1 5 Cheaper Alternatives to Word for Mac. You may want to explore other options. Text Edit might look spartan compared with pricier word processors, but it creates all sorts of documents.
Document Properties is one of those long-standing parts of Office that is worth another look. It can be quite useful and not always in the ways that Microsoft intends. At first, document properties looks like a fixed and rigid feature with limited use. However it can be used in much wider and creative ways. Any time you have a piece of text repeated within a document, is a potential use for document properties.
It’s a way to quickly and easily automate your document and ensure it’s consistent and accurate. Document properties let you replace text in places Word itself won’t go. For example, the document Title property can show up in the Header or even as text in the document. In fact some of the supplied Header formats in Word use document properties (like Title) already. Both places where you see ‘Flanders and Swann’ it’s actually a document property.
Click on either text and you’ll see that. Change the document property and the document changes. Many others can be set by you and displayed in the document. If you change that property, the document is updated automatically. The smarties among you might wonder at this point why bother with document properties? There are at least two other ways to do the same thing; find & replace or bookmarks.
That’s true, however sometimes those options aren’t suitable. Replace can change text that you don’t want changed (for example when the text to find is there in other contexts) and doesn’t always work (e.g. In multiple text boxes). Bookmarks can be confusing to find and change. Document Properties are flexible and controlled outside the main document content which can be an advantage. You choose the solution that suits your needs and it’s good to know all the options available. We’ll explain how document properties can be used beyond the narrow purposes that are usually explained.
Setting a property The common document properties are set on the File Info pane as you can see above. There are more available if you click on the See more properties at bottom right of the Info pane. Now there’s more editable properties available:. Title. Tags. Comments. Status.
Categories. Subject. Hyperlink Base. Company. Manager And there’s even more than that, but we’ll get to those later. Let’s look at the Title property. Changing the property is simple.
Just click in the area ‘Add a title’ and type in the text you want. The data entry area doesn’t look editable but it changes into a text entry field when you click on it.
When you go back to the document, any place with the Title document property inserted will show that text. Some properties are also visible from the Document Panel that appears above the document, worksheet or presentation. Go to Info Properties Show Document Panel (Word 2013/2010), File Prepare Properties (Word 2007). Choosing ‘Advanced Properties’ then the Summary tab will show a list of the main document properties. This dialog box hasn’t changed much for many versions of Word going past more than a decade. Within the document You don’t even have to go to the Info pane if the property is already inserted into the document.
Click on the document property text so the content control box appears. The text in that box is editable so type away. When you click away from the control, other instances of that property should be automatically updated. For advanced users there are other ways to change document properties:. Via VBA code BuiltInDocumentProperties( ).Value or ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties( ).Value.
Changing the XML within the document itself. It’s in docProps/core.xml in the tag. Both of these options are great for programmers and network administrators.
They are easier to implement than large scale replace commands within the main document. Inserting a document property In Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013, the main document properties are at Insert Text Explore Quick Parts Document Property. As we’ve seen already, an inserted property appears as a content control when you click on it. In Word 2003 and before go to Insert Field DocProperty and choose the property you want to insert a field code.
Hovering over a control changes the background to gray. Advanced Properties Beyond the main document properties are ‘Advanced Properties’ available from File Info Properties Advanced Properties Under the Custom tab there’s a long list of other document properties. These ‘advanced’ properties are just more inbuilt labels that aren’t on the main panes or dialog boxes.
However these ‘advanced properties’ can’t be easily added to documents nor changed within the document like the main properties can. See Custom Properties below. Custom Properties The same dialog lets you add your own document properties. Any pair of text label and a property (Text,Date,Number or Yes/No) is possible. To add a custom property, type the name/label into the Name field, choose a Type, enter a value and click Add. Inserting Custom Properties is a little more fussy than the inbuilt properties.
The standard ‘Document Properties’ insertion menu doesn’t change to allow for advanced or custom properties. Go to Insert Text Quick Parts Field Document Information DocProperty. Choose from the list of Properties shown which includes any custom properties. In the document the property appears in the text where you’ve inserted it. Press Alt + F9 to reveal the field code DOCPROPERTY that displays the custom properties. Unlike the main document properties, you can’t change Advanced or Custom properties within the document itself.
That makes Advanced and Custom properties less useful for many purposes and leads us to the simple trick that you can use. Ignore the property name The main document properties have names (aka labels) linked to a place for your text. Those labels are obvious things like Title, Subject etc but there’s no rule that the Subject property has to contain subject text it can contain any text you want. As long as you know what the property is used for you can ignore the label. For example, you might have a standard document for new clients. One way to insert the clients name throughout that document is to use the document property called ‘Client’. But that’s an ‘advanced’ property that’s harder to change and use.
Instead use the ‘Company’ property (or Status, Title, Subject etc.) which is more easily changed. As long as everyone using the document knows what to do, it doesn’t matter what Microsoft called the property. Beyond Word Document Properties work well in Word. You can set and use properties quite easily. In Excel and PowerPoint it’s a very different story which makes a mockery of Microsoft’s talk about consistency across the Office applications. Both Excel and PowerPoint have document properties that you can change and even customize.
But inserting those properties into documents is NOT easy at all. There’s no simple way to drop a worksheet property into a cell – amazing but true. Excel You’ll search in vain for an function like DocProperty that would let you insert a document property into a cell. Such an obvious and useful thing is completely missing. You can set Document Properties and custom properties but using them in a worksheet requires a custom VBA function. PowerPoint It’s even worse in PowerPoint. There are document properties available to set but no direct way to put them into slides.
![Word Word](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125394945/189604159.png)
Since Powerpoint lacks almost all of the document automation that Word has, the only way to get document properties into a slide is VBA to search a presentation and replace text with a document property. Wish List Document Properties have been around for many versions of Office and appear to have been forgotten by the Microsoft Office development teams. The Word group needs to remove the arbitrary difference between main, advanced and custom properties. All properties should be inserted as content controls and editable from within the document, just as main properties are now. The Excel and PowerPoint development gurus need to get their act together. It should be embarrassing to both groups that document properties can be set but not easily used within their programs.
The lack of an Excel function to retrieve document properties is truly astonishing.
If you use Microsoft Word, you're no doubt aware that the program doesn't have a standard Mac OS X print dialog window. That sad fact can sometimes leave you feeling a bit lost. Here are a some pointers for printing with Microsoft Word 2011 and an explanation of its major dialog box contents. The Mac's standard OS X print dialog always keeps basic information visible (after you click the arrow that expands the dialog box to its full size). Microsoft Word does not always expose basic information, and Word's print dialog changes depending on the choice you select from the untitled pulldown menu located below the Printer and Presets menus in the window. The Copies & Pages selection in Word most closely mirrors the basic information you get from the OS X print dialog—a preview of the document you’re printing, the number of copies, collation options, and the range of pages. The Copies & Pages menu is used for managing the number of copies you want to print, but also offers options for changing the page setup, printing the current page, and a useful Page Range option that lets you select the pages that you want to print.
Using this feature you can type 1, 3, 5, 11-17 and Word will print only the pages you specified. The Page Setup button lets you make quick changes to the scale, paper size, and print orientation of your document.
This is the standard print dialog box in Microsoft Word. Consult the pulldown menus to customize the output.
But the pulldown menu under the Microsoft Word choice changes the options you see and the printing choices you have, offering several items specific to the program. So, if you select Document properties from the menu, you can print a document that includes the file name and save location, the template used for the document, author information, word count, creation and modification dates, and so forth. If you used Word's Track Changes feature to edit a manuscript, selecting the List of markup choice will let you print a list of the changes made to the document. This list organizes the information logically into specific areas including the body of the document, header and footer, footnote, endnote, and text box. You can also print lists of all the styles used in the document, and any auto text entries that are in use by the document's default template. Note that in order to see the information from any choice in this dialog, you must select the item from the menu and then print the document. There is no on-screen preview of this information.
Use the Microsoft Word setting to to print information about your document. The final menu item, called Summary, lets you view a summary of all the information available about the current print job before you print it. This summary menu lets you see all the parameters you set in previous menus in a single window. While different than the standard Mac OS X print dialog, Microsoft Word's print dialog lets you print a lot of information that lies underneath the surface of the text you've typed. Even though much of this information isn't necessary for your day-to-day printing needs, it's nice to know that by using Word's unique print dialog you can get to and print this information when you need it. Jeffery Battersby is an Apple Certified Trainer, (very) smalltime actor, and regular contributor to Macworld.
He writes about Macs and more at his blog,.