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The Greatest Hidden Windows and Office Tricks for Lawyers

By Dan Pinnington

Wanna be better, stronger, faster? No, on your computer, silly. This presentation helps you find out how to tap the potential of the most common desktop applications and operating systems. Learn to control Windows and Office applications, instead of the other way around.

This "Best of ABA TECHSHOW^®" article was originally presented at ABA TECHSHOW 2009, the World's Premier Legal Technology Conference and Expo. It's just one example of the terrific content offered at ABA TECHSHOW by more than 50 legal technology experts. ABA TECHSHOW 2010 will be held March 25-27, 2010, at the Hilton Chicago. Get registration and other information at www.techshow.com.

Windows

This section reviews the essential Windows skills and some practical Windows tips with which every lawyer and law office staff person should be familiar.

Learn keyboard shortcuts

Odds are your hands are on the keyboard most of the time. Taking them off to reach for the mouse just breaks your rhythm and slows you down. With keyboard shortcuts you can do almost everything you can do with a mouse – the key is learning the shortcuts for the various programs you use. Basic Windows and document editing shortcuts are described below. Take time to learn the shortcuts for the most common tasks you complete in the programs you most frequently use. You will be able to complete things much faster.

To learn and use keyboard shortcuts you should be familiar with the syntax for describing them. Simply remember that a plus sign (+) between two or more keys means that you press those keys, in the order they are listed, almost simultaneously, moving from left to right. For example, a capital B would be described as Shift+B. You release them in the opposite order.

When you are trying to learn new keyboard shortcuts, remember that old habits don't easily fade away. You’ll find yourself reaching for your mouse without thinking about it. To help you remember to use new shortcuts, try putting a Post-it on the edge of your monitor as a reminder.

Alt+Tab for switching between programs

Switching between open programs is one of the most frequent things we all do as we work on our computers. For this task most of us use a mouse to select a button on the task bar. There is a much faster way. Pressing Alt+Tab will open a rectangular grey pop-up window in the center of your screen. It will have an icon for each program that is running on your computer. Hold down the Alt key, and repeatedly press Tab to jump from one icon to the next. To help you find the window you want, the text from the title bar of each window appears in a box at the bottom of the pop-up. Simply release both keys when you get to the window you want. In this pop-up window, the icons are presented, from left to right, in the order you last looked at their respective windows. This means that the window you were in previous to the current ones just one Alt+Tab away. This lets you jump back and forth between two programs in the blink of an eye.

Moving, minimizing, maximizing, restoring and closing windows

I expect that on occasion you will want to look at two or more windows at the same time. Perhaps you want to compare text in different documents, or cut and paste parts of one document to another. So now we need to learn about moving and resizing windows

Let's look at the minimize, maximize, restore and close caption buttons (and their equivalent keyboard shortcuts). These buttons appear in the top right corner of every window on your computer.

To make a window completely disappear by closing it, click on the close button (an “X”), or press Alt+F4.

To make a window disappear from the screen by shrinking it to a button on your taskbar, click on the minimize button (a “-“ ). To open a minimized window to its previous size, simply click its taskbar button.

The maximize button expands a window to fill the entire desktop. To make a window appear in a size that is less than a full desktop, click on the restore button (two overlapping squares).

The title bar is the bar across the top of every window. You can double-click a window's title bar to change it back and forth between maximize and restore sizes. Drag and drop a non-maximized Window's title bar to move it around your desktop.

Windows vs. dialog boxes

You should be aware that there are two types of windows that can appear on your desktop. A program like Word or WordPerfect opens in a fully functional window. Dialog boxes are primarily used to communicating with or configure a program. They have a close caption button, and sometime a help caption button (it looks like a question mark). They never have a minimize or maximize button. The most commonly used dialog box is the Print dialog box. Dialog boxes don't appear on the task bar if their program is minimized. More on dialog boxes in a future column.

Resizing windows

After selecting restore, you have a window that fills only part of your screen. To change the height or width of a window, put you mouse pointer over the one of the window's edges. When the pointer changes into a double-headed arrow, drag the border to make the window larger or smaller. To change the height and width simultaneously, go to any window corner, and when the pointer changes into a diagonal double-headed arrow, drag the corner in any direction. You can't resize a window when it is displayed in a full screen (maximized).

Arranging all open windows

Let's get real fancy and explore the ways in which you can simultaneously arrange multiple windows.

To simultaneously minimize all open windows and dialog boxes, click the Show desktop button on the taskbar. It is only available when the Quick Launch bar is displayed. If the Quick Launch bar is not displayed, right-click an empty area on the taskbar, point to Toolbars, and then click Quick Launch.

Pressing the Windows logo key and M will also minimize all windows. +Shift+M will restore windows to their pre-minimized sizes.

You can also reduce all open windows to taskbar buttons by right-clicking an empty area on the taskbar and selecting clicking Minimize All Window. To restore all the windows to their previous state, right-click an empty area on the taskbar, and then click Undo Minimize All.

Cascading and tiling windows

Now for the fanciest part: If you right-click an empty area on the taskbar, you will be given three choices: Cascade Windows, Tile Windows Horizontally, or Tile Windows Vertically. The Cascade option stacks all windows in a diagonally stacked pile so that the title bar for each window is visible. The Tile option automatically resizes all non-minimized widows so they appear like floor tiles

When using the cascade and tile options, windows reduced to taskbar buttons will not be displayed. This make it easy to cascade or tile just a few selected windows, rather than every a window for every programs that is open on the computer. To restore your windows to their previous state, right-click an empty area on the taskbar, and then click Undo Cascade or Undo Tile.

Cut, copy and paste

Why retype things when you don’t have to? The ability to transfer text or other data from one program to another via cut, copy and paste is one of the most powerful features of Windows. To move or copy text or other data (e.g. a picture) you must first select or highlight it. Next, to move the text, press Ctrl+X or Cut on the Standard toolbar (the button with scissors). To copy the text, press Ctrl+C or click the Copy button (two white sheets of paper).The text you are moving or copying is now in the Windows Clipboard, a temporary holding area. Now move your cursor and click where you want to place the text you are moving or copying. This can be somewhere else in the source document, another document in the same application, or even a completely different program. To add or “paste” the text in the new location, press Ctrl+V or click the Paste button (a clipboard with a sheet of paper).The text will appear in the new location. If you want to clean up the format of pasted text, use Paste Special.

Paste Special

Want to add text from a website or other source to an e-mail or Word or WordPerfect document and not deal with formatting issues (i.e. just get the basic text with no formatting)? You can use the Paste Special function to do this. Highlight and “copy” the text you want to copy and paste. Next, place the cursor at the point you want to add it to your document. But instead of clicking the “Paste” icon, click on “Edit”, then “Paste Special”, and then select the” Unformatted” option. The text will adopt the format of the receiving document and any formatting from the source document will be lost.

Use a “right click” for format and configuration settings

There are many formatting and configuration settings buried away in various menus and dialog boxes. They can be very hard to find. The “right click” button on your mouse comes to the rescue and makes many of these settings available with a simple right mouse click. These options and features are “context sensitive” – in other words, you will be presented with a list of choices

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