Monthly Archives: August 2013

How to copy content from different places and paste as a group at one one place in Word

This is a very useful, but lesser known feature in Word, which enables you to copy various types of content (texts/graphics) from different documents and paste all of them as a group at one place. The feature is called Spike. This is different from Clipboard, which only remembers the last copied content.

How to use Spike

  1. Open a Word document, which contains text, graphics, tables, etc.
  2. Select a text paragraph/an image/table and then press CTRL+F3. The paragraph/image/table would be deleted and copied to the Spike. (If you want the paragraph/image/table to remain intact in the original location press CTRL+z to undo)
  3. Repeat step 2 to copy the next text/images/table to Spike, and so on.
  4. Now, place mouse cursor at the insertion point and do one of the following:

 a.    Press CTRL+Shift+F3. All the copied contents from step 2 and 3 are pasted at the insertion position. This way you can paste content only once. Spike will be empty after single paste.

 b.    If you do not want to lose the copied content from Spike and paste the copied content multiple times, then type “spike” and then press F3 every time to paste. You can paste the copied content as many times as you want. You can keep adding content to Spike as well 🙂 Newly copied content would be added at the end of the last copied content. Again, type “spike” and then press F3.

Note: Selecting a table to Spike is a bit tricky. While selecting a table, along with the table, select the next line in the document too.

How to fill a Word document with random texts

 

This one is a nice trick to fill a Word document with random example texts. Use the following function:

     =rand (number of paragraphs, number of complete lines)

For example:

=rand (2, 2)

The above formula would create two paragraphs with two complete lines as shown below.

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If you read the texts, you would realize that these are Word help topics.

How to change the default save location in Word 2007

 

Word 2007 saves your files in the default location: “C:\Documents and Settings\user name\My Documents”. To change this save location, follow the below procedure:

1.   Click the Office button.

2.   From the drop-down list, click the Word Options button. The Word Options dialog box appears.

3.   From the category list on the left, click Save.

4.   From the pane on the right had side, under the section Save Documents, the field Default File Location shows the current save location.

5.   Click the adjacent Browse button to specify a new save location.

6.   Click OK. See below image.

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