The master document holds links to sets of other Word files. These sub-document contents are not inserted in the master document as such. Rather, the master document creates links to the various sub-documents. You are able to make changes to the sub-documents separately while all of these changes are added to the master document as a default. This works well for integrating separate Word documents of related subject matter. By creating a table of contents and an index in the master document, you end up with an integrated document.

Also, when several different people are writing a single document on separate computers, the master document offers the perfect solution to deliver various sections of the document to the individuals working on the project.
This article demonstrates the basics of creating a master word document as well as sub-documents. Begin creating the master document by opening a new blank document.

Title it as a master document and then save it. You can include the file name and then append with “Master Document”. Next, go to the View tab above the Ribbon and select Outline, found in the Document Views section. This opens a Navigation panel to the left of the blank document. Here you can start to enter the various headings for the document.

In the Outline Tools section in the Outlining tab, utilize the dropdown menu of Level styles and then use the green arrows to alter the headings.

After entering all of the desired headings, click Show Document. You can find this in the Master Document section in the Outlining tab.

There are several different options to access in the Master Document section. Select the entire outline and click Create in the Ribbon. It will look something like the screenshot below. Each one is a separate file attached to the master document. If you have the documents on the desktop, they are automatically added as sub-documents.

Click Collapse Subdocuments to see the links to each subdocument. Ctrl+Left-click on the link and it will open the title to the document just as you placed it in the master document outline. You can then add the content from scratch or, if the document is already created, simply cut and paste.

Do this for each subdocument heading and link and you have created a master document. This is simply the basic approach. There are options to create chapters under the headings, a table of contents or an index. Word will automatically insert a continuous section break within the master document. These section breaks will be inserted before and after each subdocument. There are a variety of different options for master documents in Word 2010. This demonstration relates more to existing documents in a simple master document format. The rest of the features are a different subject. You can always explore the user manual or look out for future articles.

You may actually like the fact that the sentences don’t seem to be crammed together with the Word 2007/2010 default. Even so, this will give you the option of changing that if you need to.

Word 2007 default spacing:

To change the line spacing for an entire document, go to the Styles section of the Home Ribbon and click Change Styles and select Style Set.

Hover the pointer over each of the styles in the dropdown menu, the document will shift to that style and you can select the one you need. In the following screenshot, Word 2003 was selected and we can see how it changed the spacing.

And if you select the Manuscript style, you get a totally different spacing format.

This is certainly more versatile than simply choosing between 1.0, 1.15, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0. All you have to do is hover any of the options and select the optimal format for your document.

If you want to select one of the style sets as a default every time you open a new document, go to Change Styles and select Set as Default.

This may seem obvious and simple, but it is surprising how many users are unaware of this useful option. It is easy to switch between defaults and even return to the original default setting. If you were pleased with the default setting in Word 2003, set that as the default. The same goes for any of the styles. You get the point.

It is also possible to change the line spacing in specific parts of a document. Simply highlight the portion of text in the document to change. Go to the Ribbon and in the Paragraph group, click the Line and Paragraph Spacing button.

Next, choose the spacing you want for that section of the document. This feature also has the live preview option to hover over the different spacing options and see how the section will look. By selecting Line Spacing Options, there are further tweaks to implement.

Word 2007 and 2010 offer a plethora of different formatting options. Use them to create any desired document format. All of the tweaks are in the Ribbon.

Like most other things in life, someone tried to answer that question with a formula, or algorithm. Microsoft Word offers readability statistics, but only if the feature is activated by the user. It is turned off by default.

Here is a quick guide on how to enable the readability statistics in Microsoft Word. Please note that I’m using Microsoft Word 2010, and that the setting may be at a different location in previous versions of Word.

Click on File and then Options. This should open the Options window where the majority of configuration changes can be made. Locate Proofing on the left side and click on it.

Place a checkmark into the box next to show readability statistics and click the OK button afterwards. This enables the feature. You won’t realize directly that it has been activated. That’s because it is linked to proof reading, which was already indicated by its location under proofing in the options.

The easiest way to bring up the readability statistics is to press F7 to run the spell checker on the open document, or by clicking on the Review tab and then on the Spelling and Grammar button.

The readability statistics display counts of words, characters, paragraphs and sentences, information about sentence, word and character averages and readability statistics

The Readability section displays the percentage of passive sentences, the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

Flesch Reading Ease scores can be interpreted in the following way:

• 90.0–100.0: Easily understandable by an average 11-year-old student
• 60.0–70.0: Easily understandable by 13- to 15-year-old students
• 0.0–30.0: Best understood by university graduates

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level transforms the Flesch Reading Ease score to a United States grade. A grade level of 9.9 as shown on the screenshot above is expected to be understandable by average 9th to 10th grade students.

If you are a Word user, are you using the Readability Statistics?

The company has added a one-click preview for the world’s most common file format, Microsoft Word documents.  In a statement on the GMail blog they said…

If you receive Microsoft® Word files as attachments in Gmail, you can now view them with a single click — no need to download, save, and open files with a desktop application when you just want read them. The Google Docs viewer that allows you to view .pdf, .ppt, and .tiff files in your browser now supports .doc and .docx formats too.

Just click the “View” link at the bottom of a Gmail message and the viewer will take it from there. If you decide you want to edit the file, clicking “Edit online” will open it in Google Docs, or you can download it to your desktop from there.

Clearly here though the reason for this is a push to remind people about the company’s own Docs service, their cloud office ‘suite’ after the recent launch of Microsoft Office Live, the new free on-line version of Microsoft Office 2010 featuring the ribbon.

Whatever their commercial reasons for doing this, it’s going to be a good move for consumers as anything that makes users lives easier will always be a good move.  However is there a potential security risk with this new one-click viewer.

Word documents, lets not forget, are also a favourite for virus writers to hide their malicious code in.  Having the user being able to open the file in the browser could be a god-send for them, potentially being able to expose a user to a virus without their PC’s anti-virus software seeing it.

Which brings me back to how do you want to preview and open your files.  Is this new feature excellent and a real time saver, or is it a huge security risk waiting to happen.  I for one will continue to download all attachments and virus scan them before opening them.

Microsoft Word offers options to prevent data loss caused by connection issues to remote storage. The option is available in Word 2003, 2007 and 2010. This guide explains how to make the configuration changes in Word 2010 so that copies of remote documents are always stored on the local computer system during editing to prevent data loss.

The File button in the upper left corner of the Word window opens a context menu that includes a link to the Options menu.

word options

The left sidebar links to specific configuration categories like Save, Proofing or Language, the right content area lists the parameters that can be modified in the selected category.

The Advanced category displays a large list of parameters that can be changed in Microsoft Word.

The Save sub-heading under Advanced contains the parameters needed to make the changes to work with local copies of remote Word documents.

The entry “Copy remotely stored files onto your computer, and update the remote file when saving” is responsible for this. Enabling it reduces the chance of data loss while working with remote documents in Word.

word remote document copies

The parameter “always create backup copy” can be enabled to increase the security further. Word will always create a backup document copy once the option has been enabled.

The remaining option is a file recovery software to recover the text. Damaged docx2txt is one of those programs. The recovery application can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The website is offering an online recovery option as well but most users will probably prefer the offline recovery solution especially when privacy is an issue.

The free portable program will launch a new command window which in turn will load the application’s interface. There are only three controls offered by the program. The user can load corrupt Word documents if they are available in the docx format from the file menu. The recovery program tries to recover the text of the Word document loaded by the user. The contents recovered are instantly displayed in the program’s interface from where they can be copied and pasted or saved from the File menu.

The recovery software is limited to docx documents which is somewhat disappointing but it works nicely for corrupted docx documents. The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Windows operating systems and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.

Update: The website is no longer available. You can try Microsoft’s official guides on how to recover data from corrupt or no longer opening Word documents. The guides are available on this web page.

But is GNOME office and alternative that you should overlook? More than likely most readers didn’t even know there was a GNOME office. And of those that have heard rumors of this suite, many probably didn’t even know it was ready for installation. It is. But the big question…is it worth try? In this article I will highlight the tools that make up GNOME Office and help you to decide if this suite is worth your time.

Installation

The first thing I should bring up is the installation. Previous incarnations of GNOME Office required the user to install the pieces separately. That has changed and now you can open up the GNOME Software Center and follow these steps:

1. Search for ‘gnome office”.
2. Select GNOME Office.
3. Click the right-pointing arrow.
4. Click the Install button.
5. Enter your password.
6. Sit back and watch the installation happen.

What GNOME office installs is the following (some may already be installed):

• Abiword: Word processor
• Gnumeric: Spreadsheet
• Evolution: Email, contacts, calendar
• Planner: Project manager
• Inkscape: Vector graphics
• XSane: Scanning

There are other tools that are supposed to be included with GNOME Office, but are not installed:

• Gnucash: Finances.
• gLables: Label designer
• Glom: Database designer.

Why the above tools are listed on the GNOME Office official site and not installed I have no clue.  Of course those are simple enough to install, just by going to the Software Center and going through the same steps above.

Value of the applications

Instead of taking each piece apart and showing you how they work, I want to spend a little time on whether or not each application is a worthy usurper of your current tool. And since I do not know the tool you are using, the usurper is going to have to be pretty good.

Abiword: I have always wanted to like Abiword. And, in some instances I do. But the problem is that Abiword really stinks at document exchange. Abiword’s idea of formatting doesn’t always gel with another Office Suite’s idea. But I will say that Abiword has come a long, long way. And if you are just needing a simple word processor that is lightweight and fast, Abiword is a great alternative. Does it match the skills of OpenOffice? Not so much.

Gnumeric: Another tool that I have always wanted to like, but have been prevented from doing so because of its poor ability to work with other tools. Any spreadsheet that uses complex formulas or formatting will most likely wind up a bit of a mess in Gnumeric. But for basic spreadsheet use, Gnumeric will get the job done.

Evolution: If you are looking for a groupware suite to take the place of MS Outlook, this is where you need to go. Evolution is, without question, the best groupware suite available for Linux. It’s power, easy to use, reliable, and includes everything you need for a groupware suite. This is, by far, the best tool of the GNOME Office suite.

Planner: Because most office suites do not generally include a project management tool, planner is a surprising addition to the suite. Not only does planner bring a much needed tool to the office suite, it does so with aplomb.

Inkscape: There is only one office suite that includes a vector graphics application – OpenOffice. Inkscape brings to GNOME Office one tool that the competition can not touch. Inkscape is the best vector graphics tool for the Linux operating system. There is, however, a rather steep learning curve that comes with using Inkscape. So don’t expect to just jump into this tool without any idea of what you are doing.

XSane: You can read my article on Xscane (“Scanning in Linux with iScan and XSane.”) I think most readers will agree that XSane is an overly complex tool for a simple task. However, XSane can be made simple by simply closing all of the unnecessary windows.

The verdict

Although GNOME Office makes a valiant attempt at replacing your current office suite, it fails in too many categories to actually usurp the big dogs in this space. Now, if are in a situation where you are not having to trade documents with others and you do not need the power features of tools like Excel or Calc, and you don’t need a tool for presentations then GNOME Office might be your go-to suite of tools. Otherwise, stick with OpenOffice or MS Office.

What do you think? Is GNOME Office a worthy entry in the office suite category?

Here is a tip on how to get the same result in Microsoft Word. The easiest way to make Word jump to the last cursor position in Microsoft Word documents is to use the keyboard shortcut [Shift F5].

Pressing [Shift F5] in a recently launched Word document will place the cursor at the position of the last change in the document. Word will only record changes to the document this way. Simply placing the Word cursor in the Word document is not enough to make [Shift F5] jump to that position.

The other requirement is that the document needs to be saved in doc format. Word cannot perform the jump to the last cursor position if a txt or rtf document is loaded into the text editor. This little keyboard shortcut can be very useful in large Word documents that are edited over time.

A limited technical preview of Office Web Apps was announced yesterday. Interested users could apply to become part of the technical preview but there was no instant way to get access to Office Web Apps at that time.

Instead of having to wait days, week or even months before they get accepted users can do the following to get instant access to Microsoft’s Office Web Apps preview.

It starts by logging into Windows Live Skydrive. Users who do not use English as their main language might need to change the language to English first before they can continue with the process.

Upload at least one Office document. The following screen should appear after uploading that document:

A sentence with a link to join the preview program should be visible above the uploaded document. A click on that link will open a license agreement page. Accepting the license will automatically enable the Office Web Apps Technical Preview for that account.

A new menu entry will be displayed in the header afterwards called new. A click on that opens a submenu with options to create a new Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel workbook or Microsoft OneNote notebook.

Only Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are available at this moment in time. It is also possible to edit Excel and PowerPoint files that have been uploaded. Files that can be edited will have an Edit option in the top menu indicating that. via Liveside

Probably the two most interesting aspects of the announcement of Office Web Apps is that it will be completely free and compatible with browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft has not been very specific about the requirements but Brian Hall mentioned Firefox and Safari in the announcement. It is likely that additional web browsers will be supported as well. There have also been no information regarding access from other operating systems like Linux or Mac at this point.

Office Web Apps can be interesting for many users who sometimes work on computer systems where Microsoft Office is not installed. It would allow them to work with their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. This would get rid of formatting problems and other difficulties when editing these documents in Office alternatives.

Interested users can apply to become a part of the Office Web Apps beta test.

That’s where the Word Document Hyperlink Checker comes into play. The Microsoft Word add-in can check all hyperlinks for validity in a Word document.

The hyperlink checker add-on supports Microsoft Word 2007, 2003, XP and 2000. It will automatically place a new menu entry in the Word interface that can be used to open the hyperlink checker interface.

It will display all hyperlinks that have been added to the Word document after clicking on the Show All button. A click on the Suspicious button will display suspicious and broken links which are the links that need to be tested by the user.

The add-in unfortunately lacks a few features that would make it more comfortable working with it including the ability to click on a link to check it in the default web browser, to edit links in the link checker interface or to place the cursor at the position of the selected link.

Another shortcoming is that the add-in will not recognize plain urls as hyperlinks. Only links that have been created using the hyperlink option will be recognized as links.

The Document Hyperlink Checker is still a helpful program for Microsoft Word especially for testing the hyperlinks in large documents. The Word add-in can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

This does mean that an account at Microsoft Office Live Workspace is required before the add-in can be used. The service is free on the other hand and it takes only a few seconds to signup for it. Windows Live account users can use their account to signup for Microsoft Office Live Workspace. The service is currently in beta and provides access to 5 Gigabytes of storage space for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that can also be edited on the website.

Office 2007 users find the option to upload their documents to the Microsoft Office Live Workspace and to open documents from the online storage space under the Microsoft Office button in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Office 2003 and XP users get a new Office Live toolbar that provides access to three buttons that offer the functionality to open documents that are stored at Microsoft Office Live Workspace, save documents so that they are stored online and to open the Office Live Workspace website.

The Office Live Add-in itself is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP.

Eligible are families, students and small businesses that own 5 PCs or less from the United States. Each selected participant will receive a preview copy of Microsoft Office 2010, access to web versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint plus dedicated support by a program manager and various other sources.

Participants specifically get:

• Microsoft Office 2010 pre-installed on a “loaner” laptop PC – before it ships!
• 24-hour unlimited e-mail support Monday – Friday, with phone support for escalations
• Monthly webcast training and Q&A sessions
• Community site access, so you can connect with other participants and easily use resources like feature videos and announcements
• FREE copy of Microsoft Office 2010 (when available)

This does come at a price. The loaner laptop and Microsoft Office 2010 have to be used on a daily basis and Microsoft expects participants to take part in surveys, trainings and calls with the chance to be invited to share the story on an even broader level by being featured in case studies and videos.

The Microsoft Office 2010 Real Life Stories program is available to US citizens only at this point in time. They can submit an application at the official website until June 30.

It does so by automatically creating a copy of the document whenever it is saved either by the user or by the software. The functionality becomes available immediately after installation of the Word add-in. Checking the Show / Hide History box will display a sidebar menu with all document revisions of the active document. A double-click on any of the documents will load it in a new Microsoft Word window.

A click on the Settings button opens the configuration menu where the maximum number of document revisions and the language can be configured. The default number of document revisions is unlimited but can be changed if size is of importance to the user.

AutoHistory (via Killertechtips) requires the installation of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system before it can be used and installed.

The Word add-in could come in handy for users who regularly work with Microsoft Word documents.

The Google Docs team on the other hand was reserved and did not add support for these file formats until now. Today, they announced that they finally added support for both the docx (that is for Microsoft Word 2007 documents) and xlsx (Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets) format in Google Docs.

Support in this case means that users can upload files with the docx and xlsx extension to Google Docs. The size limitations are 500 Kilobytes for docx documents and 1 Megabyte for xlsx spreadsheets.

The document can then be edited in Google Docs just like any other document. There is however no option to save documents to a local computer system in the docx or xlsx format yet. Google Docs will automatically convert the documents to doc or xls format.

Enter PDF to Excel and PDF to Word, two online services created by the same developer that convert pdf documents in microsoft word or microsoft excel documents. Both products are available online and simple to use. Three steps are required to convert the pdf document. The user needs to select a pdf document from the local computer system, pick a output format and enter an email address where the converted pdf document should be send to.

The test results have been impressive. Take a look at the screenshot of the first page of a pdf document and its Word conversion.

The conversion comes close to the original. Some parts might need some fine tuning but the overall look and feel of the pdf document has been carried over and probably more important than that the data in the tables looks exactly like that in the pdf document.

PDF to Excel (link) and PDF to Word (link) are two helpful online services for users who have to convert pdf documents into Word or Excel format.

The Office add-in startup manager provides the means to disable Microsoft Office add-ins comfortably. The program will display all add-ins, enabled or disabled, that are currently installed in Microsoft Office. It sorts the add-ins in tabs that refer to the Microsoft Office program that they are installed in. Displayed are tabs for Microsoft Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word.

The listings contain checkboxes, the startup type of the individual add-in, its name and description. The Office add-in will be loaded if the checkbox is checked. All it takes to disable an add-in is to uncheck it in the program.

EnableDisable might also come in handy to permanently disable add-ins in Microsoft Office in case they are not needed at all. All in all a very straightforward comfortable tool to manage Microsoft Office add-ins.

Doc Scrubber is a Microsoft Word metadata scrubber which can be used to analyze and scrub Word documents. The software program is compatible with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 or Windows XP. It has been designed with simplicity in mind. It basically is managed by the two buttons Analyze and Scrub.

Analyze lets the user analyze one specific Word document to see if and which information it reveals in the metadata. The Scrub button is where the real action takes place. It can be used to scrub a single document, all Word documents in a folder or selected documents of folder.

By default a new document will be created after the scrubbing with the metadata removed which is another option that can be changed in the program’s settings. The user is given the choice to remove only the metadata that he selects.

A total of 13 different settings can be removed from the selected Word documents including subject, keywords, comments and several dates including creation and last saved data. Three of those 13 options can reset data back to their default values. This includes setting the template back to normal.dot, the revision count to 1 and the total editing time to 0.

The very same menu contains two options to replace the author and company to values specified by the user.

All three tools function as plugins, or add-ins, and integrate Flickr access, or more specifically the option to integrate Flickr images into Microsoft Word, Outlook or Live Writer. Supported are not only photos that have been uploaded by the user who wants to integrate them but also from other Flickr users.

A search and filters are provided in all three applications. It is for example possible to filter images by uploader, by size and search by photoset or tags.

If you like the idea head over to Flickr4Word, Flickr4Outlook and Flickr4Writer to download the plugins. The option to access the plugin is available directly from the toolbar. A button Flickr Image appears after installing the plugin in the selected Office program.

I had some problems in the past when I saved documents in Word 2007 in docx format only to get cries for help of users who could not open the document because they were using a previous version of Word. I had the option to explain to them how they could open it (convert online or download the compatibility pack) or convert it to doc and send it to them again.

This happened several times and I finally decided to look for an option to change the default save format in Word. The article at Technix Update reminded me of that and I thought it would be nice to post the quick tutorial as well.

All that needs to be done is to open Word 2007. Once open a click on the Office icon on top and a selection of Word Options loads the menu where the default format can be changed. Just select Save in the left pane and pick Word 97-2003 Documents instead of the default Word Document.

A document that is simply saved will from now on have the file extension doc and not docx. I have not checked but I assume similar options are available for Excel and Powerpoint.