Productivity Plus Newsletter by Vincent Brown

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Productivity Plus Newsletter

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Navigating and Editing Long Word Documents Easily

March 2012

Rapidly navigate and restructure long corporate documents quickly and easily… Welcome to the March 2012 edition of the Productivity Plus Newsletter, a publication of VincentBrown.com.au designed to help you and your staff be more productive using Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.

If you have had this newsletter forwarded to you, but would like to receive your own copy delivered in a high quality PDF format each month, please subscribe at vincentbrown.com.au. This then entitles you to distribute it to your internal staff as you see fit, place it on your company intranet and even print as many copies as you like for the same purpose. So why wait a moment longer? Subscribe now! In this month’s issue… Navigating and Editing Long Word Documents Easily ........... 1 The Importance of Effective Document Navigation .............1

THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE DOCUMENT NAVIGATION Once your long business document becomes hundreds of pages in length, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage, especially in terms of navigation, editing and overall restructuring. As many staff have discovered, trying to do these things using the good old ‘scrolling’ method just doesn’t cut it, and results in huge amounts of time being wasted that could be better employed doing more constructive things.

MICROSOFT WORD TO THE RESCUE However, the good news is that Microsoft Word has a number of easy to use features that can make your life a great deal easier in this regard. They’re not all that well known, but they are well worth learning. These tools are: 

Outline View



The Document Map



The Split Window command



Bookmarks



The Table of Contents

Microsoft Word to the Rescue .............................................1

OUTLINE VIEW

Outline View .........................................................................1

Navigation | Restructuring

The Document Map / Navigation Pane ................................2 The Split Window command ................................................3 Bookmarks............................................................................3 Table of Contents .................................................................4 Enforcing Data Integrity in Excel Spreadsheets .................... 4 The Importance of Data Validation ......................................4 Applying Data Validation ......................................................4 User Interaction with Applied Data Validation ....................5

Word’s Outline View provides you with a very quick and efficient means by which to work with long business documents, especially those with scores or even hundreds of pages. It is important to note however that it only works if you have formatted all of your headings using the built-in styles, e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2. Outline View can be activated by clicking the View tab on the Microsoft Word 2007/2010 Ribbon and clicking the Outline command, as shown in the image below.

A Fantastic Email Management Time Saver .......................... 5 The critical nature of workplace email .................................5 Email Overload .....................................................................6 Categories to the Rescue .....................................................6 Creating a Category ..............................................................6 Assigning a Category ............................................................6 Searching by Category ..........................................................7 New Courses and Books ....................................................... 7

Now, what makes Outline View so useful is that it allows you to collapse your document’s content to any heading level you want so that you can see only the content that exists at that level.

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Therefore, if you choose Level 1, your document will be collapsed so that you only see all Level 1 headings. If you choose Level 2, then you will see only the Level 1 and Level 2 headings in the document and so on, as shown in the image below.

THE DOCUMENT MAP / NAVIGATION PANE Navigation The Document Map displays all of the level headings in your document in a tree format presented in a panel located to the left of screen. In this regard, it looks and operates very similarly to the old Windows Explorer feature. Just like Outline View, the Document Map allows you to navigate quickly to specific locations in your long business document that you wish to edit or review. The Document Map feature is activated by access the View tab on the Word 2007 Ribbon and checking the Document Map box as shown in the image below.

You can also choose to view the paragraphs that exist under each heading, either as just the first line, or in their entirety. Using Outline View assists you in three way when managing your long business documents efficiently: 1.

It allows you to get to any section of your long business document very quickly. Simply collapse to a high level, e.g. level one headings, find the section you want to work with, expand that section to see the sub-headings and paragraphs it contains. You can then switch back to Page Layout or Normal view to edit or review that section as required. In this way, navigation tasks that would usually take several minutes can be performed in just a few seconds. Very cool and very worthwhile. It allows you to reorder the content of your long business document very quickly and safely. If you want to restructure parts of your document, you can do this using a simple drag and drop method. Simply collapse your document to the required level in Outline View, then drag the specific heading up or down to reposition it within the document. When you do this, any linked subheadings or paragraphs are moved in concert with it. Doing this any other way would take ages, and is highly prone to error.

By default, all Level 1 headings are shown, with the remainder collapsed and accessible using the expand button (+). Things are slightly different regarding this feature with Word 2010. Here, the feature is referred to as the Navigation Pane and has a different look and feel to Word 2007’s Document Map. Word 2010’s Navigation Pane is activated by access the View tab on the Word 2010 Ribbon and checking the Navigation Pane box as shown in the image below.

Compared side-by-side, the Document Map feature and the Navigation Pane feature appear as in the image below when they display a document’s levelled headings.

It allows you to promote and demote headings rapidly. This is very handy as your long business document is a living document that is dynamically changing as you develop it. As a result, the level at which you have placed certain headings will naturally change. Outline View allows you to make these changes rapidly using its promote-demote buttons shown in the image below. Simply choose the level heading that need to be changed, and demote or promote it as required. The cool thing is that where ever numbered headings have been used, Word renumbers the promoted/demoted heading as required. Very cool. Unlike Outline View however, neither the Document Map or Navigation Pane feature will display document paragraphs, as they are not designed for this purpose. The Document Map and Navigation Pane features are very useful document management feature for two main reasons:

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They allow you to navigate your way through a long business document without going out of Page Layout or Normal view. By contrast, Outline View requires you need to switch between views to change from reviewing and restructuring duties to editing duties. The Document View and Navigation Pane features however hover in their own panels to the left of screen, and therefore do not interfere with your ability to edit the document. When you select a level heading in the Document Map or Navigation Pane, your cursor jumps to that exact location in your document so that you can start editing or reviewing straight away. No scrolling required.

It is these two capabilities of the Document Map and Navigation Pane features that make them such useful tools for rapidly navigating your way through your long business documents.

THE SPLIT WINDOW COMMAND Navigation | Editing This little known feature of Microsoft Word is extremely useful if you want to compare and work with two completely separate sections of the same document at the same time without having to scroll and jump about excessively. This makes it a great feature to have in your long business document editing toolbox.

For example, you may provide an overview of a concept on page 20 of your long business document, but then go into it in detail in a later chapter starting on page 112. If you wish to ensure the overview and detailed explanation are consistent, you would need to do a great deal of scrolling back and forth over many pages to do this. However, by dividing your document in to independent parts using the Split Window command, you can compare both parts at the same time on your computer screen, and edit them as well. Great stuff.

BOOKMARKS Navigation Just as the name suggests, a bookmark in Word is a special kind of marker that identifies a location or section of text in your long business document. In this regard, bookmarks are a very useful and simple way by which to quickly navigate to a part of your long business document that you wish to refer to and/or edit, which aren’t covered by any of the methods described above, e.g. specific words and phrases that are not headings that you wish to locate and refer to frequently. Inserting a bookmark is very simple. All you need to do is select the text or location within your long business document that you wish to bookmark, then insert one using the Bookmark command under the Insert tab in either Word 2007 or 2010, as shown in the image below.

The Split Screen feature is accessed by selecting the View tab on the Word 2007/2010 Ribbon and clicking the Split command as shown in the image below.

Once you activate the Split Screen feature, you create two separate views of your long business document that can be navigated and edited independently, as shown in the image below.

It is very important to note that Bookmark names must begin with a letter and have no spaces in them. To find a bookmarked location at a later time, all you need do is access the Bookmark dialog box under the Insert tab once again, select the bookmark name you wish to navigate to, and then click Go To, as shown in the image below.

The really cool thing is that it is still just the one document. This is perfect when you wish to compare and cross-reference sections of long business document content that are nowhere near each other.

Dead easy! The other good thing about bookmarks is that they don’t appear when your long business document is published. This means that you don’t have to go to the hassle of removing them before printing or converting to an electronic format.

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Productivity Plus Newsletter

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Navigation Assuming you are using heading styles, and of course you are, then you can quickly and easily insert an automated table of contents that picks all of these up. Most people know this. However, what many people don’t know is that if you hold down the Control (CTRL) key and then click on a TOC entry, you will jump immediately to that location in your document, as shown in the image below.

When the Data Validation dialog appears, select the type of validation you wish to apply from the Allow menu, in this case Whole number.

This last method is by no means high-tech, but it’s quick and its useful nonetheless, and as such, is worth keeping it in mind when working with your long business documents. This action will cause a new set of drop-boxes to appear under the heading Data. Choose the validation operator you wish to apply, e.g. between, and enter the required range, e.g. 5 and 10. Note that when you set this range, both values you enter are included. Be mindful of this.

Did you know…

These techniques and more are covered in detail in the upcoming course and book entitled Work with Large Corporate Documents Efficiently, due for release in May 2012. To register your interest, please visit vincentbrown.com.au.

Enforcing Data Integrity in Excel Spreadsheets Ensure you’re the data integrity of your spreadsheets is maintained using Data Validation…

THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA VALIDATION More often than not, certain cells or ranges with the spreadsheets you create and manage will have to have highly specific and constrained values entered into them. The issue with this however is that if other users of your spreadsheets enter invalid values into these cells or ranges, the consequences can range from annoying to disastrous. However, Microsoft Excel offers a means by which to prevent this from happening using its Data Validation tools.

APPLYING DATA VALIDATION All Data Validation settings can be found under the Data tab of the Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 Ribbon. From here you locate and click the drop-arrow on the Data Validation command and select Data Validation from the menu that appears. Copyright free for registered subscribers

Why not subscribe – it’s free! If you’re not getting this incredibly useful newsletter in your inbox each month, then why not! Subscribe now so that you can get it delivered in a high quality PDF format that you can distribute internally to your staff as you see fit. You can even print it for this purpose, as many copies as you want. But you must subscribe. Don’t hesitate – it’s free! To subscribe is quick and easy; just visit vincentbrown.com.au and click on the Productivity Plus Newsletter button. Then all this and much, much more is available to you and your staff every month to supercharge workplace productivity using the most effective and efficient Microsoft Office tools available.

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Productivity Plus Newsletter

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The next step is to select the Input Message tab of the Data Validation dialog box we are working with and enter some text to guide the spread sheet user in inserting an allowable value into the selected cell. Be sure to insert a meaningful Title and Input message. The spread sheet use will see this message when they select the cell to which the data validation is being applied.

The next step is to select the Error Alert tab of the Data Validation dialog box we are working with and enter some text to tell the spread sheet use what they have done wrong if they enter a value outside of the range you have set.

USER INTERACTION WITH APPLIED DATA VALIDATION Now the data validation you require has been applied to the selected cell. When the spread sheet user clicks on the cell, they will see the help text as shown in the image below. This greatly assists them in inserting a valid value.

However, should they still go ahead and enter a value that is outside of the range you have set, they will see the error message shown below. At this point they can Retry or Cancel what they are attempting to do, but under no circumstances can they insert an invalid value.

Be sure to leave the Alert icon Style as Stop as this has the greatest impact in terms of attracting user attention. Once again, be sure to insert a meaningful Title and Error message. The spread sheet use will see this message when they insert an invalid value into cell to which the data validation is being applied.

By applying this simple, yet powerful tool, you can ensure the data integrity of key cells or ranges within your spreadsheets is maintained by both guiding the spread sheet as to what they need to do, and preventing them from entering incorrect values should they choose to ignore your help prompts. In the next issue of the Productivity Plus Newsletter, another very simple, yet powerful data integrity enforcement tool will be explained to you in detail.

A Fantastic Email Management Time Saver

Did you knowâ&#x20AC;Ś

THE CRITICAL NATURE OF WORKPLACE EMAIL

This data validation technique and many more are covered in detail in the upcoming course and book entitled Maintain Data Integrity in Excel Spreadsheets, due for release in June 2012. To register your interest in either the course or book, please visit vincentbrown.com.au.

Even though many organisational staff donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think of it this way, Microsoft Outlook is not so much an email management client as it is a mission critical information management system. Just think about it. How much of the important information you need to do your work is contained within the emails that reside within the various mail folders of Outlook? When I ask this question of those who attend my email management courses, the answers generally range from 80% to 100%. I kid you not!

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Productivity Plus Newsletter

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EMAIL OVERLOAD The problem however is that it does not take long for the number of emails within Outlook to reach huge levels. In fact, it is not unusual for a busy staff member in a large organisation to accumulate thousands of email items over the course of an average year. This creates a serious problem in that this pure mass of email messages often make locating sent and received emails for reference purposes very difficult, and sometimes even impossible, even in cases when an intuitive folder tree is being utilised. However, Microsoft Outlook does in fact provide you with a range of features that allow you to manage this problem very effectively. These features will be discussed in detail over the next few months in this publication. However, today we will begin with a little known, but very powerful feature known as Categories.

This will reveal the Color Categories dialog box, within which you can create your own custom category by clicking the New button and entering its name in the Add New Category dialog box that appears. Once you have done this and clicked OK, your new category will appear in the Categories list as shown in the image below.

CATEGORIES TO THE RESCUE Categories are virtually unknown to most Outlook users. However, they are easy to locate, set up and apply. So what is a Category in Microsoft Outlook? I guess the best way to characterise them is as labels that help you find, sort, filter or classify your Outlook items such as email, calendar appointments, contacts and tasks. When used, they make finding and organizing your Outlook items a very quick and efficient process, which saves a great deal of precious time. Although you can use Outlook folders to organise information, Categories offer many advantages, these being: 

You're not dependent on the location of email messages with the folder tree you have created for yourself over time



You can assign more one category to an email, this allowing them to be searched for in more than one way



Categories allow you to retrieve an Outlook item that pertains to your searches, be they emails, calendar items, contacts or tasks.



You can select Categories that meaningfully describe your various responsibilities, tasks and projects

ASSIGNING A CATEGORY



Categories allow you to focus on the data contained within your email and other Outlook items in very powerful and meaningful ways

need to do is right-click on the email’s Quick Click icon and select the custom category you wish to assign to it, as shown in the image below.



Categories allow you to customize Outlook to meet your needs

TIP: You can also assign a shortcut key to the Category to apply it to an email quickly if you so wish.

Assigning a category to an email is a very simple affair. All you

CREATING A CATEGORY The Outlook Categories feature can be found under the Home tab of the Microsoft Outlook 2010 Ribbon. From here you locate and click the drop-arrow on the Categorize command and select All Categories from the menu that appears.

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SEARCHING BY CATEGORY

New Courses and Books

Now the true power of Categories comes into play. By clicking in Outlook’s Search box, you can choose to search by one of the custom categories you have created. This categoryoriented search is accessed under the Search contextual tab using the Categorized command, as shown in the image below.

This month VincentBrown.com.au released two new Microsoft Word courses and companion books, these being: Format Long Documents Perfectly with Microsoft Word This course has been specifically tailored to meet the needs of organisational staff required to format large and complex professional documents, typically hundreds of pages in length using Microsoft Word. It addresses the precise knowledge and skills required to successfully manage this task by applying an overarching formatting strategy that leverages specialised Word tools and features. Gather Data Efficiently Using Electronic Word Forms

Once the search is completed, you will see a list of email messages that have had the custom category selected assigned to them, as shown in the image below. Email messages that have not had the custom category assigned to them will not appear in the search results.

This course has been designed to teach organisational staff both the methodology and technical skills required to develop and deploy electronic Word forms for data collection purposes. By developing these skills, staff can avoid many of the issues and problems commonly associated with the use of paperbased forms. To register your interest in taking these courses when run regularly throughout the year, or to purchase their companion books for personal use or corporate licencing, please visit vincentbrown.com.au. That’s it for this month…

So as you can see, Categories are a very powerful way by which to work with your email messages, as they allow you to classify them in very meaningful ways that correlate to your workplace responsibilities. Further, they allow you to perform highly-targeted searches that retrieve only those email messages relevant to your current needs. Did you know…

This effective email management strategy and many more are covered in detail in the upcoming course and book entitled Manage Email, Time and Tasks Effectively with Microsoft Outlook, due for release in April 2012. To register your interest in either the course or book, please visit vincentbrown.com.au.

We hope you enjoyed the content and have started to apply it already to be more productive. Don’t forget, if you haven’t yet subscribed to the Productivity Plus Newsletter, now’s the time. This then entitles you to print as many copies as you like for you and your staff to use. So why wait – subscribe now at vincentbrown.com.au.

Vincent Brown Australasian Best IT Trainer 2008 Vincent is one of the most highly qualified and experienced technology training professionals in his field, having worked for over a decade in the organisational training and development space. During this time, he has trained countless staff in the tertiary education and corporate arenas, and awarded Australasian Best IT Trainer in 2008 for this work. Employing a unique teaching and writing style that blends practical instruction with humour, patience and inclusion, Vincent quickly makes participants of all skill levels and backgrounds feel at ease, allowing them to develop the technical knowledge and skills they require to use Microsoft Office productively in the workplace.

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