Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Microsoft Word: Quick Parts

As a toddler, I’m sure many of you played with building blocks. As we get older, we can continue to play with building blocks. To make it sound more efficient, let’s call them Quick Parts. I’m all about being lazy (for the polictically correct, efficient), and Quick Parts works for me.

Words comes with many of these built in Quick Parts (cover page, header, footer, etc.) You can use one of the built in cover pages, headers or footers, but I really prefer my own. NU Central Administration provides some nice letterhead templates where the header and footer are already done for you. You can use one of these or open a document that already has the header, footer or cover letter you want. The point is, you need something to copy or save for use later.

Got it? Now select it. Next, go to Insert ribbon, Text group, click Quick Parts and select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery… Add the necessary information in the dialog box. Be sure the name is something you’ll remember, like “UNL Header.” You will also need to select the appropriate category, like “Headers.”

To insert your new Quick Part, place the insertion point where you’d like the part to appear. Go to Insert ribbon and select the item, like “Header.” In the gallery of optoins, you’ll find your part neatly alphabatized with the rest. Select it and there you go.

Did you know you can also do this with boilerplate text? If you remember AutoText but didn’t know where it disappeared to in 2007-10, you’ll be happy to know it’s a Quick Part, too.

4 comments:

  1. I have a client that has a boilerplate list of about 300 comments. He wants to be able to check off a bullet box ane the comment goes to his new list so the new list he gives to his clients only has the comments he checked. Is this possible?

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  2. Dave, all 300 comments can be saved as an AutoText entry. The trouble with this is you can only insert one at a time. To get around this, you can insert AutoText by typing the name and then press F3 to insert it. This would require you have short and easy names for each comment or keep a cheat sheet of codes handy so you don't have to memorize each one.

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  3. i'm using Word 2011 on Mac.....i cant access quick parts......is there any other way..??

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  4. My quick parts keep disappearing and I constantly have to re-do them. What's up??

    ReplyDelete