78 Ways to Make Software Do More

Microsoft Word 2003

Everyone lives in Word, but it's a house beset by trapdoors, windows that stick, and a sometimes leaky roof. In short, it could stand some improvement.

Make Word Run Faster

Sometimes I think Microsoft intentionally configures Word to run slowly. Click Tools, Options and make the following changes to improve Word's speed and attitude: On the View tab, uncheck the Animated text box. If you use Word in Normal view, check Wrap to window. On the General tab, uncheck Provide feedback with animation. If you work with many documents, bump the 'Recently used file list' entries to 9 (the highest setting). If you use simple AutoShapes, uncheck Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes. On the Spelling & Grammar tab, uncheck Check grammar as you type and Check grammar with spelling. Really need speed? Turn off the on-the-fly spelling checker too, by unselecting Check spelling as you type. On the Print tab, turn off Background printing; most printers and networks spool print jobs plenty fast. Click OK.

Is Word still dragging? Turn off the other automatic features. Click Tools, AutoCorrect Options; and on the AutoFormat As You Type tab, uncheck all the boxes under 'Apply as you type' and 'Automatically as you type'.

Revive Dead Documents

When Word crashes, it often trashes your document. But when Word restarts, the Microsoft Office Application Recovery feature may offer you a replacement document. If it does, check the file carefully and save it under a different name. If it doesn't, use Windows Explorer to make a backup copy of the damaged file; then switch to Word and open the original damaged document, but click the Open button's drop-down arrow and select Open and Repair. Word will try to fix the file. No good? If you've set up Word to make backup copies, look for your file with a .wbk extension tacked on; most of your data may still be there. If not, open the damaged document with WordPad and collect as much usable material as you can.

Supercharge Search

Smart searching requires documents stuffed with metadata--descriptive keywords that Word can search for. First tell Word to prompt you for the Properties dialog box. Select Tools, Options, click the Save tab, and check the Prompt for document properties box. When you try to save a new document, the Properties box will ask for input. (To add this data to an existing document, open it and select File, Properties.)

On the Summary tab, enter the basic information--Title, Subject, keywords (for example, "restructuring," "goals for 2007"), Comments, and so on. Need more? Click the Custom tab and enter additional properties--Client, Department, and so on. You can even create custom fields: Enter a name in the Name box, choose its type, enter a value that you define, and click the Add button.

To search for documents, select File, File Search. In the Other Search Options area to the right, choose the drives or folders to search, the file types to find, and so on; then click the Go button.

Lock Up Your Docs

Word can secure your documents to a moderate degree. Choose Tools, Options, and then click the Security tab. To prevent unauthorized edits, type a password in the 'Password to modify' box; to disallow unauthorized viewing, type a password in the 'Password to open' box. To permit editing (to fill in a form, for example, or to use tracked changes), click the Protect Document button and make your choices.

But Word's lockbox is easily picked. Try creating a watermarked PDF of your document with Docudesk's deskPDF Professional ($30). The tool can generate tamper-proof PDFs using 128-bit security that restricts viewing, copying, pasting, and printing.

Use Word as a Calculator

Word used to have a Calculate function on the Tools menu. Select numbers anywhere in the text, and, with a click, Word could add, divide, and more. Press <Shift>-<Insert>, and the result was pasted into your document. Word could even resolve expressions such as '(5+5)*(3+3)'. This feature remains part of Word; it's just hidden. To make it resurface, select Tools, Customize, and choose the Command tab and then Tools in the Categories panel on the left. Over in the right panel, locate Tools Calculate, grab it, and drag it over to a Word toolbar. To use the feature, highlight numbers in your document and click the new Tools Calculate button on your toolbar. The results appear in the status bar in Word's lower-left corner.

Keep Documents Connected

Your business proposal contains links to Excel worksheets, logos, and even parts of other Word documents. But if you put that proposal on your laptop and leave town, you will lose all the linked material.

You can embed the material in the document, but then you lose automatic updating. Here's a fix: When inserting graphics, select Insert, Picture, From File, select the file, click the little down arrow on the right side of the Insert button, and choose Insert and Link. Word will thereupon store a copy of the picture for use when the linked file isn't available, and it will update the picture whenever the file becomes available again.

For files and other objects, you can either break the links or take all the files with you. To break links, choose Edit, Links, select all the links, click the Update Now button, and then click Break Link. To take the files with you, use the Links dialog box to see which files you need, and copy them all to a folder on your computer. In the Links dialog box, click the Change Source button to alter each source file's location. And use the free Word Hyperlink Checker to find and scotch dead hyperlinks.

Don't Use XML--Yet

Don't use Word's XML format to save documents if they have embedded images. Word's XML encodes images as ASCII characters, and the resulting files are easily 30 percent bigger than their .doc peers. Worse, in the words of XML.com reviewer John E. Simpson, Word's XML is "spectacularly hideous." If you want to get your Word documents up on a Web site in lean and clean XML, either wait for Word 2007 or fork over $125 for upCast.