Word Tips

Most documents you create are likely to use portrait page orientation. However, when your document contains an oversized item like a table, chart, or diagram that's wider than your document's portrait-oriented pages, you might want to print that item using landscape orientation instead. When you're working with drawing objects, you can often solve this problem by rotating the objects 90 degrees. However, if you're working with text, tables, embedded objects, and other types of graphic objects, rotating isn't always the best option, if it's an option at all.

As an alternative, you can apply landscape orientation to a single item or selection without affecting the portrait orientation used in the rest of your document. Better yet, you can do it on-the-fly, without using the Break dialog box to insert section breaks!

• Select the item(s) that you want to appear on a landscape-oriented page

• From the File menu select Page Setup

• In the Page Setup dialog box, click on the Paper Size tab (Margins tab in Word 2002), and then choose the Landscape option in the Orientation panel.

• Select Selected Text from the Apply To dropdown list.

• Click OK

Word automatically inserts Next Page section breaks at the beginning and end of your selection and applies landscape orientation to the isolated section.

If you prefer using the mouse and you're always looking for faster ways to get work done in Word, here are three tasks that can be accomplished by either a traditional method or by double-clicking.

To add a new toolbar or remove an existing one

You can use the menu system by going to the View menu select Toolbars.

• Or, as long as at least one toolbar is displayed, you can double-click anywhere in the toolbar area (the grey area just to the right of the toolbar) to display the Customize dialog box.

• Then, enable or disable as many toolbars as you like and close the Customize dialog box.

To undock a toolbar

You can mouse over the toolbar's leftmost edge to change the cursor to a four-directional pointer and then drag the toolbar into a new position.

• If you find the four-directional mouse pointer difficult to deal with, you can simply double-click on the top or bottom edge of the docked toolbar.

• Word will undock the toolbar and display it as a floating rectangle in your document.

To display the ruler

You can go to the View menu and select Ruler and Word will display the horizontal ruler.

For Word users who don't like having the ruler visible all the time can use the mouse to display the horizontal ruler on an as-needed basis.

• Mouse over the thin grey border on the top inside edge of the document window. When you hover the mouse pointer over the border and wait, the ruler will appear.

• To summon the Page Setup dialog box, just double-click on the grey border at the top of the document.