Replies

Chuck,

In addition to the method Gary points out, you should be able to see the TOC styles in the Styles Pane — if you configure the pane to show “All Styles.” With the Styles Pane displayed, click “Options…” (a link at the lower right-hand corner), then change the “Select styles to show” drop-down to “All Styles.” If you like, you can click the “Select how list is sorted” drop-down and change the order in which styles are displayed in the pane. (My own preference is “Alphabetical.”) Before you close the dialog, click “New documents based on this template” to ensure that your preferences will take effect in all new documents, then click “OK.”

After reconfiguring the options, you should be able to scroll down and see — and easily modify — the TOC styles.

Jan

It’s true that the AutoRecover files are deleted when you exit from Word under normal circumstances, but you also have the option of having Word save permanent backup copies of your files in the same folder where the originals are stored.

Click the Office button, Word Options, Advanced, scroll down to the “Save” options, click “Always create backup copy,” and click “OK” to save your settings. Note that the backup copy, which uses the name “Backup of .wbk,” represents the previously saved draft, not the current draft. However, having a copy of even the last-saved version can spare you a tremendous amount of work and anxiety.

I started using this feature when I began experiencing problems as a result of some glitches in the Word 2010 beta while working on my latest book this past spring. I got the idea from Herb Tyson, who suggested it in some writing I happened to see online (I can’t remember exactly where). It seemed like a good option because the book manuscript was such a critical document. The setting is found in a similar location in Word 2010, except instead of clicking the Office button, Word Options as in Word 2007, click the File tab, Options.

Just a thought.

Jan

As for the issue of Word ignoring the before/after spacing, when you go into the style definition and open the Paragraph dialog, is the checkbox labeled “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” checked? If so, uncheck the box, make sure to select the “New documents based on this template” radio button, and click “OK” to save your modifications.

Both Word 2007 and Word 2010 have this new “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” option. Many people are unaware that it is in effect, which can cause the sort of issue that you’re experiencing.

Let us know if that helps.

Sorry so brief–on my way out the door.

Good luck!

Jan

Glad you resolved the problem.

Tracing the issue to a setting under Windows…Explorer reflects great detective work! That’s not obvious in the least.

Thanks for posting back. The solution could be helpful to others.

Jan

If I’m understanding you correctly, what does display is the “Quickly access this number of recent documents” list that appears at the left side of the File drop-down. Also, you do get a listing of “Recent Places” (at the right side of the screen). What does not display is the “Recent Documents” list that normally appears when you click the “Recent” fly-out menu in the drop-down. (I think, but am not certain, that that is what Jefferson was referring to as the “Recent tab.”) Is that correct?

I wonder if there is some odd setting under Trusted Documents or Trusted Locations (in the Trust Center) that could be disabling the MRU function.

Jan

The customization options you see in that portion of the Options relate only to customizations you make to the Ribbon and/or the Quick Access Toolbar (you can save your personalized Ribbon and/or QAT and transfer those settings to a different computer).

Which settings, specifically, do you want to move from Word 2007 to Word 2010?

Jan

Typically, people invoke Quick Parts (and AutoText) entries by typing the name they assigned, plus the F3 key, which is the expansion key for Quick Parts / AutoText. So if you set up a Quick Part entry for letterhead and assign it the name “lh,” typing “lh” (without quotation marks) and pressing F3 should produce your letterhead.

Quick Parts / AutoText entries are not case-sensitive, so LH, lH, and Lh also should work.

Let us know if that meets your needs.

Jan

This suggestion might seem obvious, but have you checked the Options to make sure “Show this number of recent documents” is set to a number greater than 0?

File tab, Options, Advanced, Display (about halfway down the screen). Set the number of documents to display (the maximum is 50, at least in Word), then click “OK” to save your settings.

Any luck? If not, let us know and we’ll try to figure out what’s going on. (I’m assuming you’re referring to documents that you have saved, as opposed to documents you closed without saving.)

Jan

Pam’s right — there’s no need to feel stupid. It’s hard to know what happened, but it could have been some odd glitch. Or perhaps you accidentally clicked somewhere before doing the sort, thereby removing the selection without realizing you had done so.

Have you added any items to the table and re-sorted? If not, you might make a copy of the document to use for testing, add three or four new rows, insert one or two new items (one per row, but leaving at least a couple of rows blank), select the rows you want to sort, and try it. Go slowly so that you can see exactly what happens immediately before you click the button to sort the rows.

If you discover anything interesting, be sure to post back and let us know.

Jan

Lee,

No need to apologize. It was just one of those situations where the communication wasn’t 100% clear. In my case, it didn’t occur to me that the blank rows might be interspersed throughout the table, though Pam did take that possibility into account.

Glad Peter was able to take Pam’s suggestion to its logical conclusion and get everything working.

Jan

Did you try Pam’s suggestion about selecting only the rows you want to sort before performing the sort? That should produce the desired results.

Let us know.

Jan

Assuming your AutoText entries did not automatically migrate when you updated to Word 2007**, do the following:

Position your cursor where you want the code to appear. Then navigate to the Insert tab, click the Quick Parts drop-down, and click Field (or simply press Alt I, F).

When the Field dialog appears, scroll down to FileName (or press the letter “F” until the FileName field is highlighted).

If you want to include the path, click the “Add path to filename” checkbox at the upper right side of the Field dialog, then click “OK.”

If you like, you can change the font face and/or size by selecting the code and then applying formatting.

A quick way to create an AutoText (“Quick Parts”) entry — after you have formatted it to your satisfaction — is to select the code, press Alt F3, and when the “Create New Building Block” dialog appears, give the entry a name such as “Path” (without quotation marks, of course). Then click OK to save the Quick Parts entry.

To insert the code into a document quickly, position the cursor where you want the code to go, type the name you assigned to the entry (such as Path), then press F3. Note that Quick Parts names are not case-sensitive; “Path,” “path,” “PATH,’ and other permutations work the same way.

Hope this helps.

Jan

**If your AutoText entries did migrate, you might be able to insert the file name and path by typing “filename and path” (without quotation marks) and pressing F3 — or by clicking the Insert tab, Quick Parts drop-down, Building Blocks Organizer, and locating the “Filename and path” entry in the list of Quick Parts and AutoText entries. Because the built-in list is extensive, it might help to alphabetize the entries, which you can do by clicking on the “Name” column. When you locate the “Filename and path” entry, click it, then click the “Insert” button.

Are there any blank rows in your table? Sometimes table sorts will place blank rows ahead of rows that contain text, which might produce the result you’ve described.

Just a thought.

Let us know.

Jan

I’ve just tested a few times, and I can confirm this behavior. (I created simple macros and assigned keyboard shortcuts, used those keyboard shortcuts to invoke the macros, and checked the Customize Keyboard dialog — which initially displayed the key assignments. Then I closed out of Word, reopened the program, made sure that the key assignments still worked, and looked in the Customize Keyboard dialog again, only to discover that the keyboard shortcuts no longer appeared.)

There is an alternative. Clicking the “Print What” drop-down at the lower left side of the Print dialog and then selecting “Key assignments” produces a list that displays keyboard shortcuts you have assigned to various features. In my tests, the lists included key assignments for my new macros.

It can be difficult to identify certain keyboard shortcuts in the list as belonging to macros unless you typed a description when you created the macro. Fortunately, it’s easy to add a description even for a macro you created some time ago. You can simply open the Macros dialog either from the View tab or from the Developer tab and type in the Description box. Then, when you print the key assignments, the resulting list shows both the key assignment and your description.

I believe the “Print What” option prints the key assignments for items in the current document and in the underlying template.

Once you have printed the list of key assignments, you’ll probably have to open the Customize Keyboard dialog and, for each macro, reassign the original key combination and then remove it. A kludgy solution, I realize, but it does seem to work.

Does that help?

Jan

I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding the issue, or if this additional information is pertinent here, but FYI there is an option, “Prompt before saving Normal template,” that you can disable. Click the Office button, Word Options, Advanced, and scroll down to the Save category. If the box is checked, click to uncheck it, then click “OK” to save your settings.

Does that make any difference?

Let us know.

Jan