Tech Tips: Two Chores Made Easy

Today I have tips for disposing of two tasks in mere seconds. While less savvy writers and editors are laboring over for the same chores for hours, we can go dancing!

[NB: Back up work before making any global change to a document.]

Removing All Field Codes (Including Hyperlinks) from a Document

Do you ever run across strange, shadowy, curly-bracketed expressions lurking in your documents? Or chunks of text that turn gray when you click anywhere within them? Or lots of hyperlinked URLs that are merely excess baggage if a document is headed for a print publication? These bits of tagged text can be extremely useful—essential—for compiling data, updating documents, and other chores I almost never need to do. You might actually need your field codes, so consider carefully before you wipe them out. Once you’re certain they’re disposable, there’s a way to trash them all at once, in two seconds. (Don’t worry about disturbing automatically numbered or bulleted lists or linked footnotes or endnotes. Although they may fall within the scary gray description, they’re a bit more difficult to dislodge. See below.)

1. Highlight the chunk you want to remove fields from. (Ctrl-A highlights the entire document.)

2. Hit Shift-Ctrl-F9.

Ta-daa! All gone.

Learn more about inserting and deleting field codes.

Converting Automatic Numbering to Typed Numbers

Like field codes, automatic numbering can save lifetimes of word processing. This feature allows you to add or delete an item near the top of a numbered list and watch all the numbers below it neatly increase or decrease by one. However, when the auto-feature isn’t needed or welcome, simply removing the numbered formatting in Microsoft Word leaves the text without any numbers at all.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to save yourself keying in all the missing numbers. It involves putting a toe into the waters of Visual Basic, but don’t be frightened.* I promise: you can do it. I did it, and I’m here to tell the tale. Back up your document and go for it:

1. Highlight the chunk of text that contains the automatic numbering you want to convert to typed numbers. (Don’t worry about automatically numbered footnotes and endnotes; they’ll survive.)

2. Click Alt-F11. A Microsoft Visual Basic screen will open.

3. Under the View tab, choose Immediate Window. A little window will open across the bottom of the Visual Basic screen.

4. Type the following or paste it in:

Selection.Range.ListFormat.ConvertNumbersToText

5. Hit Enter.

6. Close the Visual Basic screen.

That’s it—your numbering should now be typed instead of automatic.

______

*I confess that I never work in Visual Basic and have no idea what it is. My level of understanding is like that of a rat running a maze to get a hit of cocaine: I do the steps; I get what I want. I’m telling you this so you don’t come back to me if it goes wrong. You did back up your work, right?

~ ~ ~

Moonlight Blogger free on Kindle!

Interested in more tech tips, copyeditor musings, and occasional silliness? Starting today, for three days only (January 9–11, 2013), Moonlight Blogger for the Kindle is free. If you enjoy it, feel free to post a review at Amazon or Goodreads. (If you don’t enjoy it—well, what did you expect for free?)

 

 

Comments

[Greencaret]

I love your blog, Carol, and I'm a big fan of _The_Subversive_Copy_Editor_.

Your tech tips also sound great -- but they seldom seem to work for me, since I work in an all-Mac world at a marketing agency.

Do you happen to know a good source for tips like yours in Word for Mac OS? And you know, a disclaimer would be nice as well. ;-)

Thanks for working so hard to help your fellow editors!

[Janesuperstar]

Hi Carol,

Yes, how do you do this on a Mac? I have a 350-page MS due on Friday with all sorts of numbered and bulleted lists.

Consider, perhaps, issuing a call for a Mac expert among your readers to help out with this type of thing.

Another big fan of the Subversive Copy Editor,

Jane

[Lawrence Osborn]

A word of warning about the first tip (relevant to anyone who uses Word to edit technical documents or scientific texts): If you do this with a document that contains Mathtype equations, you will no longer be able to edit them!

[Carol Saller]

I believe both procedures are the same on a Mac, but I'm not able to try them myself to confirm. If anyone knows otherwise (or can test them for us), it would be very helpful. It should be easy to set up a simple test document and go through the steps.

[Jake Widman]

I had to do the numbered list thing a lot recently for the references in journal articles. (I'm on a Mac.) The tip I got, which works, is to select the list, Cut it, and then paste it in again using Paste Special and choosing Unformatted Text. You get a tab after each number, and you lose any italics or other formatting, but often the tradeoff is worth it.

BTW, Mac Office 2008 doesn't support Visual Basic, but Office 2011 supposedly added it back in. The Mac I'm on now has 2008, but when I get back to my main one, I'll text the VB tip (for which thank you).

[Carol Saller]

Jake, that's a great trick--thanks! (Beware, though, that you'll lose all formatting, so if your list has italics or whatever, they'll be gone.)

[Janesuperstar]

I have Mac Office 2011 and the Visual Basic trick didn't work for me, but maybe it's a different key command? The key command you listed above (Alt-F11) resulted in adjusting the audio settings.

Carol, you are doing god's work. (Note the lowercase.)

[Carol Saller]

Mac users might have to install Visual Basic, depending on the version of Word they're using. (Evidently VBA has come and gone in Mac versions of MS Word.) I found this advice online: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macstart/is-there-an-update-or-download-available-for-the/eb8de04d-0b4e-4238-9f10-59a64183ee30

[Lori Robertson]

Just yesterday I manually replaced numbering on 51 reference entries - sure wish I'd known about this then! Today I tried this out using Word for Mac 2011, and it worked beautifully. To open the visual basic screen in Mac, go to Tools >Macro > Visual basic editor. Thanks for the tip!

[Carol Saller]

Thanks, Lori--all the Mac users will be grateful!