March 2004

What Does This Button Do?

By Teresa Lightle- Technology Coordinator                            Printable Version (pdf)

This month’s tip will introduce some useful and often underused buttons in the Microsoft Word standard toolbar.

Print Preview Button

This button should be used before printing any document. It can save time and paper by viewing how the document will print.

When the print preview screen is activated, it has a toolbar with several additional buttons.

Buttons from left to right:

• From the Print Preview view you can print directly to the printer.

• Magnify the image to see a specific area.

• View single or multiple pages at the same time.

• Zoom in or out on the document.

• Show or hide the ruler bars.

• Shrink the document onto fewer pages, using the shrink-to-fit option. When this button is pushed, the computer will make several attempts to condense the text on the specified number of pages; this can be very helpful in documents such as flyers and resumes.

• View the document in full screen mode.

• Close out of the Print Preview screen.

Using the print preview can help identify blank pages so they can be deleted before sending them to the printer.

Format Painter Button

Office experts encourage users to create the documents first, and format later. Using the format painter can make formatting easier. If you have a document which has headings or titles and you want them all to match, Format Painter can be used to duplicate text color, size, alignment, bold, and italic attributes.

1. Highlight (select) the first heading or text.

2. Make the format changes to the selected text.

3. Check to make sure the text is formatted correctly.

4. With the formatted text selected, click on the Format Painter button on the menu bar.

5. Go directly to the heading or text you want to match the format and select that text.

If you have multiple text items, double-click the Format Painter button.  The format will be applied to all text items you highlight until the Format Painter button is deselected.

Document Map Button

If you are working in a large Word document, make it easier to navigate by using the Document Map button on the standard toolbar. By pressing this button, a new pane will appear on the left side of the screen. Chapters, titles and headings show sections of the document. Clicking on these key words in the side window will take you directly to that location in the document without having to scroll through the document. To remove the document map pane from the screen, press the Document Map button again.

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For Questions or Comments about this newsletter please contact: tlightle@bcoe.org

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