Go ahead, give it a try – right now – if you right-click with your mouse on these very words you are reading you will see a menu appear that gives you options that are appropriate, super handy.

Oh, and by the way, if you are like me and often prefer keystrokes take a look at the key on your keyboard located in between alt and ctrl to the right of the spacebar; it should kind of look like a menu…guess what, this also opens the context menu and all without touching your mouse!

Voila, Facebook hidden and crisis averted

Once your boss returns to wherever it was they came from, “Windows key + Shift + M” will return you to the same spot you were at before you were interrupted.

There is, however, a catch…if you minimize all (windows key +m) and then do anything else with your computer then restore (windows key + shift + m) doesn’t work, restore only works if the absolute last thing you did was minimize all.

The article I wrote entitled Powerful PC or Pricey Paperweight?  The choice is up to you! is located in the members article area.

Hope you enjoy!

Crabby’s Windows 7 House Party

1. Click on the File menu then choose Print;
2. Next to Print what, select Styles; and
3. Click Ok.

Once you have a printed copy of the styles available in your document, grab a highlighter to mark your favourites and hang them nearby for easy reference!

Take Note: When you print a list of your styles you are only going to receive a list of the styles available in the document you have open at the time you printed the list.  If you have unique styles available based upon specific templates you may want to print a list based upon each template.

1. Click on the Tools menu, then select Options;
2. Click on the View tab;
3. Type 1.0″ in the field next to Style area width; and
4. Click OK.

Take Note: Once you have any value greater than zero entered next to your style area width the feature will be visible.  Once your style area width is visible you can use mouse to resize the area by clicking and dragging on the line that appears between the style name and your document text.

In my opinion, Styles are one of the single most powerful tools in MS Word.

Example:  Let’s pretend you have a document that consists of numbered paragraphs, like an agreement.  Now let’s assume that you have used direct formatting to format the document and now you need to make several of the paragraphs, like the headings, look different.  If you are using direct (also known as, manual) formatting you now need to go through the document one paragraph at a time, select each paragraph and then remove/add the desired formatting – once per paragraph – now let us assume that document is twenty or thirty pages long…pretty time consuming.

However, if you had formatted the document using styles all you need to do is modify one heading to look the way you want and poof, all the others headings will follow along!

Further reading: What is a Style?

Although there are more, the two most commonly used types of styles are Paragraph and Character. A paragraph style applies formatting to entire paragraphs and can consist of font, paragraph, tabs, border, language, frame and numbering attributes. A character style applies formatting to specific characters within a paragraph and can only consist of font, border or language attributes.

Anytime you use Find (Ctrl+F), Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) or GoTo (Ctrl+G) you are actually use features built into Select Browse Object.  Within Microsoft Word 2003, the Select Browse Object icons are in the bottom right corner below the vertical scroll bar and to the right of the horizontal scroll bar.

(Ctrl+PageUp/Down)You can choose which object you wish to browse by clicking on the round circle in between the double arrows that point up and down or press Ctrl+Alt+Home on your keyboard.

Select which type of object you want to browse by clicking on its related icon.

Select Browse Object remembers the last object you navigated using the GoTo feature.  If your last request was to move to page 3 then next time you use GoTo you will automatically be taken to page 3 until you choose to go somewhere else.