Chained Styles in Microsoft Word – Simple Q&A Formatting

What would you say if I told you there was a simple way to format a Q&A document in Microsoft Word so that all you have to do is hit enter to change speakers and continue on typing?

This is one of my all-time favorite productivity tips – the chained style. I won't take credit for discovering this handy trick. That all goes to Cheryl Flanders the Microsoft Word guru, but I'll lay it out for you in easy steps right now.

The following instructions are based on using Word 2003. Word 2007 is not quite this easy to set up, and I'm still working on simplifying the instructions into a usable format.

• Start by creating a new template file (.dot file).



• Go to "Format/Style" and click the "New Style" button. Type a unique name for your style. I used "Interviewer" for one and "Interviewee" for the other.



• To set up your "Interviewer" style, click on the "Format" button in the style dialog box and select "Numbering."



• On the "Numbering" tab, click on a format that reflects your hanging indent and click the "Customize" button.



• In the number format box, manually type "Interviewer:" (or whatever you want the speaker identification to be without quotes). At this point you can also modify the font to appear in bold, italics, underling, whatever you need.



• Adjust your hanging indent tabs.



• Save your first style. Be sure to check the "Add to Template" option before closing the dialog box.

At this point you will follow the above steps to create a second style for the interviewee in the Q&A.

The next step will be to chain or link the styles together. Modify the first style to enter the name of the second style in the "Style for following paragraph" box. Modify the second style and enter the name of the first style in the "Style for following paragraph" box. Your styles will automatically alternate when you press Enter. Make your first style the default style of the template, and save your template file.

It's that easy! Now when you hit "Enter," Word will automatically switch styles and insert the speaker tag. To create paragraphs within a speaker, you'll need to hit Shift+Enter.

There's one last small modification that you'll need to make to create double spacing between the speakers. Go into "Format," then "Paragraph," under each style and change the "Spacing After" to reflect the font size that you're using.

The best thing about using a chained style is that it's infinitely customizable. You can modify it to work for almost any document, even using it for multiple speakers by combining it with macros. Shaina's got a great modification so that you can use it with documents that require line numbering, and I'm sure she'll share that soon.

One last caveat – you will want to check with the companies you contract with before using chained styles in their transcripts. It can throw off the formatting if they have additional programs that they run a transcript through before presenting it to a client.

Using a Macro to Format a Timestamp

Recently I discussed how you could use Express Scribe to insert timestamps in a document. This is a very useful tool; however, you will probably need to make some small adjustments to the formatting to convert it to your client's preferred style.

Here's is what the unformatted timestamp will look like:


You can make the formatting easy and simple by recording a macro that will reformat it to your client's specs.

The key to this is to start recording with your cursor on a blank line. Click on "Record New Macro," name it, and then select a keyboard shortcut(I used Ctrl+D). The first recorded step should be to key Ctrl+V to paste in the unformatted timestamp. Then while still recording, format the timestamp to your client's instructions. For example, I removed the milliseconds and added brackets. The final step in recording the macro is to place your cursor at the end of the timestamp. This is important because it allows you to just hit enter and continue typing after inserting the timestamp without any additional maneuvering. Click on the "Stop Recording" button, and your macro is ready for use!

Now when I need to insert timestamps in a transcript I can simply key Ctrl+T (copies timestamp from ES) and then Ctrl+D (formats timestamp), and my formatted timestamp will look like this:

Product Review – Microsoft OneNote

When I purchased my new laptop, I also made the leap to Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, including Microsoft OneNote 2007, and I've been dying to tell y'all about it ever since I started using it. (I got a great deal on the entire software package, but you could also just upgrade to the Small Business versionand buy OneNote separately rather than buying the Ultimate edition.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm a list maker. I LOVE lists, and I make them constantly. I'm one of those people that adds things to lists just so I can cross it off. Pathetic, I know.

Anyway, my issue has always been that while I love the flexibility of notebooks and handwriting my lists – being able to write in the margins or stagger my notes across the page, for example – it was frustrating to me to realize that I hadn't put things in the exact order that I wanted them and have to either rewrite the list, squeeze in an additional item in teeny writing or just deal with it.

I've seen references to Microsoft OneNotea few times and really thought it was a business software that wouldn't be relevant to my needs. To be honest, I had no clue what it was. And then I installed my software and opened it up to see what it was all about.

I can't believe I've been missing out on this program for all of my life. It is exactly what I never knew I wanted. Let me show you...

With the press of a few keys, I can open the program and have everything I need at my fingerprints, all in the same place.

The content on each page is not the only thing that makes this program so exciting. You can customize that virtually any way you want. Starting with a template or a blank page, you can basically type anywhere you click on the page, insert tables, Microsoft tasks or any other variety of tools, giving you the flexibility of handwritten notes with the editing power of a computer program.

But what makes this program really exciting for me is the organization of many different categories of notes. You can have several different notebooks, which are listed down the left side for easy access. I've opted just to keep everything in one notebook, called "Planning Notebook" (because I'm creative like that).

Then, you'll see a few tabs across the top for quick reference – Weekly Schedule, Master To-Do List, Monthly Calendar. In the view below, I'm looking at my monthly calendar, (which admittedly has not been fully populated yet – life has been very busy for the last several weeks since I got it!). If you look on the right side, you'll see yet even more tabs, and I can access each month while looking at this view. Again, these tabs can be customized virtually without limit.

But that's not all!

Look next to the tabs at the top. I have tab groups created as well, and if I click on any of those – Blogs, Personal and Work – it opens yet even more tabs.


So, in the view below, I've clicked on my Personal tab group, and I now have access to my to-do list, budget and finance information and grocery shopping/couponing lists. And yet again, down the right side, I can include multiple documents for each tab.


Although I have not yet gotten it set up, my dream is to take the tabs that I have set up for each company that I currently contract with and create documents for their style guide, payment schedule, assignment tracking and other notes. I love having everything all in one place and organized exactly how I want it, with the ability to easily change and adjust as I go.

If you have this programand are not using it, I encourage you to open it today and starting putting together your dream notebook. If you don't have it, I encourage you to consider it. It may be just want you've been dreaming of or exactly what you need to get organized!

Microsoft Word Shortcuts: Advanced Formatting

Have you been practicing your basic Microsoft Word shortcuts? I'm embarrased to admit I've been pretty lax about it this week. Computer issues forced me to reformat my hard drive, resulting in two days' worth of lost work time, so I've been playing catch-up since Tuesday. I resolve to do better this week and not only work on the basics but incorporate these more advanced formatting shortcuts as needed.

Shortcut	Output
Ctrl + K	Insert link.
Ctrl + L	Aligns the line or selected text to the left of the screen.
Ctrl + E	Aligns the line or selected text to the center of the screen.
Ctrl + R	Aligns the line or selected text to the right of the screen.
Ctrl + M	Indent the paragraph.
Ctrl + Shift + F	Change the font.
Ctrl + Shift + >	Increase selected font +1pts up to 12pt and then increases font +2pts.
Ctrl + ]	Increase selected font +1pts.
Ctrl + Shift + <	Decrease selected font -1pts if 12pt or lower, if above 12 decreases font by +2pt.
Ctrl + [	Decrease selected font -1pts.
Ctrl + Shift + *	View or hide non printing characters.
Ctrl +	Moves one word to the left.
Ctrl +	Moves one word to the right.
Ctrl +	Moves to the beginning of the line or paragraph.
Ctrl +	Moves to the end of the paragraph.
Ctrl + Del	Deletes word to right of cursor.
Ctrl + Backspace	Deletes word to left of cursor.
Ctrl + End	Moves the cursor to the end of the document.
Ctrl + Home	Moves the cursor to the beginning of the document.
Ctrl + Spacebar	Reset highlighted text to the default font.
Ctrl + 1	Single-space lines.
Ctrl + 2	Double-space lines.
Ctrl + 5	1.5-line spacing.
Ctrl + Alt + 1	Changes text to heading 1.
Ctrl + Alt + 2	Changes text to heading 2.
Ctrl + Alt + 3	Changes text to heading 3.
Ctrl + F1	Open the Task Pane.
F1	Open Help.
Alt + Ctrl + F2	Open new document.
Ctrl + F2	Display the print preview.
Shift + F3	Change the text in Microsoft Word from upper to lower case or a capital letter at the beginning of every word.
Shift + Insert	Paste.
F4	Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+)
F5	Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word.
Ctrl + Shift + F6	Opens to another open Microsoft Word document.
F7	Spell and grammar check selected text and/or document.
Shift + F7	Runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.
F12	Save as.
Shift + F12	Save.
Ctrl + Shift + F12	Prints the document.
Alt + Shift + D	Insert the current date.
Alt + Shift + T	Insert the current time.

A Macro for Gonna, Wanna, Sorta, etc.

I'm excited to share another macro with you today. But first, for those of you who may have had trouble with the first macro, which automatically changes your sentence spacing from one space following each sentence to two, I'm trying something new. I've now hosted a Word document with the macro at Google Docs. I think the issue may have been that the macro lost its formatting when pasted into Blogger and Word couldn't recognize the code. Click here for that document.

Also, be sure to revisit the old post for instructions on installing the macros.

This new macro is another one of my favorites. Because my main contract uses verbatim speech, such as gonna, wanna, sorta, 'em and 'cause, I sometimes find that I inadvertently use these words when transcribing files that require proper English in place of this common slang. This macro automatically replaces all of those words with the correct speech with the push of a button. To grab the code for this one, click here.

Once you've installed the macro, you can then choose a keyboard or toolbar shortcut to make activating the macros a simple process.

Microsoft Word Shortcuts: The Basics

I don't know about you all, but utilizing the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word is probably one of my weakest areas. Sure, I know most of the basics, but I don't always use them in practice as much as I should. Not to mention that there are a whole slew of shortcuts that are less commonly known that I really need to learn.

My ultimate goal is to get to a point where I never have to remove my hands from the keyboard. I've got a long way to go to get there, but I'm determined. If you'd like to join me in this endeavor, this will be an ongoing series to achieve this skill.

We'll start with the basics this week. I'm assuming that you are already familiar with most of these, but there were a few that I wasn't aware of.

Shortcut	Output
Ctrl+A	Selects all text and graphics in the active window
Ctrl+B	Bold - Formats selected text; make text bold, or remove bold formatting
Ctrl+C	Copies the selection to the clipboard
Ctrl+F	Find - Searches for specified text in the active document
Ctrl+I	Italic - Formats selected text; make text italic or remove italic
Ctrl+N	Open a new word document quickly
Ctrl+O	Opens a previously saved document
Ctrl+P	Prints the active file, also gives the opportunity to change print options
Ctrl+S	Saves the active document with its current file name, location and format
Ctrl+U	Underline - Formats selected text; make text underlined or remove underline
Ctrl+V	Paste - Inserts the contents of the clipboard at the insertion point (cursor) or whatever is selected
Ctrl+W	Closes the active window, but does not Exit Word
Ctrl+X	Cut- Removes the selection from the active document and places it on the clipboard
Ctrl+Y	Redo - After an action has been undone, it can be reinstated in the document
Ctrl+Z	Undo the last action. This selection can be repeated several times
Alt+F4	Exit - Closes Microsoft Word

Getting the Most out of Microsoft Word 2007

Recently, Kelley left a comment on one of the posts with some additional tips for improving your productivity with Microsoft Word 2007. She's worked for Microsoft for over seven years now in roles ranging from premier support services to enterprise sales and is now an Office Technology Specialist.

Her original comment was:

With Word 2007, there are some additional enhancements that will help your productivity in transcription.

The spelling checker can now find and flag some contextual spelling errors. Have you ever typed a mistake similar to the following? I will see you their. In Office Word 2007, you can enable the "Use contextual spelling" option to get help with finding and fixing this type of mistake. More Info on Grammar and Spelling in Word 2007

When you use the spelling checker, it compares the words in your document with those in the tool's main dictionary. The main dictionary contains most common words, but it might not include proper names, technical terms, or acronyms. In addition, some words might be capitalized differently in the main dictionary than in your document. Adding such words or capitalization to a custom dictionary prevents the spelling checker from flagging them as mistakes. Custom Dictionaries in Office 2007

How to customize the color of the spelling and grammar checker underlines in Word 2007

She also sent me these two additional links that look like great resources. One is the Word team's blog, which includes dozens of great articles, and the other is for the "Getting Started Tab" for Word 2007, which, according to Kelley, "translates the old user interface to the new interface, has links to training, how-to, etc on Office Online. It's really a must for new users of Office 2007."

How many of you have upgraded to Microsoft 2007? Any tips to share? Issues you're having? If you haven't yet, are you planning to in the near future?

Adding Words to Word's Dictionary

This may seem like an obvious tip to many (most?) of you, but I'll admit that it's taken me a while to really do this regularly. However, I've started adding common company names and lingo to Word's dictionary, and it really does cut down the time it takes me to spellcheck and proof my files.

Be careful not to add words that you still want Word to flag (such as gonna, wanna, etc., if you sometimes need to switch to writing these out properly), but overall, this is another time saver that, when combined with other productivity tips, can help improve your speed and increase your earnings.

My Favorite Macro!

Due to popular demand, we decided to go ahead and post this macro rather than keeping you in suspense.

I have quite a few macros that I use on a regular basis, but this one is by far my favorite. Rather than typing two spaces after every sentence, I just type one and then let the macro add in the second one for me. You do have to watch for the spacing around acronyms, but the most common ones are already included in the macro. An average audio hour has 600-700 sentences, and this macro can save you many keystrokes every minute you work.

To install the macro, simply go to Tools -> Macro -> Macros.

In the dialogue box that pops up, enter a name for your macro in the top box and then hit Create.

You'll get a visual basic window like this. Leave the first line, "Sub ________," and the last line, "End Sub," but delete the text in between.

View and copy the entire code here and paste it into the macro window.

Simply hit save and close the window. Refer to yesterday's post to assign keyboard and/or toolbar shortcuts for the macro, and you're ready to go!

Setting Up Keyboard Shortcuts and Toolbar Buttons for Your Macros

What makes macros especially useful is being able to run them with the press of a few keys or the click of a button. When you record your own macro, assigning these is part of the process. However, when you paste the code in directly, like when sharing macros with other people, which we'll be doing soon as we begin posting some of our favorites, you skip that step. Fortunately, it's easy enough to manually make and change those assignments.

First, go to the Tools menu and click on Customize.



To change the keyboard shortcuts, click on Keyboard... at the bottom of the window.



You'll want to scroll down in the Categories window and click on Macros and then choose the macro you're trying to modify from the list on the right side. Then click in the "Press new shortcut key" box and hit the key combination you'd like to use. If that combination is already in use, the current assignment will show up underneath the box. At that point, you can decide whether to overwrite it or try a different combination, and once you've decided on the one to use, you can click Assign, and the key combination will show up under "Current keys."



To add a button to your toolbar for easy access, click on the Commands tab. Scroll down and click on Macros and you'll see the list of saved macros populate the right side of the window. You can then drag the one you want to use to your toolbar.



To edit the appearance of the button, make sure that the button itself is still highlighted in the toolbar and click Modify Selection. A menu will pop up that allows you to change the name, assign icons, group your buttons, etc.



With just a little bit of effort, macros can save you a lot of time in your daily work. Next week, I'll be posting my favorite macro, which saves me thousands of keystrokes a day.

Using Autocorrect to Your Advantage

While I'm sure there are some perfect typists out there, I'm not one of them. The truth is that while my accuracy continues to improve, I've also just learned to utilize some of the tools available to overcome my deficiency. Unfortunately, I never learned to type properly, and I still don't, using only three fingers and my thumb on my left hand and only my middle finger on my right hand (not a style I recommend, by the way, but old dogs, new tricks and all of that), and I think this contributes to transposing letters in words, such as typing jsut for just.

I actually have the most common errors I make, such as jsut, added to ShortKeys so that they're automatically corrected wherever I type them rather than just in Word. But, I've also found that adding other errors to AutoCorrect while spell checking my files makes a huge difference. I can't even guess how many of these common errors I've added, but if I see the same mistake twice, I simply choose the correct word from the list and click "AutoCorrect" in the spell check window. This has cut down on my spelling mistakes exponentially, saving me time when it's time to check my files after I've finished transcribing.

It is important that you're careful about these when you add them because there may be times when you type two different words as the same incorrect word, and you'll want to be sure that you're not changing it to the wrong one. Occasionally, these AutoCorrect words will collide with your ShortKeys, but that can be easily fixed by following these instructions.

Remember that it's the seemingly little things, like adding spelling errors to AutoCorrect, that add up to improve our productivity as a transcriptionists. I know that sometimes I focus on the extra time that it takes now rather than the time it will save me later, but it is definitely worth that initial investment!

Diacritical Marks in MS Word

A Diacritical mark is simply what we usually call an accent mark that is added to a letter to provide a different pronunciation. While not common in English, they are used occasionally, and I personally believe they are important to include in transcription where appropriate.

One way to make your life easier when typing words such as crème brûlée, façade and éclair is by learning the shortcut keys to typing them. It will make you smile the first time you get to use them without stopping to look them up in the symbols box.

Each of the diacritical marks below are formed by typing the key sequence, releasing and then typing the letter you want it applied to. For example, you would type: control + ', then release and type e to get é.

Diacritic	Key Sequence
grave accent à	Control + `(key above Tab key)
acute accent é	Control + '(apostrophe)
umlaut ö	Control + Shift + :
circumflex accent â	Control + Shift + ^
tilde ñ	Control + Shift + ~
cedilla ç	Control + ,

So, the next time you need to type your résumé you won't need to resume typing after searching for the accent mark you are in need of. While those seconds may not seem like much, when working under a deadline or on a rush file every second counts.

When Autocorrect and ShortKeys Collide

I've had some issues with some of my ShortKeys expansions that took me a while to figure out, so I thought I'd mention it here and hopefully save someone some time.

The first was when I tried to set up yo/ to expand to -year-old. It kept inserting a space before the first hyphen even though it was set to backspace first. I eventually gave up and just deleted the ShortKey and forgot all about it.


And then, several months later, I wanted to add contractions to my list so that I wouldn't have to type the apostrophe each time. As an example, I added didnt to expand to didn't.

Unfortunately, every time I did that, I got:


I mentioned it to Tara and Shaina, and they said that it was because the words were already in autocorrect, and both programs were trying to change it at the same time. I definitely did not want to go through and have to search for all of the autocorrect words that might interfere, and I almost deleted all of the contractions I had added, but fortunately, I realized there's a much easier way to do it before I did that.

First, type the word that is causing the collision. In this example, it's didnt.

Now, hit Ctrl to cancel the ShortKey expansion.

At this point, hover your mouse over the word, and you'll see the autocorrect icon just below the first letter of the word:


Click on the icon, and you'll see this menu:

Simply click "Stop Automatically Correcting 'didnt'" (or hit A), and voila! Now when you type didnt, you will only get the expansion you're looking for.

As it turns out, the problem was a bit more complicated with my first example. When I would type "yo" and then add the / to the end, autocorrect would change it to you/. Then when ShortKeys expanded it, it was using the backspace for the extra letter that appeared rather than the space. Hitting Ctrl before the expansion happened let me see what was going on, and I was also able to disable that one so that I can now add "-year-old" as needed.

Hopefully this will save someone time and frustration and allow you to use ShortKeys even more effectively!

Recording a Macro

Before we get to sharing some of our favorite macros, I wanted to start with a tutorial on recording a macro.

Although there is more flexbility when using Visual Basic Language to actually write out a macro (much like HTML when blogging), Microsoft Word will actually record your actions as you go and write the language for you, which is obviously much easier and a great way to get started with macros.

So, here we go. First, you'll want to open up the "Record New Macro" dialogue box:


You'll need to name your macro.

You also need to choose whether you want to add a button to the toolbar for this macro or create a keyboard shortcut. The good news is whichever you choose, you can modify those later if you want, and we'll get to that in another post.


If you choose keyboard shortcut (which is the best way to maximize your efficiency if it's a macro you'll be using while transcribing, so that you don't have to lift your fingers from the keys), you'll see this dialogue box.

Simply press the key or combination of keys you wish to use, and you'll see them appear in the second box from the top on the right-hand side. I hit Alt+Ctrl+/ for the purposes of this sample. Below that you'll see "Currently assigned to:". In this case, it shows that the combination I have chosen is unassigned, so I can hit "Assign," and it will move over to the white box on the left side. I can add more combinations if I want, or I can hit close and move onto the next step.

If the key combination is already in use, it will tell you what it's being used for so that you can decided whether to override it or not.

Finally, after you close the window, you'll see the icon appear on your screen that indicates the macro is recording. Now simply go through the steps that you wish to record as part of the macro, whether they be changing formatting, find and replace or any number of things. You can pause and restart the recording as needed, and when you're done, simply hit the stop button, and your macro is ready to go.

Printing Your AutoCorrect List

If you use AutoCorrect frequently, you've probably wanted to print your list out at one time or another, but unfortunately, this is not a feature included in Microsoft Word. Well, have we got a treat for you today! Here's a macro that you can install to print your list quickly and easily.

Sub PrintAutoCorrect()
Dim a As AutoCorrectEntry
Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.ClearAll
Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add Position:=72, _
Alignment:=wdAlignTabLeft, Leader:=wdTabLeaderSpaces
For Each a In Application.AutoCorrect.Entries
Selection.TypeText a.Name & vbTab & a.Value & " " & vbCr
Next
End Sub

Note: See here for an introduction to macros. If you are unfamiliar with installing macros, you can also find a very detailed tutorial here.

Before running the macro, make sure you open a new document. It will create the list in the open document, and then you can print it and save or discard it. This tip reportedly works in Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007.

What Is A Macro?

You may or may not have heard of using macros in Word before, but next to text expanders, macros can be one of the most overlooked productivity tools available to us as transcriptionists, and the best part is there is no additional software to download or cost to incur.

A macro is “an action or a set of actions that you can use to automate tasks.” With the click of a button or a single keystroke, you can have Word perform some of your routine tasks quickly and easily.

Macros are written in Visual Basics for Applications programming language, but thanks to Word’s macro recorder, you can create new macros simply by performing the tasks with the recorder running.

Some examples of useful macros are:

□ Sentence spacing
□ Formatting
□ Automating find and replace
□ Changing the color or style of text

We will be posting examples and detailed instructions for each of these types of macros in the coming weeks.