TO ASK A QUESTION: If you have a question or need help with Office, please feel free to use the 'Click to Contact' link at the bottom of this page. You'll get a form that you can use to email a question to me. (I had been getting a ton of spam when accepting direct emails, so only emails that use this form will get through to me.)
Please be sure to mention the version of Office you are using when you send your question.
I answer all e-mails that I receive via this form, as long as they are polite :)
Since disabling comments on this site, I'm actually hearing from more of you with questions ... so, as it seems people prefer to email rather than comment, I'm going to leave comments disabled. As always, you can ask me any Office-related questions you have. If the question is outside of my expertise, I'll try to direct you to where you can get an answer.
When we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, each of the children at the table were asked to say something they were thankful for. My 12-year old nephew said "I'm thankful for a lot of things. But the thing I'm most thankful for is the XBOX 360."
Happy Thanksgiving :)
Hi, folks! I have a new article just posted on the Microsoft at Work website: Take Your Data Traveling: Presenting the Same Table Data in Multiple Programs
This article is mostly about using OLE features for displaying data across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Check it out if you have a chance...
It's also the first article I've done for this site where we've included a sample file to download to make it easier to try the tips for yourself. If you get a chance to check out the article and you follow along using the download sample data -- I'd love to get your feedback on whether you think the sample data is helpful and anything that might make it more useful in this type of article ... for future reference.
Thanks everyone, and happy Tuesday!
Steph
Happy Tuesday everybody! I received an email about a problem document in which a bunch of numbered paragraphs appeared combined into a single paragraph -- but only in print preview or when printed, not on screen. Thought the answer might be of interest to others, so it felt like a blog post (yes, I know I still owe other topics I've promised to blog on -- but this was a direct question ... so it takes priority :)
The answer, as you might suspect, is that the paragraph marks had the hidden font attribute applied to them. So, why does this happen and what can you do about it? If this has happened to you, here's the scoop...
Using hidden paragraph marks as a TOC workaround
Applying hidden font formatting to a paragraph mark is an old workaround for run-in headings that need to be included in a TOC. For example ... if I have a paragraph:
Sample heading Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text. Sample text.
... let's say that I only want the text "Sample heading" to be included in the TOC, but I'm generating the TOC from styles.
Well, if you know about the style separator, you can insert that between the heading and the rest of the text. (The style separator is actually just a hidden paragraph mark that's controlled so that it won't mess with your other formatting.)
But, if you don't know about it (which most Word users don't -- it's not on any menu or toolbar by default, though there is a shorcut key assigned to it by default) and you need that same text in the TOC, you might have typed "Sample heading" as a separate paragraph and hidden it's paragraph mark, so that it appeared to be a run-in paragraph in the document, but still generated correctly in the TOC.
The problem
As you probably know, all paragraph formatting is stored in the paragraph mark that falls at the end of a paragraph. For this reason, when you press ENTER to start a new paragraph, you get the same formatting (by default) as you had in the preceding paragraph. That is, all formatting stored in the paragraph mark carries over to the new paragraph unless you change it (or specify otherwise by using styles and setting Style for the Following Paragraph to be something other than the same style).
In the case of applying the hidden font attribute directly to a paragraph mark, that formatting will be retained when you press ENTER unless you remove it, because direct font formatting will take precedence even over a paragraph style. Word thinks if you've applied it, you did so deliberately (technology, no matter how good, can't read your mind after all ;-)
So, when a document gets edited by lots of people, or copied and changed and reused over time ... it's not unlikely that one person in the mix had used this workaround at some point ... and someone else carried that formatting accidentally (and unknowingly) to other paragraphs just by pressing ENTER to add new content.
How can you fix it?
Just select each affected paragraph mark and remove the hidden attribute (available in the Font dialog box on the Format menu). The fellow who wrote to me smartly recommended to his users to use the Find and Replace feature to locate instances of hidden text. You can even do that in one step and let it do the work for you in a simple Replace All function (if, that is, you want to remove hidden text from any paragraph mark in the document -- otherwise, use Replace and let the Find and Replace feature take you to each instance, so that you can can confirm).
To do this, set up the Replace dialog box so that you are searching for paragraph marks with the hidden font attribute and replacing with "Find what text" with "Not hidden" as the formatting attribute. This is what your dialog box will look like:
You can type the paragraph mark reference as well as the "Find what text" replacement reference as you see here, or insert them from the Special menu you see in this dialog box ... Set both 'hidden' and 'not hidden' in the Font dialog box available from the Format menu in this dialog box (see both Special and Format at the bottom of the dialog box after you click MORE to expand the dialog box).
IMPORTANT: If you have intentionally used the style separator in the document, do NOT use Replace All -- as this setup will find and remove the hidden attribute from those marks as well. In that case, use Replace and confirm at each mark that you want to change.
What's this style separator you keep talking about?
If you've never seen the Style Separator, you can add it to a menu, toolbar, or keyboard shortcut yourself. It does the same thing for generating a TOC from the styles applied to run in headings as you do with hidden text, but it doesn't mess with your formatting or get carried from one paragraph to the next. To get it, go to Tools, Customize, Commands. You'll see Insert Style Separator in the All Commands list ... drag it to the toolbar or menu of your choice ... It is also already assigned (by default) to keyboard shortcut ALT+CTRL+ENTER.
Insert the style separator at the end of the run-in heading to start a new paragraph without the appearance of a new paragraph (you can use a separate style). Note that, if you insert a style separator in an existing paragraph -- it will turn the existing paragraph mark into the style separator (as mentioned above, it's really just a controlled hidden paragraph mark)... so be sure that you're working with all formatting marks visible, and pay attention to what you insert in the document.
If this post raised or left any questions on the topic ... post a comment and I'll reply as quickly as I can -
Have a great day!
Today is the 311th anniversary of Voltaire's birth ... the father of the French Enlightenment and the fellow for whom this site is named.
A friend recently gave me a copy of a new Voltaire biography - Voltaire Almighty a life in pursuit of freedom, by Roger Pearson.
As someone who has read much of Voltaire's body of work and several biographies about this wonderful character, I highly recommend it. I also urge anyone with any interest in freedom, justice, history, politics, the destruction of fanaticism, social climbing, or self-promotion ... not to be content on the subject of Voltaire with having read Candide in college. This great man was as entertaining as he was brilliant, as foolish as he was magnanimous, as vain as he was humble.
Happy Birthday, Monsieur de Voltaire... Monsieur Arouet... a very Happy Birthday to you, sir.
Hi, everyone! Thanks to those who took time to attend today's session ... and, if you missed it, check it out on-demand anytime after tomorrow... Meanwhile, I promised a lot of follow-up info to the folks who attended today, so here it is...
First, let me say that we covered A LOT today. That was not to overwhelm you, but to give you all the information. Just because you know that a type of metadata or hidden content could exist, doesn't mean it is in your document ... and doesn't mean you should be worried about it. The important thing is to have the information -- know what the possibilities are -- so that you can make an educated, confident decision about how you want to handle the hidden data issue for your documents. If you do feel overwhelmed at all by all of the content we covered, I suspect that going through the lists and links provided here will put it all into place. However, if questions or concerns remain after you read this post -- just post a comment and I'll do my best to clear them right up for you...
- To get the Microsoft free hidden data add-in for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and\or the free Redaction add-in for Word, click here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdate/CD010773571033.aspx ... and you can always get to the general Office downloads site by office.microsoft.com/downloads.
- For the steps to resolving many types of metadata and hidden content discussed today, as well as more discussion on the options available for resolving that content, see my earlier blog post The Whole Truth About Metadata in Office Documents.
- As discussed, you don't need to know VBA to deal with metadata and hidden content, but if you do want to write some simple macros to automate some cleanup steps for yourself and you've never written macros before ... check out an earlier webcast I gave on the basics of Word VBA for document production (most of what you'll learn there applies to Excel and PowerPoint as well):
To view that VBA webcast, click here
- For the sample files used in that webcast, click here
You'll find a couple of macro tips as well, as promised, at the end of this post. But first ...
The list of metadata and hidden data types demonstrated in today's session: If you need to review the steps for determining if these exist in your files or how to remove them ... review today's session on demand. Also, many of these items are in the earlier blog article linked above ... and of course, post a comment with a question if you want the steps for any specific item in this list.
REMEMBER: Just because it's on this list doesn't make it a privacy threat and doesn't mean you have to worry about it. This list includes things that are actual metadata and that are hidden content commonly considered metadata. It is not exhaustive, because I won't include things I think are mentioned as metadata to scare people, but are incredibly unlikely (in my opinion) to be a privacy threat -- like Pivot Cache, slide timings, or style names.
THESE ARE NOT IN ANY PARTICULAR ORDER WITHIN EACH PROGRAM. Decide for yourself which items are important or not. Also be careful before you remove any type of metadata or hidden content, as it might not be a privacy risk, but removing it could cause some functionality in the program or an add-in program you use to not function (for example - custom document properties, bookmarks, the name of the attached template, or document variables). The important thing is simply to be aware of what your files MIGHT contain, so that you can confidently check for that content and, if you feel it's necessary, remove that content...
Notice that the lists below include both actual metadata and hidden content you place in a document but need to be aware if it's there ...
TIP: Consider creating 2 lists for yourself ... one list of items that you want to check for all documents and another, longer list to use just for extremely sensitive documents...
Word
• File Summary info
• Routing Slip
• Versions
• Custom Document Properties
• Fields
• Bookmarks
• Comments
• For tablet users … ink comments and annotations
• Hyperlinks
• Tracked Changes
• Embedded or Linked Objects\files
• Embedded linguistic data
• Fast Save Data
• Hidden Text
• Text with white font color applied, or shading the same color as text
• Content in headers and footers that have been turned off or are not visible because of the length of the header\footer
• Footnotes unseen when viewing the document in Normal view
• Style names
• Name of the document template
• If the file is a template – content saved in AutoText entries
Excel
• File Properties Summary info
• Routing slip
• Custom document properties
• Hidden rows, columns, sheets
• Frozen panes
• Embedded files and objects
• Tracked changes (for shared workbooks only)
• Comments
• For tablet users – ink annotations
• Conditional formatting – or other formatting - applied to obscure content
• Headers and footers are not visible in all views
• Hyperlinks
PowerPoint
• File Properties Summary info
• Custom Document Properties
• Fast Saves
• Comments
• Tablet users - ink annotations
• Saved header, footer, or date content that is not being shown on the applicable slide or master
• Formatting, such as white font color, that obscures text but does not remove it
• Notes page content
• Slides set to be hidden during a slide show
For those who want them ... some sample macro tips follow ...
Using the VB Editor to resolve metadata and other hidden content:
These are just a few tips to get you started. If you've never used the VB Editor to write or edit macros, I suggest starting with the VBA basics webcast I mentioned earlier in this post. And remember, this is just to save time (which can surely be important!)... but you DON'T HAVE TO write VBA to manage metadata and hidden for yourself.
Okie dokie ...
The general tips that follow (how to use the Immediate Window and how to write a For Each>>>Next loop apply to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (any program in which you can write VBA, actually) -- but these specific examples are all Word properties just to keep it simple...
For on-the-fly document checking, use the Immediate Window:
- on the View menu click Immediate, or press Ctrl+G (note that Ctrl+G isn't a toggle command ... so it won't turn that window off).
To ask for information, start with a question mark, followed immediately by the line of code you want the information on. Press ENTER to get your information (the immediate window only deals with 1 line at a time). For example:
Find out how many comments are in a document:
?ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count
Find out how many hyperlinks are in a document:
?ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Count
To remove all of a type of item from a document at once:
Use a simple For Each...Next loop. For example:
Delete all hyperlinks from the document (the macro samples that follow need to go in a VBA module):
Sub DelHyp()
Dim alk as Hyperlink
For each alk in ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks
alk.Delete
Next
End Sub
Delete all comments from all currently open documents at once:
Sub DelCmts()
Dim acm as Comment
Dim adc as Document
For each adc in Documents
For each acm in adc.Comments
acm.Delete
Next acm
Next adc
End Sub
(Note that this interface doesn't let me indent lines of code, but good coding practice would indent the lines within the nested loops above for easy reading)
_____________________
If you need help with a macro for any particular metadata or hidden data feature in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint ... post a comment asking for it and I'll post either the answer or a link to the answer ...
Meanwhile - have a great Thursday everyone!!!
Happy Tuesday everyone! Please join me this Thursday for a 90 minute, advanced (level 300) webcast on identifying and removing document metadata and other hidden content from your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
Tips and Tricks for Managing Hidden Content in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Level 300)
Thursday, November 17th - 9am Pacific, 12noon Eastern (please note that this session runs 90 minutes)
I'm really looking forward to this session -- this is one of my favorite subjects in Office because there is SO MUCH evil misinformation out there designed to scare you into being afraid of your documents ... I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to demonstrate the straight scoop once and for all.
(Note that when you register, you'll see this says it's for 'legal documents' ... I will be addressing any kind of potential hidden content -- so it will be just as applicable to you regardless of your business or your job role... as long as you share files electronically.)
Potential privacy risk content hidden in your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files is a very important issue ... but the fact is that there is virtually no privacy risk content you can't remove yourself from Office 2003 documents -- and pretty easily at that.
Learn what document metatada is AND what it is not (Did you know, for example, that virtually ANY software program you use stores SOME TYPE of metadata? More importantly, did you know that MOST document metadata is NOT a privacy risk???)
And, learn about the potentially hidden content in your documents that is not actually metadata but might be more dangerous to your privacy (for example, headers and footers in Word or PowerPoint that still exist in the file even after you turn them off)...
This session will give you the information you need to make an informed decision about managing hidden data in all of your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Look forward to 'seeing' you there!
... and I have been terribly remiss recently with a couple of posts that I've promised to do. I've not forgotten... In particular, I've promised to (and am looking forward to) blogging about the scientific vs. the presentation perspective on Excel charting -- I know there are a couple of people wanting to get in on that chat. I'll get to it asap (just catching up on a couple of projects)... I've also promised more VBA tip posts to a couple of people -- so those will start appearing soon. In fact, look for my favorite on-the-fly document production macros to be posted within the next couple of weeks ...
Meanwhile, it's raining in NY but I didn't get my fabulous new shoes wet ... so I'm happy! ;-) Hope you're all having a good day as well ...
Webcast reminder notes: If you have trouble hearing when you sign in to the session on Thursday ... post a question in the Q&A panel asking for the dial-in number (it's a free call, of course) ... where you can listen by phone (and watch that panel for the producer's reply). And, if you haven't attended a LiveMeeting session in awhile, sign in a bit early so that LiveMeeting can install the updates you'll need to see and hear the webcast properly.
Happy Thursday everyone! Thanks to those folks who took the time to attend today's advanced document webcast. If you wanted to, but didn't get the chance, it should be available on demand by tomorrow.
Meanwhile -- I still owe follow-up links to the folks from last week's webcast and need to post follow-up for today's attendees as well ... so here goes ...
Additional resource links:
Most of these links are in the links section on this page, but just for quick reference:
Access to upcoming webcasts and other tips - microsoft.com/greattips -click the More Webcasts link at this site for easy access to on-demand webcasts.
Office Online - great help content, access to updates, downloads, free trials, templates, etc.
Office Online Training - lots of great, free courses for most Office System programs.
Microsoft At Work - a great collection of some of the best content from all around the Microsoft website, as well as a lot of original content. Includes content on most Microsoft technologies for everyone from beginners to experts.
Work Essentials - articles, templates, tools, tips, and demos from a wide range of experts, targeted to your specific occupation.
Office Discussion Groups - get help from other MVPs from all over the world on a wide range of technologies.
Follow-up links from my 11-1 webcast:
Here are a few links to review core concepts for building complex documents as well as some of topics covered in that webcast:
Tables I: Create and Format Basic Tables
Learning to love Word tables - in a nutshell
Book excerpt: Making Your Word Documents Behave
Book excerpt: The pure and simple logic of building extraordinary tables
On-demand link to last week's level 200 legal documents webcast
Follow-up links for today's webcast:
Tables II: Use tables to simplify complex layouts (also look for Tables III, which should be published soon and includes many of the specific financial table tips covered in the webcast today)
Book excerpt: Understanding character, paragraph, list, and table styles
Book excerpt: Tips, Tricks, & Problem-solving for Tables
The Happiest Thing about PowerPoint: Perfect is easier than close enough
Save Time with Temporary Links
Let's Talk about Fields, Baby!
Creating Multiple TOCs in a Document
Outline Numbering with the Marvelous LISTNUM Field
If I've missed anything you were looking for, or you have unanswered questions from either event ... please post a comment and I'll respond as soon as possible.
Have a great day!
Hi, everyone. Please join me tomorrow for a 1 hour level 300 tips session on complex documents - focusing on financial tables, managing graphics, and working with fields. The focus is legal documents, but the principles of formatting tables, graphics, and fields apply to any complex document ... so please join in regardless of your job role or the type of documents you work with.
Here's the link to register:
Advanced Tips for Legal Assistants: Better Word Documents in Less Time (level 300)
This 1-hour event will be live at 9am Pacific, 12noon Eastern time.
IMPORTANT: I owe some follow-up to the folks who attended last week's session, and I apologize for the delay. As I mentioned during that event, I left on a business trip right after the webcast ... and I've just been crazed since getting back! However, I have tomorrow afternoon slated to get that follow-up to you guys -- so I'll post follow-up to last week's and tomorrow's events together tomorrow afternoon.
NOTE FOR FOLKS NEW TO WEBCASTS: If you haven't been to a webcast in awhile, or ever before ... please log in a few minutes early for the event tomorrow to make sure that your version of LiveMeeting is up-to-date and that your sound is working correctly. The LiveMeeting console, like the event, is free, so if your version isn't current, you will just be prompted to upgrade on the spot. All it costs is a couple of minutes of your time.
Also, though LiveMeeting sound is improving, it isn't always perfect for these events. Because of that, the producer will post a free call-in number where you can listen to the webcast on the phone if your sound in LiveMeeting isn't good. To get that number, after you are in the LiveMeeting -- either turn your seat color to red (you'll see a place on the screen where you can select this) or post a question in the Q&A panel asking for the number. Either way, the producer will come to help you and will give you that number if you ask for it. Look for the producer to respond to you in the Q&A panel. Her name is Aurora, and she's terrific -- if it takes her a couple of minutes to get to you, it just means she's helping someone else.
Look forward to 'seeing' you all tomorrow! Meanwhile, Happy Wednesday!