Create a hyperlink

To create a hyperlink in a Word document, type the text that you want to anchor the hyperlink to and then choose Insert > Hyperlink. In Word 2007 and 2010 this is in the Links group on the Insert tab.

The text to display should appear in the box, click the Screen Tip button and type a screen tip.

To link to an Excel file, select Existing File or Web page and browse to find the file to link to. Once you’ve selected the file to link to, click Target frame and indicate whether you want to open the document in a new window or not. Click Ok and then Ok again. It is also possible to link to an existing file such as a different Word document, or a web page, a place in this document, a new document, or an email address.

Hyperlink options

To test a link, Ctrl + Click on it. This behavior can be changed to a single click by changing your Word Options. Click the Office Button or choose File and then Options. In the Advanced area look for the Editing options and you can disable the option “Use Ctrl + Click to Follow Hyperlink” and only a single click will be required. This applies to version of Word only and won’t change any settings on the document recipient’s computer.

Also in the Options > Proofing area you will find the AutoCorrect options which control how text is converted automatically to hyperlinks. If you enable Internet and Network Paths with Hyperlinks then things that look like URLs or email addresses will be automatically formatted as hyperlinks. If this is disabled, they won’t – but you can always do this manually if desired.

Images as hyperlinks

In Word you can not only use text as a hyperlink anchor but you can also use an image or a graphic. To do this, inset the image, then with it selected, choose Insert Hyperlink. You won’t have any text displayed in the dialog in this case because you are linking to an object so the Text to Display area will read <<selection in document>> instead. You could use this to link an image of a worksheet to the actual worksheet or a small image of a website to the actual site.

Hyperlinks are saved with a document and are also included as live links in PDF files when you save a document as a PDF file from Word.

Create a hyperlink within a document

To link to a place in the current document first create a bookmark where you want the link to take you to by using Insert > Bookmark, type a name for the bookmark and click Add. Now go to where the link should be type and select the anchor text, right click and choose Hyperlink.

Step 2

Choose Place in This Document in the Link to: area. In the list of places locate the Bookmarks collection and select the bookmark to link to. This creates a link within the document so, when you Ctrl + click on the hyperlink, you’ll be taken to that bookmarked position.

Step 3

To change how hyperlinks look, from the Styles group on the Home tab, select the Style Task Pane flyout. Locate the Hyperlink entry and, from the down-pointing arrow to its right, click Modify. Change the style options and click Ok. You can also change the look of Followed Hyperlinks.

Since the early days of Microsoft Office, there has always been a tool for finding and using clip art in your documents, worksheets and presentations. While the clip art that comes with the Microsoft Office suite may not be to your taste, there are other ways that you can use the clip organizer to speed up your work. In this column, I’ll show you some techniques for working with your clip organizer in Office 2007 and 2010.

Finding the Clip Organizer

In Office 2010, the direct link from inside Office applications to the Clip Organizer has been removed. In previous versions when you choose Insert > Clip Art you find an Organize Clips option at the foot of the task pane. This no longer appears in any Office 2010 application.

Instead, to access the Clip Organizer you’ll choose Start > Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office 2010 Tools and then click the Microsoft Clip Organizer option. This opens the Microsoft Clip Organizer. Here you will find clips that you have downloaded as well as links to Office and web clip art collections.

Find and download free Microsoft clip art

You can add additional images to your clip art collection from the web. To do this visit http://office.microsoft.com/images and type a description of the image to search for in the search bar and click to find matching images.

If you click Download, the image will download as an image file and will not be automatically added to your clip art collection. You must then add the image to your clip art organizer. To do this, from in the Clip Organizer, choose File > Add Clips to Organizer > On My Own and then brows to where the image is stored – typically your Downloads folder. Select the image and double click it. It will appear in the Organizer.

Click it and click the down pointing arrow and choose Preview/Properties. Here you can edit its keywords and move images to other collections if desired.

Add a signature or logo as Clip Art

One handy way to use your clipart collection is to add images such as a scanned version of your signature or your company logo or any other image which you use often in your work. When you do this, you can easily add the image to a document using the Insert > Clip Art option and you don’t have to search for it on disk.

To add the scanned image to the Clip Organizer, choose File > Add Clips to Organizer > On My Own. Browse to find the clip to add to the organizer. Select it and click Add To to select a collection to add the clipart to or create a new one.

Click Add to add the image to the selected collection. Click on the collection and click the dropdown list opposite the clip and choose Edit Keywords. Add keywords to help identify the image and remove any which are not relevant.

Add a clip art image to a Word document

Once the image is in your clipart collection, in any Office application choose Insert > Clip Art, type a keyword to search for and click Go. When the image is returned as a match click it to insert it into your document.

Here, I’ll show you how to get started customizing the Ribbon and show you what you can do in customizing it. I’ll use Word for the examples but you can do this in Excel, PowerPoint, or the other Office 2010 applications.

Get started

The customization options are accessible from the new Backstage view so choose File > Options > Customize Ribbon. Here are the tools for customizing the Ribbon. They include the option to rename any of the Microsoft built in Ribbon Tabs or Group and to add your own Tabs to the Ribbon.

You can also add new groups to any Tabs – yours or those which were built-in and rearrange items in existing Tabs if you don’t like how they’re arranged.

Add a new Tab

To add a new Tab to the ribbon, click the New Tab button then right click the New Tab, choose Rename and type a name for it. Right click the New Group that has been created automatically for you, click Rename and type a name for this – you can only put items on a tab if they are located in a group. Select an icon to use for the group and click Ok.

To add commands to your new group, select a command in the panel on the right and, with your new group selected, click Add. Continue to add commands to your new group as desired. You can also add additional groups by selecting your new Tab, click New Group, rename it and then add commands to it too.

Share your customizations

In addition you can import and export the customizations that you’ve made to the Ribbon. This lets you share your customizations with others – this will be useful at work if you have tools, macros or templates that you use all the time. You could add these to the Ribbon to have easier access to them and use the exported customization file to easily make everyone’s copy of Word, for example, look the same.

To export your customization to share with others or as a backup, click Import/Export > Export All Customizations and export the customizations as an .exportedUI format file. This can be imported into another copy of this application on another computer.

Accessing Commands not in the Ribbon

Another application for creating your own Tabs and groups is to get access to commands that are not currently in the Ribbon.

Click the dropdown list in the left hand panel in the Customize Ribbon dialog and select the ‘Commands not in the Ribbon’ option. You will see there is also a Macros option here – both options give you access to tools not otherwise on the Ribbon.

Renaming tabs and Groups

To rename an existing Ribbon Tab, click on the Tab name in the right hand panel, select Rename and type a new name for it. You can also rename groups by clicking the group name and select Rename.

Reordering the Ribbon

To reorganize the Ribbon you can move Tabs and groups around. To do this, click the tab to move and click the Move Up or Move Down button to the right of the rightmost panel to change its position.

When you’re done customizing the Ribbon, click Ok to view your changes.

Reset the Ribbon

To reset the Ribbon – effectively undoing your changes – so it looks how it did when you installed the program, from the Customize Ribbon area of the Backstage view, select the Reset dropdown list.

Now select to reset just the selected Tab or to reset all customizations. You can also right click a Tab and choose Delete to remove it.

Creating a form in a Word document is one half of a data collection process. Once the form is completed, you will need to extract the data so you can do something with it. Here I will show you how to use the legacy form controls to create a form in Word and how to get the data into an Excel file.

Get the Developer tab

To get started, you’ll need to create a form in a new Word file. I’m using Word 2010 but the process is the same in any version of Word. In earlier versions the forms tools can be found by choosing View > Toolbars > Forms. In Word 2007/2010 the form tools are on the Developer tab – in Word 2007 choose Office Button > Word Options > Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.

Create a form

My form includes fields for the name, email address, check boxes for the operating system, a combo box for the application they’re having problems with, and a small box for comments. This is the kind of form that could be used for a computer support desk for example, but your form can gather any kind of data.

The form is created using Content Controls from the Developer tab in Word 2007/2010. You need to use the Legacy Forms controls as the newer ones don’t work for this process. Each textbox is created using a Text Form Field and the combo box is created using a Drop-Down Form Field. The checkboxes are created using a Check Box Form Field.

Add all the objects you need to the document and right click each control in turn to access the Properties for that control. For example, for the Drop-Down Form Field Options box you’ll need to add items for the list.

Protect the form

Once you’ve done this, protect the form by choosing Restrict Editing (Protect Document), enable the ‘Allow only this type of editing in the document’ checkbox and choose Filling in Forms from the list. Click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection.

Save the form template

Save the file as a template by choosing File > Save As. From the Save As Type dropdown list, select Word Template (*.dotx) and then give the template a name. From the Favorite Links at the top left of the dialog, select Templates, to locate your Word templates folder. Once you’ve saved the file you can close it.

Use the new form

To complete the form choose File > New > My Templates and then select and open the template.

Complete the form and then choose File (Office Button) > Options > Advanced and from the Save category of options, select ‘Save Form Data as Delimited Text File’ and click Ok. When you save the file it will save as a plain text file containing the data only.

Import form data into Excel

To import the data into Excel start by opening Excel and choose Data > From Text and locate the text file containing the saved data. Select Delimited, click Next, select Comma and deselect Tab and anything else that is selected, click Next and then Finish. Select the cell for the data (A1) and click Ok.

To add data from another file you will repeat the previous step but, to do so you must leave a blank row between the data that you previously entered and this new row. If you are positioned in the row immediately below the data the Data > From Text option will be greyed out.

Once you’ve finished importing all the data, you can delete the blank rows that you had to leave. Insert a new first row into the worksheet and add the column headings for your data. Save the file and you can now analyse the data or open it later on to add more data to it.

Helen Bradley introduces the skills you need to create your own cover pages for Word 2007 and 2010.

In Word 2007 Microsoft introduced a number of dynamic elements such as Cover Pages, Headers and Footers. You can use the Cover Page tool, for example, to select from a preset list of attractively formatted document cover pages. Once you’ve entered the data in that cover page, if you change your mind and want to use a different cover page, you can easily do so. Not only is the previous one removed automatically but any content you have entered into that cover page will be automatically repurposed into the new one. This month we’ll show you how to create your own custom cover pages in Word 2007 and 2010 that behave like Word’s own built-in cover pages.

To create your own cover page in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 start by creating two new blank documents. Choose File > New > Blank Document and click Create. Select the first blank document and choose Insert > Cover Page and select a cover page that has the text elements on it that you want to include on your cover page. You won’t be looking at any of the images – just the text elements.

Switch to the second blank document and here you can create the basic design that you want to use. For our cover page, we chose a shape by selecting Insert > Shapes > Block Arrows and then drew it on the screen. The shape was formatted by selecting it and using options available on the Drawing Tools > Format tab. Opposite the shape we placed a long narrow image and then selected each object in turn and selected Drawing Tools (or Picture Tools) > Format tab > Send Backward > Send Behind Text to place it behind the page text.

If one element should be in front of the other, in our case the arrow should be in front of the image, select it and choose Drawing Tools (or Picture Tools) > Format tab > Bring Forward to bring it in front of the other object but still placing it behind the text on the page.

Follow these steps to add the content placeholders to your cover page and to save it as a new built-in cover page.

Step 1

Switch to the document that contains Word’s own cover page. Locate an element such as the Title, Subtitle or Abstract and click on it. Locate the small grey marker above it, click that, right click and choose Copy.

Step 2

Return to your cover page, click where you want the element to go, right click and choose Paste. Repeat this process to add all the content placeholders you need for your cover page. To alter the format of an item, click the grey panel above it and format it using the options on the Home tab.

Step 3

When you’re done, press Control + A to select all the elements on your cover page. Choose Insert > Cover Page > Save Selection to Cover Page Gallery. Type a name for the cover page, from the Gallery dropdown list, select Cover Pages. Set the Category to Built-in, leave the other options untouched and click Ok.

Save a copy of your design as a regular Word document too in case you need to alter it in future.

To use your new cover page, simply select it as you would any cover page in Word. If you enter text into the cover page and later select a different cover page the text will be repurposed for that cover page automatically and vice versa. Copying the content placeholders from an existing Word cover page as we have done ensures the data is bound correctly so your cover page works the same as Word’s own designs.