Reduce size or Word Documents

Working with large files is a problem especially if you have to transfer them frequently over the internet using a slow internet connection. In MS Word XP, document files sometimes become too large in size. There is a simple and quick way to prevent this from happening. But first, let us try to understand why does this happen. Whenever you save a file in MS Word XP by pressing Ctrl+S, the program does not overwrite the entire file from scratch but incrementally saves the changes made and appends it to the original file i.e. it is simply adding more and more data to the file and making it larger and larger every time you save it. To turn off this incremental saving, follow these steps:

Click on Tools button

Select General Options

From the box that pops uncheck the ‘allow fast saves’ option

From now on, Word will rewrite the whole file from scratch each time you save it. This will take some time though to save, but file size will be reduced considerably.

Insert image as watermark in MS Word documents

You can use any image as a watermark in your documents, which will appear on every page’s header or footer. 
To do this, click on View > Header and Footer.

Header and Footer toolbar appears.

Now click on Insert > Picture > From File and select the image file you want as watermark for the browse menu

Click the close button on the header and footer toolbar to confirm.

Increase the number of files in recently opened files list

When you open a file in MS Word, it keeps a track of it and displays it in the list of recently opened files in the file menu. But, by default Word displays only the last 4 opened files. 

To increase the number files shown in the list of of recently opened documents, Go to Tools > Options.

From the resulting menu, select the General tab, notice the option ‘Recently used file list’ change the number next to it from 5 to 9.

Next time when you open word it will show your specified number of files in the recently accessed documents list.

How to insert dummy text in MS Word

To insert dummy text quickly in MS Word 2003, simply type =rand(m,n) and press enter, where ‘m’ is the number of paragraphs and ‘n’ is the number of sentences per paragraph. This trick is useful if you want to print a test page.

e.g. if you want to print a dummy text containing 5 number of paragraphs and 6 number of sentences per paragraph type =rand(5,6)

Disable office online in MS Word 2003

The office online side bar can be very annoying at times when you open Microsoft Word 2003. To disable it,

Press F1 to open Word Help

Click on Online Content Settings…

Uncheck the checkbox next to show contents and links from Microsoft Office Online.

Click OK.