Advanced Topics in Word Designed by Jason Wagner, Course Web Programmer, Office of e-learning EMBEDDING EXCEL GRAPHS/CHARTS... 1 MAIL MERGE... 2 CREATING FORMS... 4 CREATING TEMPLATES (DOTX FILES)... 5 COMPARING AND COMBINING DOCUMENTS... 6
EMBEDDING EXCEL GRAPHS/CHARTS Microsoft Word allows you to embed Excel graphs and charts directly in documents so that you don't need to create a separate Excel file, and copy and paste the graph/chart into the document. To do this, go to the Insert ribbon, and click the Chart button under the Illustrations group of icons. Then, select the type of chart you want. For this example, we will pick Pie from the left menu, and then the first option for pie charts. Click OK. Now, Excel will load in a new Window. If you are using Windows 7, the two documents will open up side-byside. You will see in the Excel window that there is pre-populated information to get you started. All you need to do is change the labels and data. As you enter the data, you will see the graph automatically update in the Word window. Advanced Topics in Word Page 1
When you've finished, simply close the Excel file. In Word, you will see three different ribbons at the top of the screen under Chart Tools. Here, you can change the way your chart looks in Word, just as you would in Excel. If at any time you need to update the data in your chart, simply click on the chart and go to the Chart Tools > Design ribbon. Under the group of Data icons, click the button that says Edit Data. It will relaunch Excel to allow you to edit the data. Simply close Excel again when you are done as you did before. MAIL MERGE Mail merges allows you to take a single document and create multiple copies of that document, with each one having slight customizations such as name or address. For example, suppose we wanted to create letters to send letters to students who achieved Dean's List. First, we need an Excel document that contains all of the information we want to include in the letter. Take note of the headings (Row 1) and name of the file. Then, in Microsoft Word, go to the Mailings ribbon. Then, click the button that says Start Mail Merge. Then, for this example, pick Letters. Then, still in the Mailings ribbon, select the Select Recipients button, and choose Use Existing List. Advanced Topics in Word Page 2
A box will pop up. Navigate to where you saved the Excel file and open it. Select the sheet that you saved the data in within the Excel file. Now, we will begin writing our letter. First, we want to add the address of the recipient to the top left corner. In the first line, we want to put the name from our Excel file. To do this, from the Mailings ribbon, go to Insert Merge Field. In the box that pops up, select Name. Click Insert. Click Close. Repeat this process for the rest of their address. When you are finished, your document should look like this: Then, begin writing your letter. We will add the name again as a greeting, and write a message which we will want to include the GPA in. Your document should look like this: Now that your message is written, go to the Mailings ribbon and select Preview Results. You can use the arrows to the right of the Preview Results button to see each document as it has been created in the merge. Advanced Topics in Word Page 3
Then, in the Mailings ribbon, select Finish & Merge, and then select Edit Individual Documents. When the dialog box pops up, select All and click OK. Now, a new document has opened on your computer. It contains your document, with each record from the Excel spreadsheet on its own page. You can save this document or print it. Note: To do an email message mail merge, you will need a column in your spreadsheet that contains the recipients email address. You will also need Microsoft Outlook configured with the address you want to send from configured on your computer. CREATING FORMS Note: Although forms can be much more advanced in Word, this tutorial will only cover creating a form that you can send to other people and have them send back to view their responses without allowing them to edit the entire document. To create forms in Word, you must first enable to Developer ribbon. To do this, click File > Options. Then, select Customize Ribbon. Then, in the list on the right, check the box next to Developer. Click OK. Now, click the Developer ribbon. In the group of Controls icons, there are nine small icons. We will focus on using the following icons, which, unless otherwise noted, can be added by simply clicking your cursor where you want the form field to go and clicking the corresponding icon. The middle icon in the top row allows users to input text. The middle icon in the middle row allows users to select from a dropdown menu. To use this item, click your cursor where you want it to go and click this icon. Then, in the Developer ribbon, click Properties. In the dialog box that pops up, click Add to put additional options into the menu. You can remove the default option. Click OK when you are finished. The last icon in the middle row allows users to select multiple items from a list. This field functions similar to the previous field for dropdown menus does. The first icon in the bottom row allows users to pick a date. Advanced Topics in Word Page 4
The middle icon in the bottom row allows users to check boxes. Consider a form where we want to collect the following information from students: Name, class, today's date, and sports they participated in. Using these tools, we will create the following form: Next, to stop people from editing the document, we will click Restrict Editing in the Developer ribbon. In the pane that appears on the right, check the box next to Allow only this type of editing in the document and change the option to Filling in forms. Then, click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection. In the box that pops up, you can enter a password and hit save. NOTE: If you do not add a password, people will be able to turn off the restrictions and edit your document. Now, you will be unable to edit the document. However, people can click in the areas where you've defined form fields and enter their responses: CREATING TEMPLATES (DOTX FILES) All Microsoft Office applications have a function called templates. Templates are useful when you want to keep the original document, but you want somebody to create a copy of the document to fill it out, such as in a form or application. When a Word document template is opened by double-clicking it on a Desktop or in a folder, it does not open the original document -- it opens a new copy of Advanced Topics in Word Page 5
the document. When you go to save this document, it does not save over the original, but instead asks you where you want to save the file. Once you have created the file you want to turn into a template, go to File > Save As. Then, change the Save as type to Word Template. Everything else is just like saving a regular file -- just give it a name and choose a place to save it. Because double-clicking a template opens a copy of the template, you must open the template file differently if you want to edit it. To do this, first open Microsoft Word. Then, go to File > Open. Then, navigate to the template file, select it, and click Open. When you are finished, simply go to File > Save -- you do not need to do the process above of going to Save As and selecting the file type. This function can be very helpful when combined with the forms functionality described in previous pages. COMPARING AND COMBINING DOCUMENTS Word has a feature built in to allow you to find the differences between two documents. This feature is useful if you send a document to somebody for revisions, and you want to see what they changed but they did not turn on Track Changes. There are two different options here: Compare: Compare documents shows three different panes. Two of the original panes show the two different documents as they were loaded, and the third pane shows what Word recommends they look like merged. Combine: Combine merges the two documents together, and gives you a new document that is Word's "best guess" at what the new revised document would have looked like had Track Changes been turned on. First, open a new Microsoft Word file. (Do not open either of the two files you are comparing/combining.) Then, click the Review ribbon, and click the Compare button, and select either Compare or Combine from the menu. Advanced Topics in Word Page 6
Then, under Original document, click the folder icon and navigate to the folder where your original document is saved. Do the same for the Revised document. Enter labels for the Label changes with so that you can identify what content came from which document when Word shows them in a combined view. Click OK. Depending upon which option you chose, your document(s) will load. To scroll through the changes, you can use the Next and Previous buttons as you did with Track Changes. You can also click Accept and Reject to keep the changes or revert it back to what that item was before it was changed. Advanced Topics in Word Page 7