Word

Word for Executives - 5 tips for senior executives whose team members use Word

Quick Reference: 5 things senior executives need to know about Microsoft Word

1. Learn the lingo

2. Make sure that Word is set up on your machines so it works effectively for your team
3. Learn how Track Changes works
4. Be kind to your staff when editing a document someone else has prepared
5. Accept that most things work most of the time in Word.

If you're a senior executive, you might not use Word all day long, but your people do. Here are tips for executives about Word, and how to help your team use Word better.

Contents of this page

1. Learn the lingo
   1. Template
   2. Heading, Header, Footer, Footnote
   3. Section
   4. Macro
2. Make sure that Word is set up on your machines so it works effectively for your team
   1. Do not share Normal.dot
   2. Every user should have a separate user name in Word
   3. Set up Word to work in your language, or in your form of English
3. Learn how Track Changes works
4. Be kind to your staff when editing a document someone else has prepared
5. General guidance for the confused or irritated manager just trying to get things done

Tip 1: Learn the lingo

Even if you don't use Word, your staff do, and you have to talk with your staff about documents. Here's some useful terminology.

1.1. In Word, "template" is a technical term referring to a particular kind of file

A template is not a document that you use to fill in a form.  Nor is a template a commonly-used form of words.

• In Microsoft Word, a "template" is a specific kind of file. It has a different internal file structure from a Word document file.
• If a file name ends in .doc, .docx or .docm, it's not a template, it's a document. A template's file name ends in .dot or (in Word 2007) .dotx or .dotm.
• A template's file structure can store things that a document cannot store. A template can have AutoTexts and (from Word 2007) other kinds of Building Blocks. A document cannot.
• Create a template by doing File > New and choosing to create a template. Or, do File > Save As, and save an existing document as a template.
• Use a template by doing File > New and choosing the template.

More info:

Creating a Template – The Basics (Part I)

What do Templates and Add-ins store?

What is the relationship between a Microsoft Word document and its template?

Be nice to your staff: Avoid confusing your staff by talking about a 'template' when you really mean something else.

Be nice to your staff: Get a professional to create the basic templates your business needs, and expect your users to use them.

1.2 Heading, header, footer, footnote

Useful terminology:

• A heading is a paragraph, often large and bold, that introduces some text.
• A header is text that repeats at the top of every page.
• A footer is text that repeats at the bottom of every page, like a page number.
• A footnote is a numbered note placed at the bottom of the page above the footer. They are used more in academic work than in business.

1.3 Section

"Section" is a technical term in Word.

Every document has at least one section. A document with more than one section has a section break between the sections. Look at the status bar to see which section you're in.

Among other things, a section controls headers and footers and page orientation. So when you want to change from portrait to landscape, you need a new section. When you want to change back to portrait, you need a new section.

1.4. A macro is some code written in the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language

Macros are used to automate Word. A macro is code written in a programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). VBA is built in to Word. VBA id derived from Visual Basic 6 (VB6) and closely related to VB Script.

You can't see a macro by looking at the face of the document.

Macros are stored in a special part of the file that is hidden from the ordinary user. You can only see a macro by doing Alt-F11 and viewing the code.

Macros are not the same as fields. If you're coming from WordPerfect, then what you currently know as a "macro" is not a macro in Word.

Macros are used to help users conform to corporate standards, and to improve user productivity by automating repetitive tasks.

Macros can be stored in documents, but it is generally better practice to store them in a template.

A single macro might be 3 lines long, like this one:

Sub PrintMyDocument

    ActiveDocument.PrintOut

End Sub

Or, a collection of macros might be thousands of lines long. (You wouldn't write one single macro that was thousands of lines long; you'd chop it up into smaller bits and call one macro from another.)

Macros can do very complex things: talk to external databases, create new files, format a document, give users a wizard to walk them through complex operations and so on.

Tip 2: Make sure that Word is set up on your machines so it works effectively for your team

2.1 Do not share Normal.dot

Normal.dot (or, in Word 2007, normal.dotx or normal.dotm) stores crucial settings.

Some people try to standardize so that users share the same Normal.dot file, either by making Word look for Normal.dot on a server, or by deploying a new version of Normal.dot to every user when they log on to the network.

Sharing Normal.dot is not a good idea.

• Microsoft's is explicit: you cannot share Normal.dot files
• If you replace users' Normal.dot file every time they log on to the network, you are explicitly choosing to reduce their productivity. Keyboard shortcuts and AutoTexts are stored, by default, in Normal.dot. Deleting Normal.dot every day prevents staff from using these productivity tools.
• Savvy users will figure out a way around this imposition (hint: create a template, save it in Word's startup folder and store your shortcuts there). The savvy users will take up valuable time explaining the technique to colleagues and your name will be mud in no time at all. 

2.2 Every user should have a separate user name in Word

When a user saves a document, Word records who saved it. When users use track changes, or add comments to a document, Word records who made the change or added the comment.

You can't run effectively if your IT department has rolled out Word with every user having the same name. Yet I'm astonished at how many installations I see where every person has the same user name in Word.

You can view or edit the user name that Word stores:

• before Word 2007, Tools > Options > User Information
• after Word 2007, Pizza button > Word Options.

If every user in your organization has the same user name, talk to your IT people and get them to fix it so that Word knows every user's real, unique, name.

If the IT people look at your blankly, try "I read that the Office Resource Kit on Technet might have some information about that. Would you like me to email you the link?".

2.3 Set up Word to work in your language, or in your form of English

If you open a new document and it's not in the language you need, ask your IT department to explain what configuration settings they used when they deployed Word. Unless you get a coherent answer that you can understand, point them to How to tell Word to use a non-US form of English (such as Australian English).

Be nice to your staff: Make sure every machine used by your team (yes, the laptops, too) is set up to use the appropriate language. If your IT department is intractable,

• tell the people on your team to change each of the four required settings themselves
• get yourself appointed as the external member of the performance review panel for the IT department.

Tip 3: Learn how Track Changes works

Track changes is a great feature to use if more than one person in the office contributes to a document. Learn about how Track Changes in Word works.

Tip 4: Be kind to your staff when editing a document someone else has prepared

4.1 The basic unit of construction of a Word document is a paragraph

The basic unit of construction in Word is not a line or a page. Word barely knows what a page is, and isn't too sure about a line.

The basic unit of construction is a paragraph. You create a new paragraph when you press Enter.

You can see an end-of-paragraph marker. Before Word 2007, click the ¶ button on the toolbar. In Word 2007, this option is hidden away so deeply, I can't bring myself to describe it. Do Ctrl-Shift-* instead.

The Enter key is the create-a-new-paragraph key. It is not the 'I want some more space here' key.

If you press Enter twice you'll get an empty paragraph.

A document should not be littered with empty paragraphs.

More info: Why you should press Enter only once to end a paragraph

Be nice to your staff: If you have to edit a document that someone else has worked on, press Enter once at the end of every paragraph.

Be nice to your staff: Don't get obsessed with lines or pages. Word barely knows what they are. Talk about paragraphs. (And press Enter once at the end of every paragraph!)

4.2 The basic way to format text in Word is to apply a style

"I don't use styles" is a meaningless construct. Word formats everything with styles. Yes, everything, whether you are conscious of it or not. If you're not controlling styles, then Word is controlling you.

Use the built-in styles. There are umpteen built-in styles and you can create your own. As a general rule of thumb, use the built-in ones whenever you can.  More info: Why use Microsoft Word's built-in heading styles?

Most important is to use the built-in heading styles. The main styles to get a handle on are the heading styles. There are 9 of them, named, with remarkable ingenuity, as Heading 1, Heading 2, ... Heading 9. Use each style for a different level of headings in your document. More info: Curiosity shop: About heading styles

If your document does not mark headings with an appropriate heading style, then:

• you can't create a table of contents except by circuitous, time consuming routes
• you can't number figures or tables as (eg) Table 1-1, Table 1-2
• you can't use Outline View to re-structure big documents
• the Document Map will be useless, when it could be a quick navigation tool
• you can't create a header that shows (eg) the title of the chapter at the top of each page.

Applying a style increases productivity.

Applying a style to a paragraph takes one or two mouse clicks.

Applying the font, font size, font colour, bold, italic and other formatting properties takes several mouse clicks or keyboard strokes for each property. And, you have to remember what the settings are. That's just not productive.

Applying a style is not hard. Try Alt-Ctrl-1 to apply Heading 1 style. Or Alt-Shift-L for bullets. Those two keystroke combinations will save hours of mucking around trying to remember whether the major headings were 14pt bold or 16pt not bold. For more ways to apply styles, see How to apply a style in Microsoft Word.

Modify styles to suit your needs. If you want your headings to be blue, modify the built-in heading styles to be blue. More info: How to modify styles in Microsoft Word

Be nice to your staff: If you have to edit a document that someone else has laboured over, don't muck up the styles. NEVER click on the font or font-size drop down lists in the toolbar or ribbon. NEVER apply bold or italics to a whole paragraph to make it look like (eg) a heading. If you can't bring yourself to use the Styles drop down box, or to click the appropriate style name in the ribbon in Word 2007, then maybe use Track Changes to mark every change you make. This will reduce the re-work for your staff when cleaning up after you.

4.3 You can reliably number paragraphs in Word if you have a bit of calm, a modicum of skill and want systematic numbering

Numbering paragraphs in Word is not always easy. OK, you knew that.

With a bit of calm, controlling bullets and numbering is possible.

But Word expects to numbering paragraphs in an entirely systematic way: no missing numbers; no repeated numbers; no mixing of numbering 'levels'.

Here's how:

How to control bullets in Microsoft Word

How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Microsoft Word document

Be nice to your staff: Don't expect your people to be able to come up with un-systematic numbering. Don't expect people to be able to skip numbers or repeat numbers. Don't ask for blue heading numbers in chapter 1 and green numbers in chapter 2. This is not the time for creative whims of fancy. Stick to simple, sequential and systematic.

4.4 Pages don't have headers or footers or page numbers; sections do

Page numbers in Word documents live in a header or a footer. A header or a footer might also contain other stuff: logos, watermarks, text such as the title of the document etc.

Headers and footers are properties of a section.

Each section has up to 6 headers and footers. A section may display

• a first page header and/or footer
• an even pages header and/or footer
• an odd pages header and/or footer.

To control which of the three headers and footers display in any one section:

• Before Word 2007: File > Page Setup
• After Word 2007: Page Layout > Page Setup. Click the little arrow in the bottom right corner of the Page Setup group.

Be nice to your staff: Avoid asking for a special footer on one page in the middle of a document. To do so, your staff will have to create a separate section for just that page. And, the author will have to re-arrange the section breaks whenever material is added to or deleted from the document.

Be nice to your staff: Don't ask people to create silly page numbering (eg repeating a page number, or having a different format for different parts of the document).

Be nice to your staff: In the days when typesetters used little bits of metal type, it made sense to number pages in the front matter with roman numerals. The front matter was created and paginated after the body of the document was created. In the era of the PC, that makes no sense to me at all. Just number a document from page 1 to page n. In the 21st century, I can't see any justification for any other kind of page numbering.

4.5 Some images in Word float; some are in line. This determines whether they wander around the page like lost souls.

It sometimes seems like it's hard to control how images appear in a Word document. That's because some images float and some are inline. Read Is your image slipping? How to get your images to stand still

Be nice to your staff: If you're editing a document that someone else created, do not, ever, press Enter Enter Enter Enter to get 'past' a picture. The problem is that the picture is floating. Make it an in line picture.

Tip 5: General guidance for the confused or irritated manager just trying to get things done

Most things work in Word most of the time

Word has lots of bugs. I could name hundreds if I didn't have real work to do. But you can reasonably assume that most features of Word do work properly most of the time.

I've seen seriously grown-up senior executives say things that boiled down to

• "Steve gave me a document and the table of contents was messed up. Therefore, Word's table of contents feature does not work. Therefore, I will make my staff create a table of contents by hand, and manually re-create it whenever the text changes."
  
  or
  
• "Susie prepared a monthly sales report for her division and the heading numbering was all wrong. Therefore, I conclude that Word's heading numbering does not ever work. I'll make her do it manually, so that she has to re-number every paragraph if I decide to insert a new paragraph at the top of the document."
  
  or
  
• "I don't allow my people to use styles. They don't work. I make my staff use a dozen mouse clicks to format every paragraph instead of one mouse click to apply a style. I just can't work out why my people are so unproductive."

Most things in Word work most of the time; it is worth encouraging your team to learn how to use it well.

This page was especially written for [names withheld to protect the guilty--you both know who you are!].