How to create ‘Screentips’ to improve MS Word documents

ScreenTips are those little boxes that appear when you ‘hover’ your mouse over a hyperlink. As the name implies, they usually provide a small tip, or piece of information, about the word or phrase in question.

They can be really useful when you’re writing technical documentation and want to include definitions into your text – without the reader having to revert to the glossary.

To create screentips, follow these steps:

  1. Select the word or phrase that needs a screentip.
  2. Right-click on it and select Hyperlink.
  3. Click the ScreenTip button.
    create-screentips.JPG
  4. Enter your screen tip text, click OK, and give it a name in the ‘Type the file or web page name’ box.

To test that it works, go back to the document and hover your mouse over the text. The screentip you entered should appear above the words you selected.