Comments on: Weird Word Tricks

By: Kyra

Kyra — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:23:54 +0000

Your blog is EXCELLENT, thank you…

By: Annie Brelsford

Annie Brelsford — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:07:15 +0000

Your response to the 3 asterisks made me look really good to by boss, who had this happen to him and was looking for a fix.

Thanks so much.

By: ab

ab — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:15:18 +0000

Thanks for contributing Shay. Do you have any suggestions for the blog? What would you like me (or Michael :) ) to tackle?

By: Shay Fabbro

Shay Fabbro — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:33:11 +0000

LOL Well, it WAS your post that got me here to this forum! :)))

I love all the things Word can do…but not when it does something I did not intend AND when I can’t figure out how to get rid of it :D

By: ab

ab — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:29:05 +0000

I’d like to think I had something to do with it too :). Just kidding. Thanks Michael!

Michael is a guest write sometimes. Maybe we can get him to write another post? Please?

By: Shay Fabbro

Shay Fabbro — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:21:22 +0000

Michael…you are my HERO!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

I am writing a novel and was using the 3 asterisks as breaks within a chapter and one of them gave me the dang dotted line! I could not get rid of it! One forum I found said that you had to take the entire document back to “normal” and that would get rid of the dotted line and it would just be a simple matter of reformatting! WRONG!! All of the automatic paragraph indents justified to the right. I thought I was going to have to go through all 400+ pages and re-tab my paragraphs. Your trick saved me a TON of work!!! (I am glad I am paranoid and saved my original manuscript in a different file so that I could go back to it and do your trick!)

Thanks so MUCH!!! :))))))

By: ab

ab — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:07:11 +0000

Hi Paul,
Searching in word might be worth another post, but basically * is a wildcard. So if you have the little check box ticked that says “search with wildcards” (or something like that) you will be using * to search for any character. “p*” would return Paul. If you unchecked this box, “p*” will only match p*. Wildcards can be very useful but is a touch annoying when the checkbox is still ticked. Thanks for reading!

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:22:55 +0000

I use the fractions a lot, the H20 one is a brilliant.

I liked this blog post a lot because I hit the link looking for a way to search for a word in google that has an asterisk in it NOT as a wildcard. Been having troubles. Any ideas? hehe

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:06:59 +0000

Just thought I’d jump in on the three asterisks border thing since it drove me nuts. Even more curious than adding a border without *asking* just because a user typed three asterisks (not an uncommon action) is the fact that getting rid of it if it was unwanted (likely) can often be a lot harder and less automatic then adding it since it is not obvious and not explained. And you think the Government invented Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell.

So just in case someone tries to test this out and/or add a border to their doc, here is a simple way to get rid of it without tearing your hair out. Note that it is not as simple as backspacing/deleting or typing three ~~~ since this is a Microsoft Product.

Home Ribbon
Click the Border Icon in the Paragraph Group (to the right of the Paint Bucket).
Click NO Border

Since this is rant thinly disguised as a helpful hint, let me just say that IMNSHO Word should follow this protocol:

The first time you type three asterisks it should put up a dialog box:
* Turn on Auto Borders (added when you type three asteriks)?
* No, I just want to type asterisks at will for entirely other purposes, but thanks for asking me, the user.

Option 1 Returns a ‘Hint’: [You can remove/turn this feature off in Home Ribbon>Paragraph Group>Borer (Icon) at any time

Option 2 Returns a ‘Hint’ [You can turn this feature on in Home Ribbon>Paragraph Group>Borer (Icon) at any time OR type ctrl-*** on an as needed basis.