Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – Set Default Font and Point Size

You may set the font and point size you wish to use as a default for all your Word documents.

• Press Control+Shift+F to open the Word font dialogue. Focus is place on the Font drop down edit combo control
• The current font is shown, and you can press Alt+Down Arrow to open the drop down list of other available fonts. You can arrow down the list or press the first letter or two of the font you wish to use, for example, type “CA” to jump to the popular Calibri font.
• When you have found the font you wish to use, press TAB to move to the font style drop down. Regular is the best choice for a default font style, but there is a drop down list of other choices you may access with Alt+Down Arrow.
• Then, TAB to the Point Size edit combo and either type the point size you wish, or press Alt+Down Arrow to open the list of point sizes and arrow down to the size you wish. 11 point is generally used for most documents but perhaps you want a larger point size such as 14 or 18 to write your documents in large print. As a guide, 72 point is 1 inch high letters, so 18 point would be letters that are one quarter inch high which is very large.
• After you select the point size, TAB through the remaining controls which may be ignored because they provide other font attributes such as bolding, underlining, and superscripting which are not relevant for a default font
• When you reach the “Set as Default” button, press spacebar to activate it.
• TAB through this dialogue and you will encounter two radio buttons to choose whether you want your font changes to apply only to the current document or all documents based on Normal template. Arrow to the “All Documents” button and press Enter. You will be returned to your document. Now, your new font and point size will apply to all future documents that you create.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Microsoft Word – Determining Word or Character Counts
While in a Word document, you can find out how many words or characters are in the entire document or a selected block of text. Select the block of text of interest or don’t select anything if you are interested in the counts for the entire document. Press F6 to jump to the Status tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Arrow right to the Word count button. Press spacebar on the word count button to find the number of characters, lines, and paragraphs. Press Escape to go back from the status tool bar to the body of your document.
Note: For users of the JAWS screen reader, you can press the JAWS+NumPad3 key to read the document status line which announces the number of pages and words.
That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – Shortcut for Creating a Bulleted or Numbered List

You may quickly create a bulleted list of items in your document as follows.

• Press the asterisk (*) key plus a space at the start of your first item. Type the item text and press Enter.
• The asterisk will be changed to a bullet and the next line will also start with a bullet so you can type the second item.
• Continue typing the remaining items of your list and press Enter twice on the last item to turn off the auto-bullet marking.
• You can also bullet text that is already typed by selecting the line or lines of text and pressing Control+Shift+L.

Similarly, you can type a numbered list.

1. Press “1.” Without the quotes Followed by a space and the text of your first item and then press Enter.
2. The next line will begin with “2.”. Continue typing the items in your list and press Enter after each item. Each new line will be numbered incrementally.
3. Press Enter twice on the last item to turn off the auto numbering.

If you later delete one of the numbered items, or insert a new item, the remaining items are automatically renumbered.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – Manual Spell Check

The previous tip discussed the automatic spell check that Word can do as you type your document. However, you may manually want to spell check after you complete the document or perhaps spell check a document written by someone else.

With your Word document open, press F7 to start the spell checker. The spell check window will open, show the number of spell check issues, and place focus on the “Review all Results” button.

• Press spacebar to activate this review button and you will be taken to the first issue. Word will show what it considers to be the issue, suggest a correction, and show the sentence containing the error. If you use JAWS, it will automatically speak that information for you. If you don’t use a screen reader there is also a button to have Word read the sentence containing the error to you.
• If you agree with the suggested correction, just press Enter and Word will make the correction and move to the next issue.
• Otherwise, you may TAB through the correction dialogue where you have multiple choices of actions you may take. There is a button to ignore the issue, ignore all occurrences of that issue in the document, or add the item to Word’s dictionary so it will not be flagged in the future. You may activate those buttons as needed and you will then be moved to the next issue in the document. You may also press Escape anytime to close the spell check window and return to your document.
• Also, rather than pressing TAB to move through the dialogue controls, you may simply press a single shortcut letter. For example, press key I to ignore the issue, key G to ignore all issues, or key A to add the item to the dictionary. If you press I or G, the item is ignored, and you are moved to the next issue.
• Thus, you can quickly move through all issues by simply pressing Enter to accept the correction, I to ignore it, or G to ignore all occurrences.
• There is also a Settings button in the dialogue that you may activate to change how the spell checker behaves.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – Quick Spelling Correction and Finding Synonyms

As you are typing, you might make a typo or hear a misspelled word. If you press the Applications key on the incorrect word, a context menu will open, and Windows will suggest what it thinks is the correct word. Simply press Enter to accept the correction, or Escape to return to your document, or press Tab for additional options such as adding the word to the spelling dictionary, or ignoring it. IF a new word is not suggested when you press the Applications key, then Windows is not aware of the misspelling.

Also, when you think you might have used a word too frequently or think there might be a better word to use but you can’t think of one, just press the Applications key on the word. When the context menu opens, arrow down to the Synonyms submenu and press Enter. You will be placed in a list of synonyms. IF one of them is desirable, just press Enter and your original word will be replaced with the chosen synonym. If you don’t like any of the choices, just press Escape to close the menu.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – F12 Save As Shortcut

When editing a new Microsoft Word document that has not yet been saved, you may press Control+S to save the document. However, this brings up the Back Stage Save-As dialogue which is accessible but somewhat awkward to use from the keyboard.

• Instead of Control+S, you may prefer to press F12. This brings up the more familiar Save-As dialogue with focus in the file name edit box where you can type your new document’s file name. If you want to choose a specific folder to save the document, then Shift+Tab twice to reach the list of files of the current destination folder from where you can navigate to another folder.
• Note that there are many controls in the Save As dialogue. Rather than pressing TAB many times to reach the Save button, you may just press Alt+S from any of the dialogue fields to activate the Save button.
• The “Save As Type” field is worth noting. Press TAB once from the file name field to reach it. You may use this list field to convert your document. Arrow up and down the list to see which types of documents you can convert to. For example, you may want to convert your Word document (DOCX type) to a flat text (TXT) type document or to a PDF document. Suppose you want your Word document to be converted to a web page. To do this, select document type, web page HTM or HTML. A second copy of your file will be saved in the new document type you select, and your original document type will also be retained.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – General Shortcut Keys Part 2

• Press Control+O to open a new document. You will be placed in the Backstage view where you can press Up/Down arrows to select from the list of Backstage categories, press Left/Right to choose the Tabs for the selected category, and press Enter to open a Tab. The Recent Tab allows you to browse a list of recently used documents. The Document Tab lets you browse your computer folders.
• While editing a document, press F6 to cycle between the document pane, the status line at the bottom of the screen, and the ribbon. Press Shift+F6 to cycle in the reverse direction.
• Press Control+F6 to cycle between documents if you have more than one document opened.
• Press Control+F to search the document. Press Escape to exit the Find dialogue and return to the document.
• Press Control+PageDown to find the next search item or Control+PageUp to find the previous search item.
• Press Control+H to search and replace within the document. Note this search and replace dialogue has an option to replace one or all of the search items. For example, you could replace all occurrences of John with Jane.
• Press Control+Shift+E to toggle the Track Changes feature on or off. With Track Changes on, your revisions will be highlighted so others can see what you have changed in the document.
• Press F3 to toggle lower/upper case.
• Press F7 to spell check your document.
• Press F12 to Save a new document (Save AS window).
• Press Control+S to save an amended document that has been previously saved.
• Press Control+W or Control+F4 to close a document window. If you have modified the document since you last saved it, you will be prompted to save or don’t save it.
• Press Control+P to print a document.
• Press Control+Z to undo your last action. This is valuable to restore something you accidentally delete or type or paste. You can undo multiple actions by pressing Control+Z multiple times.
• Press Control+Shift+C to copy the formatting of the current paragraph (e.g. font, bullets, indentation etc.). You can then position to another paragraph and press Control+Shift+V to apply that same formatting to the other paragraph.
• Press Control+Shift+N to restore the default formatting of the current paragraphs or selected text. This is a quick way to remove headings, font changes, underlining, bolding, bullets or any other formatting that you may have accidentally applied. The text will simply be returned to your default document format.
• Press Alt to focus on the Office upper ribbon. Press the left/right arrow to move among the upper ribbon tabs.
• Press TAB to move to the first command for a given ribbon tab. Press TAB and Shift+TAB to move forward and backward among the commands. Press Control+Left/Right arrow to move from one command group to another.
• For button items, press spacebar or Enter to activate. For a split button, which acts like a menu with multiple choices, press Enter to activate the default choice, or press Alt+Down arrow to open the split button menu and then press Tab or arrow keys to move between the other choices.
• If you reach a ribbon item you want to use often, press the Applications key to open a context menu for that item . Arrow down the menu and press Enter to add the item to the Quick Access Tool Bar. The next time you require that item, press Alt to reach the ribbon, then up arrow to focus on the Quick Access Tool Bar and then arrow to the required item. Finding an item from the Quick Access Tool Bar is typically much faster than finding it on the ribbons.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.