Make your watermarks.

Personal Computer World December 24, 2007 Byline: Tim Nott Make your watermarks Add background images to documents and find favourite features in Word 2007 Posh writing paper used to have – and may well still have, as it has been a while since I penned a real letter – watermarks. These consist of a faint pattern or logo embossed into the paper during manufacture and which you can see if you hold a sheet up to the light.

Watermarks have also been used as anti-counterfeiting devices for banknotes and stamps, for example, and according to Wikipedia have been used since the 13th century. In computing circles, however, the word has other meanings.

In Word, a watermark is an image, or item of text printed in front of, or behind, the main text. Although visible, it is displayed and printed faintly so it doesn’t impinge on the legibility of the main text. The purpose can be decorative or functional.

In early versions of Word, creating watermarks was rather a fiddle that involved inserting pictures into the header and then tweaking them – Wordperfect users had a much easier time. Word XP and later have a more direct method, though as we will see shortly, watermarks are still contained in headers. In the Print Layout view, go to Format, Background, Printed Watermark and you’ll get a choice between a picture or text. If you choose the first, then you browse to the image file in the normal way. The image will be faint when inserted, or fainter still if you have the ‘Washout’ option checked. Depending on your printer and monitor contrast you may need to experiment to get something visible yet unobtrusive (see screen 1). go to website online word count

For text, the options are fairly evident. There’s a ‘Semitransparent’ option corresponding to the picture ‘Washout’ and you can experiment with the ‘Apply’ button before closing the dialogue. What isn’t apparent is that you can type your own words into the ‘Text:’ box if none of the ready-made phrases are suitable (see screen 2).

By default, watermarks appear on every page, but if you only want your ‘Top Secret’ on the first page, for example, you need to go to Page Setup, Layout and tick ‘Different first page’. Next go to View, Headers and footers. Go to the second page header and you’ll find you can select and delete the watermark – this will remove it from that and all subsequent pages while leaving the first page intact.

Where are they now?

en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx. Download the guide in Excel format with the unhelpful name of AM101938681033.xls – you might want to rename this to something more memorable.

Each Word 2003 menu has a corresponding tabbed worksheet, listing the contents of the menu in one column and the 2007 hiding place in another, so you should be able to find what you want (see screen 3).

However, be warned that it doesn’t go very deep – Word 2003 Tools, Options is shown as Office Button, Word Options, which is fine, but trying to find a particular option can be a challenge. Although the ‘Advanced’ category gives you a list grouped roughly in the same way as the old Tools, Options tab, this is only true for liberal values of the word ‘roughly’. If you want to turn off the status bar, for example, this doesn’t seem possible. You can, however, customise it by right-clicking on it and ticking the boxes for the items you want.

The information in the spreadsheet can also be cryptic. If, for instance, you want the word count command, you’re instructed to go to Review, Proofing, Word Count (or if you are blogging, Blog Post, Spelling, Word Count). What it doesn’t tell you is that word count is a status bar option, and this gives you a running count of the words in the document and, if applicable, the selection.

Similarly, the ‘Reveal Formatting’ tool is found by going to Word Options, Customise, All Commands, where by implication you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. But why bother, as the old keyboard shortcut, Shift & F1, still works (see screen 4)?

Exclude To recap, in Word XP and 2003, you create a list of words to be flagged in Notepad – all lower case, one word per line. You then save this as Mssp3en.exc in C:\Documents and Settings \username\ Application Data\ Microsoft \Proof.

It will come as no surprise that in Word 2007 things are very different. On the plus side, you don’t need to create the file – Microsoft supplies an empty one for each installed proofing language. On the minus side, the instructions in the on-line and off-line help are incorrect. So here’s a way that actually works.

First, make sure you have the Windows setting of ‘Show hidden files and folders’ enabled in Folder Options, View. You’ll then normally find the files under Vista in C:\Users \username\ AppData \Roaming\ Microsoft \UProof, and XP under C:\Documents and Settings\username\ Application Data \Microsoft\UProof. In either case, the file you want for UK English is ExcludeDictionary EN0809.lex. Open this with Notepad (if Vista makes this complicated, just run Notepad and drag the file in) then create the entries, as before, in lowercase and each on a separate line. Save and close the file and when you restart Word instances of your custom additions will get underlined in red. go to website online word count

Hide and seek Did you know you can hide text in Word? We’re not suggesting this as a way of protecting sensitive data, but it can have its uses. You can, for example, hide chunks of ‘boilerplate’ text – such as legal notices – in a document to make it less cluttered. ‘Hidden’ is something of a misnomer, it should be ‘hideable’ as you can go to Tools, Options, View and choose to show it or not from the Formatting Marks section. It will also appear if you show all formatting marks from the toolbar. When hidden text is made visible, it is shown with a black dotted underline.

One nice feature is that printing has independent options to print hidden text or not. This makes it possible to print a ‘light’ version of a long document, and you’ll find the option by clicking the Options button in the File, Print dialogue.

Hidden is a font attribute, and you’ll find it in the Effects section of the Font dialogue (see screen 5). As with most formatting, however, it’s more manageable when included in a style. So, for example, you could create a new style, based on the Normal style, called HiddenNormal, then click the Format button, choose Font and set the hidden effect. Repeat for other commonly used styles until you have a regular and hidden version of each.

Justify You doubtless know that you can ‘justify’ text in Word (and other word processors) so that the left and right margins are both straight. You see this in books and it gives a neat symmetry to facing pages. It’s less prevalent in newspapers and magazines, which are laid out in multiple columns, as with fewer words in a line it’s difficult to create blocks of text of an even density.

What you may not know is that Word can justify the top and bottom margins, as well as the left and right. If you go to File, Page Setup and the Layout tab, you’ll find you can set the Vertical Alignment to Justified. This will ensure – provided you don’t have empty paragraphs – that the top and bottom margins line up.

If you are printing on just one side of the paper, this doesn’t matter, but with duplex printing it can bring an elegant touch to facing pages. Word does this by subtly changing the paragraph spacing, but there’s a catch. If you apply the setting to the whole document and the last page isn’t full, the paragraphs will be spaced out in an exaggerated fashion. To fix this, go to the top of the last page, then summon the Page Layout dialogue again. Choose Top as the Vertical Alignment and This Point Forward as the Apply To: setting. PCW