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How Do I? Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Microsoft Word
 

Microsoft Word Questions

How do I save Word 2007 documents so that they can be opened by older versions of Word? Answer

How do I get rid of the drawing canvas? Answer

There is a funny line on my Word document. How do I get rid of it? Answer

How do I do a mail merge? Answer

How do I format the footnote line separator in Word? I need to be able to modify the size of the line between the body text and the footer, and need to be able to modify the space between the line and the body text baseline above. Answer


How do I save Word 2007 documents so that they can be opened by older versions of Word?

St. Edward's University does not support Office 2007 at this time and recommends that you not save your Office 2007 documents in Microsoft's new file format.  Instead, you
should save your Office 2007in the older format.  To do so:

  1. Click the Office Button in Word 2007
  2. Choose Save As
  3. Choose Word 97-2003 format.  This saves your Word 2007 document not as a .docx file but rather .doc file that can be opened and read in older versions of  Office.

How do I get rid of the drawing canvas?

Go to the Tools Menu and select Options. Click on the General Tab and deselect the checkbox for "Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes."

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There is a funny line on my Word document. How do I get rid of it?
The line could be from two different sources. Sometimes the line is due to border formatting, and sometimes it is due to document review. Here is how to check for both:

Document Review

Locate the Reviewing toolbar. Click the Show menu and select Options on a PC or on a Mac select the Word menu, then Preferences. In the dialog box, in the Changed Lines section, choose None from the Mark: Outside border menu.

Border Format

  1. Go to View on the Menu Bar and select Print Layout
  2. Place your mouse in the left margin to the left of the line and click to select the line (it won't look like the line is selected, but it is)
  3. Go to Format on the menu bar, and select Borders and Shading
  4. On the Borders tab, find the Preview section on the right. Deselect the baseline button.
  5. Click ok.
  6. Repeat this process for any other lines that need to be removed.

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How do I do a mail merge?

Go to the Tools Menu and select Letters and Mailings and then Mail Merge Wizard. Follow the wizard prompts in the Task Pane. On the Mac go to Tools, then select the Letter Wizard.

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How do I format the footnote line separator in Word? I need to be able to modify the size of the line between the body text and the footer, and need to be able to modify the space between the line and the body text baseline above.

Change or remove a footnote or endnote separator

Microsoft Word separates document text from footnotes and endnotes with a short horizontal line called a note separator. If a note overflows onto the next page, Word prints a longer line called a note continuation separator. You can customize separators by adding borders, text, or graphics.

1.Switch to normal view.
2.On the View menu, click Footnotes.
3.If your document contains both footnotes and endnotes, a message appears. Click View footnote area or View endnote area, and then click OK.
4.In the note pane, click the type of separator you want to change or remove in the Notes box:

  • -To change the separator that appears between the document text and notes, click Footnote separator or Endnote separator.
  • -To change the separator for notes that continue from the previous page, click Footnote continuation separator or Endnote continuation separator.

5.Select the separator and make changes:

  • -To remove the separator, press DELETE.
  • -To edit the separator, insert a Clip Art divider line or type text.
  • -To restore the default separator, click Reset.

Notes

Note text does not appear with the separator. To view the continuation separator as it appears in the printed document, click Print Layout View on the horizontal scroll bar. In the browser, custom note separators appear as short horizontal lines.

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Updated: 02/19/2007
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