Frequently Asked Questions - Microsoft Word

To install clipart into a document simply add the clipart first then make a text box with whatever text you want inside the text box. You can insert a text box by going to Insert and then Text Box. Once you have the text formatted inside the box you can double click the outside border of the text box to bring up its properties. Then you can change the fill color to No Fill so that the text box will be transparent. You can do the same for the Line section by changing it to No Line. Then you will have only the text showing and you can drag it wherever you want on top of the clipart. You can also change the text color if needed.

If you don’t like the settings that are used in the default document or are always changing the settings then you can adjust the default document so it is setup the way you like it each time you start a new Word file.

The default settings are kept in a file called Normal.dotm for Office 2007 and up which is located in the C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. To change the settings, open the Normal.dotm file and then adjust the document to the way you like it. You can change the font, margins, add headers and footers and so on.

After you make the changes, save the file in the same directory as the Normal.dotm file but with a different name. Make sure you have the .dotm extension on the end. Then close Word and browse to that Templates folder and delete the Normal.dotm file. If you get a message that Word is still running then you can use Task Manager to kill the winword.exe process. After the original Normal.dotm file is deleted rename your new file to Normal.dot and then that will be used for the default Word template when you create a new blank document. If you want to go back to the original settings simply delete your new Normal.dot file and Word will create a new one when you open the program.

Anyone who has spent any time writing documents in Microsoft Word has used the copy and paste feature that is available with most Windows applications that allows you to copy text from one program and paste it into another. But most of the time when you copy text its not in the same format as the text in your Word document.

So you may have noticed that when you paste text into your Word document from other documents or web pages it tends to take the formatting with it. Then you have to go back and change the newly pasted text to match the formatting of the rest of your document.

To get around this annoyance all you need to do is use the Paste Special function. For Word 2007 and up click on the Paste ribbon item under the Office Orb or Home tab. Then you will pick Unformatted Text. What this will do is apply the formatting of your existing text in your document to the text that you are pasting. Or you can right click where you want to paste in the text and choose the keep text only button (depending on your version of Word).

Another way to do this is to just paste the text into your document, highlight it and then click on the Clear Formatting icon on the toolbar to have it remove any formatting from the selected text.