MS Word Tips

This page provides some tips on how to circumvent certain problems in Microsoft Word.

How to have shorter captions in the table of content?

See these links (http://www.wordbanter.com/showthread.php?t=10819, http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Mac/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/2008-10/msg00535.html) on ways to shorten the captions in the table of content (list of figures, list of tables) while still having long captions below the figures.

How to compress pictures?

To reduce the file size, it is nice to compress your pictures (images). To compress all of your images/pictures to a specific resolution (in pixel per inch, ppi, equivalent to dot per inch, dpi), select a picture, in the Format Picture ribbon, in the Adjust section, click Compress. Select the desired resolution, Select the All pictures in this file if you want to, click OK. In earlier versions of Word, right click on a picture, Format Picture, Picture tab, Compress button. It works in the same way.

Non-breaking space in Mac Microsoft Office

Hate it when line breaks happen in odd places like between Mr. and John or between reference text and [Reference]? Use Option-Space to add a non-breaking space. The same for dashes (hyphen) for avoiding 25- and 27 from displaying on two different lines, use Cmd-Shift-<hyphen>.

Proper layout of figures within the text

How can I arrange my figures such that they don't result in large white space inside my MS Word document? While this is easy to do with LaTeX, it is a bit more difficult with Word. First, figures and tables should not be "in line with text" as they will then result in large fraction of a page that is white since no more text can be added there and the figure fits on the next page. Here is a first page that describes how to change figures so that they are floating: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/change-an-inline-picture-to-a-floating-picture-and-vice-versa-HP005190262.aspx. And here is another link to a document that describes the subtleties of handling floating pictures in MS Word: www.ai.uga.edu/mc/FloatFigWord.pdf