First, you have to get all the hyperlinks to display.

Press the ‘Alt + F9’ keys. You will see that all the hyperlinks in your document have expanded.

All you need to do now is replace the text in the hyperlinks as you would any other text in the document. So if all the links in your document go to /companyabc and you want them to go to /companybbc simply search and replace as detailed above in ‘using Search and Replace’.

In this example, I want to change /synectics-solutions to company /companybbc.

The last stage is to once again hide the inner writing of the hyperlinks and you do this by pressing ‘Alt + F9’ once again. This presents the original view once again.

Removing hyperlinks from everywhere in a document

To remove a single hyperlink without losing the display text or image, right-click the hyperlink, and then click Remove Hyperlink.

To remove all hyperlinks in a document, press ‘Ctrl + A’ to select the entire document.

And then press ‘Ctrl + Shift + F9’.

Using the ‘Format painter’ tool

You can use the Format painter tool to match the formatting of one section to another in one swift move.

First, click so the cursor is flashing on the text with the formatting that you want to apply elsewhere.

Next, click the format painter button. Your chosen formatting is now set.

Highlight the text you wish to change….

…and you will find that it changes instantly to the formatting of the area you were in when you clicked the Format Painter button.

How to do a Mail Merge

Data

- Remove any middle names & spaces (so no space after name). 1 addressee column would be best eg. ‘Mr Bob Jones’ (or can add separate fields)

- If middle name is listed with first name eg. Mr Bob John:Data -> Text to columns -> Delimited ->Tick Tab & Space -> Splits middle names, then can delete column-Make sure you have made it all the same text and given headers to all relevant info

Letter

- Date – Insert – Date & Time (eg. 9 June 2015)- Ask Ian for a logo that will be good resolution for a letter. If want logo just on first page –

Design tick different first page. - Address: Add text box (make outline blank) make big enough for longest/widest address will

use. This will stop the body of the text moving up/down depending on the address length. - To link to data: Mailings -> Select Recipients -> Use existing list -> find where you saved data. - To add mergefields:

Title, forename, surname (space between)

Address 1, address 2, address 3, address 4, postcodeDear <forename>Add any others throughout document

Once set up:

-Mailings -> preview results (can click on & off) – this will show how the data will appear once pulled through – can run through first to last (click arrows left & right) if want.

-Print – usually 2 sided, colour, plain is tray 2. If in post room may need to call IT to get the post room printers added.

-Print bulk: Mailing -> Finish & Merge (double check file printer properties as that will overide) -> print document -> from eg. 1-50 to do in batches. Double check printing properties. OK.

If having issue with mergefield pulling through a different text format etc (like Chloe & I did):

ALT F9 – reveals code. Within the brackets remove the spaces (should say MERGEFIELD) then add \*charformat (see instructions from the email from Tom for further explanation). ALTF9 will take you back to normal – manually change the font to want you want etc, then test.