Fix: Word print view showing no margins and pages appear collated

I’m often asked by friends and family to assist them on frustrating technical issues they can’t resolve by themselves. Thanks to remote access / support software like TeamViewer, this is a piece of cake nowadays.

The solution to such problems isn’t always straightforward though. Just came across a Microsoft Word installation where suddenly the Print view had started using a strange layout with grid lines in the background, no margins and with the consecutive pages showing collated as you scrolled in the document. This defeats the whole WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) concept that most people like about modern word processors.

Removing the grid lines is straightforward from the View menu (Appearance section), but to fix the other issues, the only way I found was, at the Zoom section of the View menu, to change to Multiple Pages, then change to Single Page, then Set Zoom to 100% and finally Set zoom to Page Width. After all is fixed you can then switch those settings to how you prefer them (say zoom 100% instead of page width).

If that doesn’t work, you could try resetting Microsoft Word user settings to their defaults, both an automated and a manual way is offered at:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/822005/how-to-reset-user-options-and-registry-settings-in-word

Fix: Keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-A not working in Word

For some time now, I was getting very annoyed while copy-pasting content from other software into Microsoft Word 2010. I would press CTRL+C at some other software and then would press ALT+TAB to go into an open Word document and press CTRL+V to paste, but it would not. So I had to move my fingers far away to SHIFT+INSERT to paste.

Today had enough so after some Google search on it, found the best fix by Moshe Eschel at:

http://superuser.com/questions/215595/keyboard-shortcuts-such-as-ctrl-c-ctrl-v-and-ctrl-z-not-working-in-word-2010-on

To "restore" word to the way you remember, you need to go to, File->Options->Customize Ribbon On the bottom there is a label "Keyboard Shortcuts" and a button "Customize…" – click it

On the Categories box, scroll until you find "All Commands" and select it. Now, from the right box select the following Command: EditCopy Look at the "Current Keys" Box you will see "Ctrl+Insert" which is the NEW mapping now put your cursor in the "Press new shortcut key" and Press Ctrl+C, a button on the bottom named Assign will light up, and you click on it.

Do the same for all the shortcuts you like, such as EditPaste, EditUndo, EditRedo, EditCut, SelectAll etc.

Wonder why Microsoft didn’t add both the old and new shortcuts there, since it seems the dialog does support it. What a huge oversight, having Microsoft Word try to impose a shortcut from Macs (as it seems) to longtime Windows users (especially when other software the user works with use other set of shortcuts for copy-paste).

Moreover, the option to reassign the shortcut keys was very deeply hidden, hard for the average user to find it by themselves (couldn’t find it either and I don’t consider myself an average user).

Even more pathetic was the default shortcut key for Select All (usually Ctrl+A). It was Ctrl+5 and Ctrl+Clear (Numeric keyboard 5). What the heck Microsoft?

Fix: embed Office & Acrobat Active Documents in IE WebBrowser control

Since the LvS desktop application (from Learning Via Subtitling project) uses Internet Explorer to embed Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat PDF documents (among others), I added some useful info to the LvS download page on how to work around issues one may face in such a scenario:

If you don’t have Microsoft Office (or have very old Office versions like Office 95 or Office 97) and want to embed Word documents you should better also install:

• free Microsoft Word Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=4
• free Microsoft Excel Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=10
• free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13 (this older version also supports Windows 2000: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6 but might not support all PowerPoint 2010 features)

To show .docx (Word 2007+) files if you use Office XP or Office 2003 or the free Word viewer you need to also install "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats" from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3

Office 2007 doesn’t show documents embedded in Internet Explorer by default (which LvS uses internally to host Active Documents), use FixIt button at following page to fix this: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=927009 

In LvS if you have Office 2007 without this fix you will see message "Type the correct address" when your unpacked activity folder contains Office files

To embed Adobe Acrobat files you need Adobe Acrobat or the free Adobe Acrobat Reader from: http://adobe.com/reader

If Adobe PDF files don’t show embedded and open up in separate window: Use Start/All Programs menu from the Windows Taskbar and run Adobe Reader application. Then go to its menu "Edit/Preferences…" and at the dialog that opens up, go to "Internet" and check "Display PDF in browser", then press OK (can then close Adobe Reader).

When such files open embedded you may be asked to open or save the file for each one – select open and DO check to not be asked again (since it gets very annoying).

Since this "not ask again" will be remembered for IE too, if you want to clear it later on see the following article: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reset-opensave-choice-for-internet-explorer-downloads-in-vista/

How to sort text lists in Word 2010

A very useful action in Microsoft Word is that of text sorting. You select some rows of text and then use the icon “AZ” on the “Home" tab of Word’s ribbon UI. At the dialog that appears you usually would want to “Sort by: Paragraphs”, select “Type: Text” and choose whether you want to sort “Ascending” or “Descending”.

Note that this action can also sort tabular data (see “Sort by: Field” and the option on whether the list has a header row [column captions] or not).

How to change text case in Word 2010

The “Change Case” action (portrayed by an “Aa” icon) is a useful one that is usually not noticed by Microsoft Word 2010 users (although often sought for and not spotted by many – probably because somebody misnamed the respective ribbon tab as “Home” instead of “Edit”).

It provides several options, the most useful being “UPPERCASE” and “Sentence case.”. The options are formatted as the resulting text will be converted which is I’d say a bit older practice (font selection dropdowns used to be like that in various software), since in other places like HTML styles Word 2010 shows live how the selected text (or the whole text if there’s no selection) will be converted as you move the mouse over different styles.