Microsoft Word 2007-2013 Part-15

Advanced Options

There are a few of options on the Advanced tab you may want to change. The advanced tab looks like this:

To change the measurements that Word uses, click the list box to the right of "Show measurements in units of", under the Display options. As you can see, we're using centimetres. But if you prefer inches, select it from the list.

Another advanced option you may want to change is where on your computer Word saves your documents. The default location is in the Documents folder (My Documents in Windows XP). To change this scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced options tab and locate the General list. Then click the File Locations button:

When you click the File Locations button you'll see the following dialogue box appear:

The first item on the list is Documents. Every time you click the Open button on the Office menu, or Save As, the dialogue box will show the contents of the folder specified under Location in the image above. For us, this is the C:\Users\Owner\Documents folder.

If you wanted a different location, if you have created a folder for yourself called Word_Documents, for example, then you can click the Modify button. You'll then see this dialogue box:

We have selected a folder that we created called Word_Documents, which is in the Documents folder. When you click OK, the File Locations box will look like this:

As you can see, the Documents line above is now pointing to our new Word_Documents folder. Now when we click the round Office button or the File tab and then the Open item, the dialogue box will display the Word_Documents folder:

If you change your mind and want to go back to default location, just remember that you need to navigate to the folder in Computer > C Drive > Users > Owner > My Documents.

Add or Remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar

You can customize the Quick Access toolbar in Microsoft Word. The Quick Access toolbar is the one just to the right of the round Office button (or just above the File tab in Word 2010 and Word 2013). This one:

The three items currently on the Quick Access toolbar above are the Save icon, Undo, and Redo. If you look closely at the image above, you'll see an arrow pointing down:

Click the arrow to reveal a menu. This one:

The items with check marks next to them are the ones currently in the Quick Access toolbar. Clicking the More Commands option brings up the Customize tab on the Word Option dialogue box (the Quick Access Toolbar tab will be displayed in Word 2010 and 2013). This one:

The idea is that you select an item from the left-hand list, then click the Add button. When you click OK, the item gets added to the Quick Access toolbar. To remove an item, select it from the right-hand list, then click the Remove button.

But click on Popular Commands at the top. You'll then see a list of items appear:

Select Commands Not in the Ribbon and the list box underneath will change. In the image below, we've chosen Microsoft Excel as something we want on the Quick Access toolbar. That way, we have a fast way to open Excel:

The next image shows that our chosen item has been added to the list on the right:

In the next image, we've chosen the Excel item from the list box on the right:

The two arrows allow you to move your selection up and down. So, if we wanted to have the Excel item as the first one, we left-click to select it. Then click on the UP arrow to move it to the top of the list. Notice, too, that we've also added the Change Case item to appear on the Quick Access toolbar.

Have a look at the list of items and add your own choices. Click OK when you're done. Your Quick Access toolbar will then look something like this:

The Quick Access toolbar comes in very useful and saves you hunting around all the different tabs for the item you want.

How to Set Up Keyboard Shorcuts

Another useful item on the Customize tab is the Customize button just to the right of Keyboard Shortcuts:

In Word 2010, you need to click on the Customize Ribbon tab to see the keyboard shortcuts.

Click the Customize button to see the following dialogue box:

An example of a keyboard shortcut is to press the CTRL key on your keyboard. Keep it held down and press then letter F. This will bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box.

In the image above, this very shortcut has been selected. Under Categories we selected the Home Tab, which is where the Find and Replace dialogue box is located. Under Commands, we've select EditFind. The shortcut itself then shows up in the Current Keys text box (Ctrl + F).
A lot of the items on the Commands list don't have shortcuts, however. So you need to set your own, if one hasn't been assigned. Examine the Image below:

The Insert tab in Word is where you'll find the Picture item. Clicking this brings up a dialogue box. You then select the image you want to insert into your Word document.

We use the Picture item a lot so have set up a shortcut key for it. After selecting the items we want in the first two boxes at the top (Categories and Commands) we then click into the text box below "Press new shortcut key". After holding down the CTRL key and the question mark key these then appear in the text box. The Current keys text box is blank, and this tells us that our chosen shortcut keys are not being used (Currently assigned to: [unassigned]). If you see shortcuts already in the Current keys text box then it means those keys are already in use. When we were happy with our shortcut keys we then clicked the Assign button in the bottom left. After returning to Word we were then able to press Ctrl + ? to bring up the Insert Picture dialogue box.