RES IPSA BLOG

1. Get back to where you were: From law school outlines to legal briefs, law students and lawyers alike often work on very lengthy documents. For the times when you don’t remember where exactly you left off, the Shift+F5 combination will save you quite a bit of time. Hit both keys at the same time (as with all the combinations mentioned in this article) and Word will automatically place your cursor where you last left off.

2. Switch between text case: Highlight a portion of text and use the Shift+F3 combination to switch between text case. Word will toggle through sentence case, upper case, and lower case.

3. Switch to small caps: Use Control+Shift+K to switch highlighted text to small caps. This is especially useful for citations on law journals.

4. Delete entire words: The Ctrl+Delete combination will delete entire words, which will save you some time when you are making substantial changes to documents.

5. Quickly add annotations (also called “comments”): This shortcut works even if you don’t already have the Microsoft Word reviewing Pane open: hit Ctrl+Alt+M to insert an annotation (comment) into a document.

6. Switch between open Word documents on a Mac: If you are using Microsoft Word on an Mac, you may have noticed that the standard key combination to switch between open windows, Command-Tab, does not switch between open Word documents, but instead switches to the next open application. There is a shortcut to switch between open Word documents on a Mac:  Command +`. The ` button is the same as the tilda (~) button on the keyboard. It is usually right above the tab key, to the left of the 1 key.

7. Add a footnote in Word documents: If you are using Word on a Windows PC, the Alt+Ctrl+F combination will insert a footnote for you with out having to go through the insert-menu at the top of the page. If you are using Microsoft Word on a Mac, the combination is Option+Command+F.

8. Use the built-in thesaurus: The Shift+F7 combination will look up a highlighted word in the thesaurus sidebar in Microsoft Word.

9. Insert the date: The Alt+Shift+D combination will enter date quickly into a document.

10. Move entire paragraphs: The Shift+Alt+Up or Down Arrow combination allows you to move entire paragraphs up or down in a document.

Bonus Tip: Set your auto-recover to one minute: By default, Microsoft Word automatically saves documents every ten minutes. Since recreating ten minutes worth of work often takes more than ten more minutes, play it safe and change the auto-recover time to one minute. That way, if Word does crash, most of your work is easily recoverable. Here is how to change your auto-recovery time in Word 2007:

1. Click on the Office Button (the Office icon in the circle on the top-left of the window
2. Click on Word Options (it is on the bottom border of the menu).
3. Click on the Save tab.
4. Make sure the AutoRecover box is checked and change the interval to one minute

This is also a good time to change the AutoRecover location to something you can easily locate if you ever need to. I have my location set to a folder within the Documents folder on my computer.

If you are on a Mac, the steps to change the AutoRecover save interval are as follows:

1. Go to the Word Menu
2. Select Preferences
3. Click on the Save icon
4. Set the “Save AutoRecover interval to one minute.

Written by Benson Varghese. ♦ Contact Benson.♦ Have Res Ipsa Blog delivered to you.