Hello and thanks for visiting my web page. Many of the Word and WordPerfect computer tips and articles located here have been reprinted from my recently discontinued newsletter Legal User Tips. Most were written by me and some were graciously sent in by former subscribers. I believe these tips will benefit you (especially if you work in a law firm or legal department) as they have so many others who have read and utilized them for their documents. As of now, the tips are only in Word and WordPerfect, but I plan on adding Excel and Powerpoint in the coming weeks. Stop by for weekly updates!

Stay with me for awhile and I'll show you some excellent word processing techniques that you can use to format your documents. Although the tips are slanted on the side of the legal user, they can be easily customized for any type of office situation.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Marilyn and I'm a computer trainer located in New York City. Before becoming a trainer, I temped for ten years as a legal word processing operator and tech support analyst at many of New York's top law firms. This experience enabled me to start my own training company DIAL-A-LESSON (www.dialalesson.com) and write several legal computer training manuals, the most recent being Advanced Word 2000 for the Legal User Made Easy (ISBN: 0-9669761-3-4) and Advanced WordPerfect 9 for the Legal User Made Easy (ISBN: 0-9669761-4-2) . I've had articles published in numerous industry trade publications (Law Technology News, Texas Lawyer, The Point, Law Practice Quarterly, etc.) and I'm a regular contributor to THE LAWYER'S PC and REPORT TO LEGAL MANAGEMENT. I was also the editor and publisher of my own very widely-successful newsletter Legal User Tips, which I no longer publish because of time constraints. Anyway, you can either come here or visit the "Tech Tips" page on my other website for some updated computer tips. If you want to learn more about me click here. If you would like to submit some computer tips then email me at [email protected].

Now, enough about me let's get to the business of learning some new word processing tips!

Click on the computer tip of your choice below.

A Sure-Fire, No B.S. Way to Replace Straight Quotes with Curly Quotes in
    WordPerfect
Change Straight Quotes to Curly Quotes in Word
Setting Timed-Backup Limits (AutoRecover) in Word
Setting Timed-Backup Limits in WordPerfect
What To Do When Footnotes Do Not Appear On The Same Page in Word
How To Sort by "Lastnames" in a Firstname/Lastname Table Column
Sorting by "Last Names" in a Firstname/Lastname Table Column in WordPerfect
Another Method For Making Footnotes Stay On The Same Page in Word
Five Repair Techniques for Corrupt Documents
Printing Page X of Y in Word
Scanner Clean-up Techniques for Word Documents
Scanning Irreplaceable Documents in Case of Disaster (Article)

A Sure-Fire, No B.S. Way to Replace Straight Quotes with
Curly Quotes in WordPerfect
Have you ever noticed while using WordPerfect that it's difficult to successfully replace all of the straight quotes in a document with curly or smart quotes? It's usually not visible until after the document has been printed. There is a special way to correct this problem and make sure all straight quotes get replaced at the same time.
The technique described below will definitely get the job done.
1. Click <Tools>, <QuickCorrect>, select the <SmartQuotes> tab.
2. Check <Use double quotation marks as you type>, then click inside the <Open> box.
3. <Delete> any quotation marks in the box and press <CTRL+W> for the <Symbols> dialog box.
4. Search for <Typographic Symbols> in <Set>, then insert from the <Symbols> box the quotation marks that reads as <4,32> in the <Number> box. (We're going to be using Typographic Symbols for all of the quotes-double and single.)
5. Click <Insert and Close> to insert the quotations in the <Open> box.
6. Click inside the <Close> box, <delete> the quotation marks and press <CTRL+W> for the <Symbols> dialog box again. This time choose the quotes that read as <4,31> in the <Number> box.
7. Check <Use single quotation marks as you type>; click inside the <Open> box; <delete> the quotes in the box; press <CTRL+W> for the <Symbols> menu; choose the quote that reads as <4,29> in the <Number> box.
8. Click inside the <Close> box and insert the quote that reads as <4,28> in the <Number> box. Hit <OK> to exit.
9. Access the <Find and Replace> box. Press <F2> or <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, click the cursor inside the <Find> box and press <CTRL+W> for the <Symbols> dialog box.
10. Search for <ASCII> in <Set>, then choose the quotation mark in the <First row> that reads <0,34> in the <Number> box. Hit <Insert and Close>.
NOTE: The reason why we're using ASCII text is because the quotes contained in this set of fonts is straight quotes only.
11. In the <Replace> box, type a regular double quote from the keyboard, then hit <Replace All>. This will ensure that ALL straight quotes in the document will be turned into curly quotes.
12. Repeat steps 9 to 11 for <single quotes ( ' )> also, but choose the first quote in the <Second row> which reads <0,39>.

Change Straight Quotes (" ") to Curly Quotes (" ") in Word
Changing straight quotes to curly (or smart) quotes is easy as 1-2-3.
1. Click <Tools>, <AutoCorrect>, select the <AutoFormat> tab.
2. In the <Replace> section check the <"Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes"> box.
3. Now, select the <AutoFormat As You Type> tab and check <"Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes"> there also. Hit <OK> to exit.
NOTE: Both the <AutoFormat> and <AutoFormat As You Type> tab MUST have the <"Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes"> boxes checked in order for this procedure to work.
4. Open the <Find and Replace> box. Press <CTRL+H> or <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, click the cursor inside the <Find> box and type a <double quote ( " )> from the keyboard. Repeat for <Replace>.
5. Hit <Replace All> twice to make sure all straight quotes in the document have been replaced with curly quotes.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for <single straight quotes ( ' )>.
If you ever need to use the straight quotes for anything, just go back into the <AutoCorrect> dialog box and uncheck the <"Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes"> boxes.
See? Didn't I tell you. Easy as 1-2-3.

Setting Timed-Backup Limits (AutoRecover) in Word
Nothing's worse than working on a document for hours then having your computer freeze or crash on you. The real nightmare is when the backup copy (if there is one) doesn't have all your changes, because you didn't save after every edit. This happens to everybody. You get so engrossed editing your document that you forget to save and assume that it's being backed up on the system somewhere. Well, I got news for you, my experience has shown that many computers have their word processing application's backup function set to ten minutes or more! Unfortunately, by the time the user realizes this it's too late - all edits that were not saved are lost forever.
Maybe your IT department can get the document back for you with most of your changes intact, but why take the chance? In this lesson you will learn how easy it is to set your own time limits on how often your word processing application should save your file for backup purposes.
1. Open Word to a blank window. Click <Tools>, <Options>, and select the <Save> tab.
2. Check the following boxes: <Always create backup copy>, <Allow background saves>, and <Save AutoRecover info every:>.
3. Next to <Save AutoRecover info every:> type anywhere from "1" to "5" minutes. (Depending on how fast your computer is, you won't even know when it's saving the file.) Hit <OK> to exit.
These settings will remain with every document you work on until you decide to change them again. So now when you experience a power failure of some sort, the backup copy of this file will appear when you open Word.

Setting Timed-Backup Limits in WordPerfect
Again, like Word, you don't need to have a document open to set up the Timed-Backup feature. A blank screen will do.
1. Click <Tools>, <Settings>, then double-click <Files> to open it.
2. The <Document> tab should already be selected. Go to <Backup folder:> and make sure there's a backup folder set up for your files to go to.
3. Check <Timed backup every> and type anywhere from "1" to "5" minutes in the box. Hit <OK>, then <Close> to exit.
Note: If you want to keep a copy of the original document each time you save your changes, check <Original document backup>. This really depends on how important your document is, because of disk space issues, this option isn't used that much.

What To Do When Footnotes Do Not Appear On The Same Page in Word
by Patricia Jones, Greenberg & Traurig
We had a problem with footnote references and footnote text not appearing on the same/correct page. Below is a fix that we used:
1. The screen must first be in Normal view. Click <View>, <Normal>.
2. To view all footnotes, click <View>, <Footnotes>.
3. To ensure that the footnotes appear on the correct page(s), highlight/select all the footnotes, then from the menu bar, click <Format>, <Paragraph>, <Line Spacing>, <Exactly - 12 pt>.
4. If the footnotes do not appear on the correct pages after the above-mentioned steps, then enter hard returns at the end of the problem footnotes.
This solved the problem for us and hopefully it will do the same for others.

How To Sort by "Lastnames" in a Firstname/Lastname Table Column in Word
by Paula Unger & Mary-Hannah Hawkins, Gordon & Rees
My boss Paula Unger, Word Processing Manager, at Gordon & Rees, LLP came up with what I think is a great tip that I would like to share with your readers.
Say you have a long list of names that are typed in first name, last name format (e.g., Nancy Smith) but that need to be sorted by last name. Unfortunately, it is impossible to use the Word Sort feature here because Sort is only going to recognize the first letter of the first name (N for Nancy), rather than the first letter of the second name (S for Smith).
The solution is to:
1. <Copy> the table column that contains the <first name/last name> list by selecting it, then hitting the <Copy> button on the toolbar (or pressing <Ctrl+C>).
2. Next, deselect the text in the column, but let the cursor remain inside.
3. Press <Ctrl+V> to create a second, duplicate column to the immediate right of the one you first had.
4. In the duplicate column <delete> ALL of the <first names>, leaving last names only.
5. Select this <last-name-only> column and format it as Hidden Text using the Font menu.
6. Highlight the column and <Sort> it.
Because the second column is in Hidden Text, you can just leave it unseen in your document and re-sort it again easily as additions are made to your first column of first and last names.

Sorting by "Last Names" in a Firstname/Lastname Table Column in WordPerfect
By Kendall Callas, MicroCounsel
The good news with WordPerfect is that you don't have to create a last name column to hide for sorting purposes. The idea of creating a column containing just the last name to allow easy sorting of a table is a lot of work and creates the vulnerability of having to update an invisible column after each new entry. In fact, the WordPerfect sort feature works perfectly for this task.
1. Highlight the table (except the headings).
2. Click <Tools>, <Sort> (make sure <First cell in a table row> is selected), then hit <Edit>.
3. Now set the sort function to sort the last word in the column <column 1, Line 1, Word "-1"> and join any suffixes (like Esq. or Sr.) to the last name with a hard space (Ctrl+Spacebar).
Wasn't that simple? I'm amazed that Word has no similar option.
Kendall Callas is a Corel WordPerfect Certified Expert, author of the WordPerfect Productivity Kit macro package for law offices, and a 17-year veteran computer consultant. He is president of MicroCounsel (www.MicroCounsel.com), which provides WordPerfect training, productivity planning, and macro/merge/template programming to law firms nationwide using Windows, UNIX and DOS. Contact him at (415) 921-6850 or via e-mail at [email protected].

Another Method For Making Footnotes Stay On The Same Page in Word
by Mary Beth Hazen, Nixon Peabody
We run into this problem quite a bit in Word. We usually change the line spacing to Exactly - 10 pt, instead of 12. That works the majority of the time. On a chance that it does not, we then go into View, Footnotes, change to Footnote Separator, highlight the line, and do the same thing with the line spacing (Exactly 10 pt). We never have to put hard returns at the end of the problem footnotes.
I just thought I would let you know that there is another option.

Five Repair Techniques for Corrupt Documents
Corrupt documents are now a fact of legal word processing life that is here to stay. As long as you are living a bilingual software (Word and WordPerfect) existence you have no other choice but to accept this reality.
What are the signs of document corruption?
• Repeated document freezings.
• Documents that won't open
• When the codes, styles, paragraph numbers, etc. in a document don't behave properly or do what they're supposed to.
These are all signs that a document is corrupted or soon to be. The good news is that these problems can sometimes be fixed in both Word and WordPerfect without any problems.
How does a document get corrupted?
• Using <File>, <Open> to open a file from one software application (WordPerfect) into the window of a different one (Word) and leaving the original codes. You should NEVER do this. You'll be told the correct way to open a file into opposing software applications a little later.
• Not using <Edit>, <Paste Special>,<Unformatted text> when copying from one software to another (see July issue). This method, although not infallible, makes sure there aren't any codes embedded from the original application it was copied from.
• Sometimes a document just gets old. It becomes unusable after awhile from too much editing and just won't work right anymore. It's best to just copy this file into a new document window using the <Edit>, <Paste Special>,<Unformatted text> feature (or the <Insert>, <File> method which will be described shortly) and delete the old file off the system.
• Another, more sure-fire way to corrupt a document is to edit it back and forth between different software programs. If you want to destroy a document quickly, just keep doing this and the document will be on its way to oblivion.
The above are just some of the well-known examples of what causes document corruption, but it can be caused from many things. For legal word processing purposes though, we'll discuss some of the most popular methods used to repair and/or recover corrupted documents.
Corruption Repair Techniques for Word
Method One: Insert the file into a new document.
1. Open up a new blank window in Word.
2. Click <Insert>, <File> and highlight the file that is damaged.
3. Hit <OK> to insert the file into the new document.
4. For good measure, highlight the entire document, click <Copy>, then hit <Edit>, <Paste Special>, <Unformatted Text> to paste the text back into the document. Now reformat the text all over again.
Method Two: Save the document as an ASCII file using WordPad.
1. Open up WordPad by clicking <Start>, <Accessories>, then <WordPad>.
2. Click <File>, <Open>, highlight the corrupted file, then hit <Open> to insert.
3. Depending on the version of WordPad you may have, there might be some unintelligible text characters at the top and bottom part of the document. <Delete> this text. You will not need it for anything. (Note: If you don't see any of this weird text in your file, don't worry about it. This means you have an updated version of WordPad.)
4. Click <File>, <Save As>, and save the file as a <Text Document>. (Note: You will get a prompt warning you that all text formatting will be removed from the file upon conversion to a text file. Just hit <Yes> to accept. Exit WordPad.)
5. Open the file into Word, then resave it again as a proper Word file. Reformat the document to the way it was originally.
The following method is to be used for those corrupted files in Word that are on their way to becoming unusable. Meaning that you can still open them normally, but their freezing a lot.
Method Three: Repair a potentially corruptible file by saving it in Rich Text Format. (I don't really know why this technique works, I just know that it does and a lot of firms seem to use it.)
1. Open the file in Word, then save it again in "Rich Text Format". It should have an *.RTF extension.
2. <Close> the file. Now reopen it again in Word with the *.RTF extension. Now resave it again as a Word document.
For some reason, when you save soon-to-be corrupted files in Rich Text Format it somehow repairs itself in this converted format.
Corruption Repair Techniques for WordPerfect
Method One:
1. Open up to a new blank window in WordPerfect.
2. Very important: Insert a space by hitting the <spacebar> once.
3. Click <Insert>, <File>, highlight the damaged file, then hit <OK> to insert into the document.
4. Now you can do one of three things: you can (a) save the file as an "ASCII DOS" text file, (b) save the document under a new name in the current WordPerfect version you are using, or (c) save the file in WP 5.1 for DOS. Saving the corrupted file to the old 5.1 format will filter out any damaged codes and help make it normal again. Too save the file in this format click <File>, <Save As>, then choose <WordPerfect 5.1/5.2>.
5. <Delete> the blank space you inserted in step 2. You MUST do this if you want the technique to work. There should NEVER be a blank space before WP codes or they won't take effect in the file.
5. Reopen the file with your current version of WordPerfect. Resave, then reformat.
Method Two: Copy and paste text from file using WordPerfect's file viewer.
1. Click <File>, <Open>, highlight the damaged file, then view it using WordPerfect's viewer.
2. Click your cursor inside of the document in the preview screen. Use your mouse to <Copy> the entire text of the document by dragging it from the beginning of the screen all the way to the end.
3. Paste this text into a new WordPerfect window using <Edit>, <Paste Special>, <Unformatted Text>. Resave, then reformat the document.
Okay, I've given you some of the most popular techniques used by law firms to help repair and/or recover damaged files. I hope they work for you with your documents.

Printing Page X of Y in Word
by Mee-Lee Szeto, O'Melveny & Myers
Sometimes in Word, it's difficult to get the footer "Page X of Y" to work, especially if the document is over 20 pages long. The page numbering comes out perfect when you print the entire document, BUT not for instance, if you only want to print "Page 3 of 20" and select "current page". The page prints out as "Page 3 of 3", NOT as Page 3 of 20.
The tip to making the page print as "Page 3 of 20" are as follows:
1. Press <Ctrl+ P> for the <Print Screen>.
2. Click <Options>, then check <Reverse print order>. Hit <OK>.
3. Select <Current page>, then hit <OK> to print.
The page should print out as "Page 3 of 20" now.
(Note: The SR-1 service release for Office 2000 is supposed to have fixed this
problem in Word 2000.)

TOA Riddle in WordPerfect Finally Fixed
by Holly Ellison, Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP
We recently had problems generating a table of authorities with marked cites in footnotes. We use WordPerfect 9 and for some reason every time we marked the cites in the footnotes and generated it, the marks would disappear from the footnotes and not be included in the table of authorities. It was only happening to those cites in the footnotes, not anywhere else. .We were using WordPerfect's Authorities feature only, not any outside programs or in-house macros.
The problem was finally solved when we installed a new "SP4" patch from Corel. Now no more unmarked cites!
I hope this information helps others with the same problem.

Scanning Irreplaceable Documents in Case of Disaster
by Marilyn Monrose
Many things have changed since September 11, especially the way we do business. Law firms that resided in the World Trade Center lost untold thousands of documents. Files that were not sent to outside storage facilities were placed in closets, hallways, conference rooms, wherever space could be found until someone got around to sending them out. Never could these law firms have imagined or believed that they would lose tons of valuable and irreplaceable documents in what could be classified as the worst American tragedy in recent times. The twin towers were branded as "indestructible", especially after the 1993 bombing. Back in the 60s and 70s when the towers were being built, the architects designed them to withstand earthquakes, hurricane-force winds and jumbo-jet impacts. Unfortunately, we now realize that nothing is "indestructible". To believe otherwise is to fall into a "Titanic" mentality. A hundred years ago, people believed that nothing could take down this ship either, but who would have thought that a simple block of ice would forever change the course of history for the Titanic and its passengers?

Protect Your Documents
Luckily, many of the firms that resided in the WTC were networked and were able to back up many of their "typeable" documents, but what about their exhibits? Some things like charts, pictures, birth records, deeds, important signature pages, etc. cannot be replaced so easily. In many instances it will take months, even years to get copies of these documents back again, if ever. How can you protect yourself? By scanning your exhibit documents onto a computer, network or CD Recordable disk.

Invest in a high quality flatbed scanner that will scan graphics, photos and text, with graphics being the most important. You should save all of your exhibit documents in two file formats: TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). TIFF is a file format that keeps all of the original scanned image data intact. JPEG uses a method of data compression to make image files smaller, easier to download for the web and to send by email. It is also referred to as a "lossy" format, because the image loses some detail when it gets saved. TIFF files stay the same, but take up more of your hard drive space. By the way, "compression" in computer lingo means to shrink the "internal" components of your file, not the size of your graphics or photo. (For more information about the scanning process go to Webmonkey and read their article Scanning 101. It's a wonderful tutorial that will guide you through scanning basics.)

You should have two copies of each exhibit on your system, because you'll need at least one copy in its original format to print on paper (TIFF) and another for email or web purposes (JPEG). It isn't mandatory to have both file extensions, but you never know when you might need to have an exhibit copy emailed to you at another location.

Below are some useful scanning tips to help get you started.
1. If you're going to be printing your file (TIFF), set resolution to 200 to 300 dots per inch (dpi) at 100%. For online or emailing purposes, a lower resolution such as 72 dpi at 100% is better.
2. Scan all of your hard to come by documents (i.e., photos, charts, documents with signed signature pages, birth records, deeds, etc.) on the system as TIFF files, then resave them again in an image editing (graphics) program such as Adobe Photoshop™ or Paint Shop Pro 7™ as JPEG files. (Note: To learn how to scan transparencies, read Scanning Transparencies at www.scanhelp.com. This tutorial describes the best way to scan transparencies and the types of scanners to use for them.)
3. When you are ready to scan, select the preview or prescan option (your scanner may have a different name for it, but it's the option that allows you to preview your document before the actual scanning process. After your scanner sends the image of your file to the monitor, you will be able to adjust the brightness, contrast and color levels to get the image to look just the way you want it before you make the final scan.
4. Ordinarily, after making the above changes, I would tell you to select the parts of your document that you want scanned, but in this case you want EVERYTHING scanned: the date, time stamp, any and all handwritten text, etc., because this will be your "computerized" permanent file.
5. Scan your documents. Remember to save them as TIFF files first, then convert them over to JPEG with your image editing (or graphics ) software later.

How do you find a good scanner?
That's a good question. Even the pros have a hard time answering this, but here are some basic guidelines to follow:
•  Make sure it's compatible with your operating system: Windows 95/98/NT/ME/XP
•  It doesn't create photo or dust scratches (aka "noise"). This can usually be taken care of by
    calling tech support or reading the tech manual.
•  Offers 2400 dpi resolution
•  Scans legal-sized documents
•  Scans transparencies (if you don't use transparencies, then don't worry about this)
•  Includes a sheet feeder (nice, but optional)
•  Has the new updated Universal Serial Bus (USB), not an outdated SCSI
•  Most importantly: Great technical support. Not being able to access technical help when you
    need it can seriously disable your willingness to keep a product you can't work with. Make sure
    you can access the company's tech department the same way you can contact their sales
    division.

For more help with scanner recommendations visit ZDNet.com. They also have an excellent article entitled "What to look for: Scanners" that does a very good job of answering most of scanner questions. Also, try doing a search on the internet by typing the words "best scanners" in the search engine.

One last thing, I know many of you are probably saying "Well, what happened in New York, won't happen to my firm, because we're not in a high risk area." How do you know what the enemy considers a good target? Not only that, a fire or flood can happen anywhere at anytime. Remember, the events of September 11, 2001 have proven that NOTHING IS EVERLASTING!