Category Archives: Document Formatting

design and layout tips

How to Reduce Large MS Word Files – Part 1

Ever had your Microsoft Word file explode from 1MB to 10MB in just a few minutes? In the tech writing world, Microsoft Word tends to get a bad rap. One of the arguments put against Word is that its fairly unstable and prone to creating ‘horrors’, such as bloating in size until your (Microsoft!) operating system […]

How to Change the Background Color in MS Word Documents

The bright white text area of most word processors can become a quite tiring on the eyes after a few hours. You can of course jiggle the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor but a far better solution is to give your blank pages a light grey tint.  Open Word so that you can […]

The Right Way to Count Words in MS Word (using Shortcuts)

If you want to know how many words there are in a paragraph, or block of copy, select the text and click on Word Count. To create a keyboard shortcut to Word Count: From the Tools menu, click Customize. Select the Command tab and highlight Tools in the list of Categories. Scroll down the list […]