Word Annoyances: How to Fix the Most ANNOYING Things about Your Favorite Word Processor

Create a Document from a Presentation

The Annoyance:

My boss brought back this wonderful presentation from his bossour master plan for the next week, month, decade , or something. More to the point, he wants me to create a memo of the presentation so that we can issue copies to everyone in the office. I've heard of cut and paste, but this is going to work my fingers raw.

The Fix:

If you need just the text of the presentation, you can simply select it in the Outline pane in PowerPoint, copy it, and paste it into a Word document. Word carries over the PowerPoint heading levels and font formatting, so the document will be laid out with Heading styles. If the size of the font has been adjusted in PowerPoint (for example, to make more text fit on a slide), restore the regular size in Word by selecting the entire document (choose Edit Select All) and pressing Ctrl+Spacebar.

If you want the graphics on the slides as well as the text, use PowerPoint's built-in tool for sending the document to Word. Choose File Send To Microsoft Office Word (or File Send To Microsoft Word for Word XP and Word 2000), choose the appropriate options in the Send To Microsoft Office Word dialog box (see Figure 9-15) or the Send To Microsoft Word dialog box, and click the OK button.

The layouts are self-explanatory, so the main decision is whether to paste the slides or paste-link them. Pasting the slides makes the Word document far bigger than linking them, but it enables you to send the document to people who won't have access to the PowerPoint presentation and who otherwise wouldn't be able to see the slides.

If you need only the text from the presentation, select the "Outline only" option in the Send To Microsoft Office Word (or Send To Microsoft Word) dialog box. You won't need to worry about pasting or linking, and you'll get the same result as you would by selecting the text in the Outline pane, copying it, and pasting it into Word.

Create a Presentation from a Document

The Annoyance:

I get sales reports from our reps once a week (well, that's the theory) so I can create a department-wide memo. Now the VP has decided that she needs a presentation made from this material.

The Fix:

You can paste bits and pieces into PowerPoint as needed, as you'd expect, but your best bet here is probably to use Word's feature for exporting a document outline directly to PowerPoint as the skeleton for a presentation.

Set up the document as a standard outline using Heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on) or equivalent styles with the appropriate heading levels set (in the "Outline level" drop-down list in the Paragraph dialog box). The easiest way to arrange the outline is to choose View Outline and work in Outline view (see "Views in Chapter 3). Each Heading 1 paragraph starts a new slide, each Heading 2 paragraph is a first-level bullet point, and each Heading 3 paragraph is a second-level bullet point; any further levels of heading will induce eyestrain or narcolepsy in your audience.

When the outline is ready, choose File Send To Microsoft Office PowerPoint (or File Send To Microsoft PowerPoint in Office XP and Office 2000). Word starts PowerPoint if its not already running, creates a new presentation, and enters the text on the slides. Save the presentation immediately, apply a slide design (Format Slide Design), change the slide layout if you want (Format Slide Layout), and add any graphics, videos , sounds, and other finishing touches you deem necessary.

Put a Word Table on a PowerPoint Slide

The Annoyance:

I'm trying to copy a fully formatted table from a Word document to a PowerPoint slide. But when I paste, all I get is the text of the table, without formatting, in a new placeholder.

The Fix:

In Word, position your cursor in the table, choose Table Select Table, and press Ctrl+C to copy the table. Switch to PowerPoint, choose Edit Paste Special, select the Microsoft Office Word Document Object item (Microsoft Word Document Object in Office XP or Office 2000) in the As list, and click the OK button.

Another approach you may want to try is pasting a Word table into a PowerPoint table. Create the table in Word, and copy it to the Clipboard. In PowerPoint, choose Insert Table, create a table with the same number of columns and rows, select the table, and paste in the Word table.