Word Hacks review

Wendy M Grossman ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 17 Feb 2005

It is a truth universally acknowledged that 90 percent of users take advantage of only about ten percent of the features available in any given piece of software. Microsoft's Word is a perfect example. Users go for years without realising that the bullet points that keep appearing or the toolbars and templates that frustrate them can be easily changed. In fact, Word can be changed so thoroughly that it may be unrecognisable from one user to another.

This book includes some of that, but it also includes much more sophisticated hacks. Use Word as your backup software; permanently disable overtype; create a word exclusion list for the dictionary; or perform highly complex full text searches. It's a book for the ten percent of users who won't settle for the basics.

Many of these hacks will work with versions of Word as old as 97, but the book primarily covers only 2000, 2002 and 2003. There's one chapter of 2003-only XML hacks, but the author also notes that some hacks in the book are aimed at Word 2000 users who would like to be able to use some of the best features of 2003 without having to pay for an upgrade. The author, Andrew Savikas, ought to know his stuff: he works in O'Reilly's Tools group, where he helps turn manuscripts into books. As such, he maintains custom Word templates and macros, supplying them to the many O'Reilly authors who use Word.

This isn't a book you read through: rather, it's a volume you search for the bits that can help you. As such, it might have been better as a Web site that could be Google-searched. The hacks are so varied that there's no logical way to organise them, and the author doesn't try particularly hard.

Many of the hacks in this book involve writing macros, something most users find too intimidating to attempt. And let's face it, most people do not want to learn to program in VBA; they just want to make the word processor do something useful. The author and his fellow contributors have helped here, by making some of the more complex hacks available for download from the Web.

Many, however, are simple affairs of touring through menus you didn't know existed and clicking a check box or two. Put Calculate, missing since Word 6, back on the menu so you can add figures directly in a Word document. Unlink all the hyperlinks that appear in your documents uninvited. Exclude text from find and replace by setting the blocks you want to exclude as hidden text. Change style names to conform to those of other programs such as DTP that are the ultimate destination of the files you're working on. Simple when you think of it -- but most people don't pay enough attention to their word processor to think of it.

Word Hacks is one of a series of 'Hacks' books that O'Reilly has published over the last year or so; other product books include Access, Excel and BSD, but the series also includes Google, eBay and Amazon -- these books are aimed as much at improving doing business with these companies as with simple usability issues. Sample hacks from all these books are available on O'Reilly's Web site.

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