A while ago, I wrote about being asked twisty questions about Microsoft Word in all manner of situations; it's certainly not unusual for me to be explaining the finer points of field codes or the perils of master documents over a vegetarian lasagne and a cheeky little New World Shiraz, whilst some poor victim friend with a glazed expression nods and regrets ever asking.
Why Does the Appearance of Text In My Microsoft Word Document Change When I Alter One Little Thing?
It's that situation where you're working on a document (typically when there's a tight deadline involved), you change the colour of one word - ONE WORD - and then suddenly lots of other text is that colour too and you have absolutely no clue how, why or when that happened.
(2) Ensure that the automatically update option is switched on for the Heading 1 style, then simply update one heading - all other headings using that style will be updated too.
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We've all heard tell of doctors going to dinner parties and being bombarded about the various afflictions of assembled guests, but spare a thought for the humble technical writer.
"Oh! So you're good with Microsoft Word!"
Generally, I nod and try to steer the conversation towards more pressing issues of the day (What about those buns in Great British Bake Off this week? or Have you noticed how the price of tinned tomatoes has crept up?) but very often the person thinks for a few seconds and then hits me with a twisty Microsoft Word question.
So, based on these moments, I've put together a series of short guides which are based on some of the most common questions that I've been asked.
Twisty Question #1: Why is my document a mess when I paste content from another place?
The first guide deals with the thorny issue of pasting text into a document, where the text that you need to paste might be in another document, elsewhere in your current document, or perhaps from another source altogether (for example, a web page). In theory, there's nothing simpler - everyone knows you just select the portion of text, press CTRL+C to copy it and then use Word's Paste option. Easy!