Mail Merge: Format Date Field in MS-Word

Learn how to format a date field in MS-Word while doing Mail Merge. You can easily have
the date formatted as you wish using field codes and switches .
MS-Word, the word processing software from Microsoft Corporation is often used by individuals and
institutions to create and print personalized letters in large quantities. For this the Mail Merge feature
of MS Word is used. Suppose you want to print one thousand letters wherein the letter text remains
same but recipient name and address and date changes every time; in such a scenario, mail merge
comes to your rescue.
When you do Mail Merge and if you are using a date field of mergeformat, sometimes MS-Word picks
date field from source and prints it in an unwanted format. But, thankfully, we can change the format
of date to suit your purpose.
Select the date field that you have inserted in your document.
Take right click on it and select Edit Field from the pop-up menu
A box will appear. Click on Field Codes button

MS-Word: Field Codes button

Now you will see a box containing field codes of the date field in question. It would be something like:

MERGEFIELD MyDate

MS-Word: Field Codes

Also Read: See more of MS-Word Tips and Trick
Where MyDate is the name of your date field (so it could be different in your case)
If there is anything after the field name, just delete that.
Now add the date format switch after field name in the following fashion:
MERGEFIELD MyDate \@ d MMMM yyyy
Click OK and the format of your field should get changed to the one whose switch youve just used.
Example of date switches:
\@ dddd, d MMMM yyyy (formats like: Monday, 5 August 2013)
\@ ddd, d MMMM yyyy (formats like: Mon, 5 August 2013)
\@ d MMM yyyy (formats like: 5 Aug 2013)

\@ dd/MMM/yyyy (formats like: 05/Aug/2013)

Besides these, you can create any of your desired codes by rearranging these switches (d,
M and y). For example, you can write \@ MMM d yyyy to format date like Aug 5 2013.
Remember: m is used for minutes in a date field. For month, it is capital m (M) that you should
use.

MS Word: Change Order of Words by Swapping

Sequence
Learn how to change order (sequence) of a set of words by swapping them
around in Microsoft Word. This is done using regular expressions (wildcards).
MS Word provides a set of powerful regular expression codes. You can use them for carrying out
complex Find and Replace functions.
Sometimes, we need to swap the order of two (or more) words and change their sequence. Depending
upon the size of the document, this task could turn out to be nightmarish. But with proper use of
regular expressions, you can perform it in a jiffy! Here is how you can do it.
Lets assume you have three words in one line, like:
First Second Third
And you want to recorder these words as:
Second First Third
Here are the steps to hit bulls eye!
Open document in which order change is to be done.
Press CTRL + H to bring up the Find and Replace box.
In Find what box, type (<*>) (<*>) (<*>)

In Replace box type \2 \1 \3

Click on More >> button to display advanced options
Select Use wildcards checkbox
Click on Replace All button.
Thats it! The words order will be changed!
NOTE: Make sure there is one space between adjacent (<*>)
NOTE: Make sure there is one space between \2 and \1 and \3

How does this work?

If you are astonished to see the quick results of an otherwise seemingly tedious task, you might be
wondering how it happened! Well, details of regular expressions is beyond the scope of this article, so
I will not go into that. But in simple way, each of (<*>) represents one word and \2 \1 \3 represent
sequence of words. So, if in Replace with box you will write \3 \1 \2 the resulting sequence of words
would be
Third First Second
As I mentioned before, make sure that you give a space where it is required. By the way, you can
also reverse the order of a list in MS Word.

1. Small tip: To remove a single hyperlink without losing the display text or image, right-click the hyperlink, and then
click Remove Hyperlink. To remove all hyperlinks in a document, press CTRL+A to select the entire document
and then press CTRL+SHIFT+F9.

MS Word: How to Find and Replace Numbers, Digits,

Numerals
Learn how to find and replace numbers, digits, numerals in a given MS Word document. You can find certain
numbers or range of numbers and replace them with nothing or anything.

MS Word is a powerful word processing tool from Microsoft. At times we find ourselves in a situation
wherein we need to find and replace numbers in a Word document. It is quite easy to accomplish this
using Find and Replace facility given in MS-Word. Here is how we can do this.
Open the document where replacement is to be done.
Press CTRL + H keys to bring Find and Replace box up.
Now, in Find what box type ([0-9])

MS Word: Find and Replace Numbers, Digits, Numerals

Click on More >> button to reveal more options for Find and Replace.
In the extended box, select Use wildcards

Now press Find button and MS Word will find you the first number (i.e. any digit from 0 to 9) in the
document. Please note that it will find each digit individually, that is to say that if 2012 is written in
the document this search will find four digits and not2012 as a whole number.

It is very important that you select Use wildcards because this will enable MS Word to understand
your search demand.
If you want to delete all the numbers from your document, just keep the Replace with box
empty and click Replace all this action will effectively replace every numerical digit with nothing.
If you want to replace only certain digits, you can alter the search query. For example, if you
want to find only 4, 7 and 9 you should write the following in Find what box:
([4,7,9])
If you want to look only for digits from 1 to 4, you can use either of the following expression:
([1,2,3,4])
Or
([1-4])
In the Replace with box, you can write whatever you want to replace the found text with. Easy!

How to Record, Write and Run a Macro in MS Word

Basic steps for recording, writing and running a macro in MS Word. The same steps apply
for other applications in MS-Office package.
Before we learn how to write macro in MS Word, lets understand what exactly is amacro. Well,
macro is a set of instructions which automatically execute sequentially (one after the other). For
example, sometimes you repeatedly do several tasks, like selecting all the text in document (with
CTRL + A), then making it all italic (with CTRL + I), then go to font formatting and make all this text
as blue. You can record these three tasks in a macro and then give this macro a name. Afterwards, you
would just need to run this macro and all these three instructions will be automatically executed.

You can make macros in two ways. If you just want MS Word to track and record your actions, you
can Record a Macro. Secondly, if you need to write more complex instructions, you can program a
macro. Lets look at both of these options.

Record a Macro in MS Word

MS Word (and all other software in MS Office package) allow you to record your actions and then
execute them as a single command. Before you begin recording of a macro, I would suggest that you
become very sure what you want to do and how you want to do because every action of your will be
recorded in macro. Lets understand it by an example:
1. Open a document and begin recording a macro. Now you take the following steps:
2. Select all text in the document (by pressing CTRL + A)
3. Make all the selected text italic (by pressing CTRL + I)
4. Make all the selected text orange (OOPS! But, you wanted to make it blue!)
5. You again select the text (by pressing CTRL + A)
6. Make all the selected text blue
7. Stop macro recording.
Macro will record all these steps. You can not remove step 4 and 5 from the macro recording. When
you will run this macro, youll get all the desired result but macro will also go through step 4 and 5
that is to say that the macro will make the same mistake as you did and then it will correct the mistake
just the way you did.
Did you get the point? Once you start recording a macro, ALL of your actions are recorded
irrespective of whether they are wrong or right.
That is why you it is better to decide what exactly you want to record. If macro recording is going to be
long, it is advisable that you practice the steps to perfect them before beginning the recording.
To record a macro, open the MS Word document and go to View menu. There youll
see Macro option. Clicking on this will give you option to Record Macro.
When you choose to record a macro, MS Word will ask you to give the macro a name. This name will
identify the macro for running it.
Once recording is done, go back to View > Macro > Stop Recording to end the recording.

How to Run a Macro

Having done with recording, now it is time to see how your new macro works.
Go to View > Macro > View Macros
Macros box will open. Select the name youve just given to your macro. And then click
the Run button.
Youll see that MS Word will execute all the actions that you had recorded.

How to Write a Macro

If youre a programmer, you can also write more complex instructions to be executed as a macro. But
first, you may want to see an example. With VBA macro for MS Word, for example, you can do
multiple find and replace operation in one go.
Now here is how you can write a VBA macro:
In order to write a Visual Basic program to run in MS-Office packages (like Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, Access etc) you need an editor. Microsoft has provided you with one. To bring this editor
to the fore take the following steps. Here I assume that you are working in MS-Word.
In Word 2007 and above, click on the Office button (round orb like button in top left corner) and
then click on the Word Options button given at the bottom of the menu.
A dialog box will appear. Go to the Popular tab and select the Show Developer tab in the
Ribbon check box. Click OK.
SEE ALSO: My compilation of MS-Word Tips and Trick
Now on the ribbon, you will see Developer tab. Go to this tab and you will see a button to launch
Visual Basic Editor.
In the Editor, you can start a new module and write your code in there. Then save the module.
Remember, VBA modules created in Word are saved as documents.

Once you have written and saved the module, you can run it by opening the saved document and
going to the View tab on ribbon. Then go to Macros button and selectView Macros. A list of
macros associated with the document will appear and you can select and run the macro you desire.

How to Make Table of Content in Microsoft Word

MS-Word can easily create table of content. This is very useful feature especially you are working on large amount of
text, like a book. Learn how to insert a table of content in MS Word document .

When you are writing large amount of structured text (e.g. a book or booklet) it becomes imperative
to include a table of content (TOC) at the beginning of your document. Such a table is often used by
the readers to get an overall idea about the content of the document as well as a navigation means.
In MS Word, it is quite easy to create Table of Content (TOC). Many people who do not know
about this feature try to manually create TOC but you can imagine how tough such manual
process would be. Why to reinvent the wheel? Lets learn how to automatically make a table of content
in MS-Word:

Before Creating TOC

In order to automatically create TOC, you need to do a few things before staring the process of
actually making TOC.
While you are preparing your document you should use heading styles for chapter names, section
names and subsection names. The depth of this hierarchy depends on your documents. A typical
hierarchy would look like:
1.

Chapter name
1. Section name
1. Subsection name
1. Content

Its not necessary that you use sections and subsections. You could very well put content just
under chapters without having any sections or subsections.
NOTE: This article is part of my MS Word Guide. This guide solves your day to day MS Word
problems. Easily!

The important thing is that you style these chapter/section/subsection names with heading styles.
For this:
1. Select the chapter name
2. Click on Heading 1 given under Styles in the Home tab (MS Office version 2007)
3. If you have sections also, select section name and click on Heading 2
4. If you have sub-sections as well, select sub-section name and click on Heading 3

Styles box on MS Word Ribbon Bar

Repeat this procedure with all the chapters and sections (if any). Once that is done rest is all very
easy!

Create Table of Content

Go to the page where you want to put TOC. Put cursor at the point where TOC should begin.
Go to References tab > Click on Table of Contents button > Select a TOC style

Insert Table of Content in MS Word

Voila! Your table of content will appear with nice formatting and page numbers where chapters and
sections are located.

Update Table of Content

If you make changes in your document after making Table of Content you dont need to recreate the
whole table. You can update the existing TOC.
1. Click anywhere in the table of content
2. A tiny option Update Table will appear on top-left corner of the table.
3. Click this option. A box will appear
4. If you have changed chapter names or section names -or have added/delete any of them -use
Update entire table option. Otherwise, if you have just added/deleted content text -use
Update page numbers only

Update Table of Content in MS Word

Replace Line, Paragraph, Carriage Break in MS Word

Learn how to remove or replace paragraph break, line break, carriage return (enter key) and new
line. Dont do it manually. MS Word can do it for you!
When we see two lines of words in an MS Word document, we dont get to see what is separating
them. There are severl characters that act as line break. There are several names; line break, new line,
carriage return, paragraph break etc.
Today, while doing a bit of data processing, I was required to remove all the line breaks (carriage
return) in an MS-Word document and replace line breaks with a comma. I was processing a long list

of email addresses with one email address per line. And I wanted this list to become a comma
separated list (CSV); so as to use it somewhere else.
In MS-Word, paragraph break is represented by invisible character () which looks like a horizontally
flipped P letter. You can toggle the visibility of this character by clicking a button given on the Home
tab in MS Word. The button bears the same symbol. You should click this button to be able to see
what exactly is separating the lines.

If lines are breaking because of paragraph break then will appear at the end of the lines. If lines are
breaking due to line break (carriage return), a left-angled arrow symbol will appear at the end. Lets
first see how to deal with paragraph break:

How to Remove / Replace Paragraph Break

1.

Open the Word document that you want to work on

2. Press CTRL + H to bring up the Find and Replace box
3. In the Find what box type ^p [this upward arrow character is called carrotand is usually
available on a number key]
4. In Replace with box type a comma
5. Click on Replace All button.

Thus all the paragraph breaks in you document will get replaced by a comma. You can use whatever
character(s) you like in Replace with box. For example, if you want to replace every paragraph
break with two paragraph breaks then you should type ^p^p in Replace with box.
If you simply want to remove paragraph breaks; just leave the Replace with box blank. And youll
get a monolithic chunk of text!
READ ALSO: How to find ant replace formatting
How to Remove / Replace Line Break, Carriage Return (Enter key)
Follow the same process as given above. Instead of finding paragraph sign (^p), now you should look
for line break or carriage return sign (represented by ^l). Therefore, type ^l in Find what box and
replace it something else (or with nothing).

Microsoft Word Shortcut Key Combinations

Be the keyboard warrior while working on MS Word documents! Learn the shortcut keys
and see yourself working much faster.
Which MS Word shortcut keys do you use? Well, most people use only a handful
shortcut combinations like Control+C, Control+V, Control+A, Control+B etc. Have ever
thought why do you use these keys? It is because shortcut keys work faster than doing the
same thing with mouse. When you are typing in MS Word, pressing shortcuts is easier
because you dont have to leave your keyboard and get hold of mouse.
This also means that the more shortcuts you use, the faster you can work. As I often
publish article containing MS Word tips, I thought it was important to publish a list of
MS Word shortcuts as well. You can learn these shortcuts to enhance your work
productivity.
Be the keyboard warrior while working on MS Word documents! Learn the shortcut keys
and see yourself working much faster:
Shortcut Keys

Description

CTRL + 0 (zero)

Adds or removes 6pts of spacing before a paragraph

CTRL + A

Selects all contents of the page

CTRL + B

Makes highlighted selection Bold

CTRL + C

Copy the selected text

CTRL + E

Aligns the line or selected text to the center of the screen

CTRL + F

Open find box

CTRL + H

Opens Find and Replace box

CTRL + I

Italic highlighted selection

CTRL + J

Aligns the selected text or line to justify the screen

CTRL + K

Insert link

CTRL + L

Aligns the line or selected text to the left of the screen

CTRL + M

Indent the paragraph

CTRL + P

Open the print window

CTRL + R

Aligns the line or selected text to the right of the screen

CTRL + T

Create a hanging indent

CTRL + U

Underline highlighted selection

CTRL + V

Paste

CTRL + X

Cut selected text

CTRL + Y

Redo the last action performed (for example, you can use it to quickly insert
rows in a table)

CTRL + Z

Undo last action

CTRL + SHIFT + L

Quickly create a bullet point

CTRL + SHIFT + F

Change the font

CTRL + SHIFT + >

Increases selected font +1pts up to 12pt and then increases font +2pts

CTRL + ]

Increases selected font +1pts

CTRL + SHIFT + <

Decreases selected font -1pts if 12pt or lower, if above 12 decreases font by

+2pt

CTRL + [

Decreases selected font -1pts

CTRL + / + c

Inserts a cent sign ()

CTRL + + <char>

Inserts a character with an accent (grave)

mark, where <char> is the character you want. For example, if you
wanted an accented you would use CTRL + + e as
your shortcut key. To reverse the accent mark use the opposite
accent mark, often on the tilde key (~)

CTRL + SHIFT + *

View or hide non printing characters

CTRL + <left arrow> Moves one word to the left

CTRL + <right
arrow>

Moves one word to the right

CTRL + <up arrow> Moves to the beginning of the line or paragraph

CTRL + <down
arrow>

Moves to the end of the paragraph

CTRL + Del

Deletes word to right of cursor

CTRL + Backspace

Deletes word to left of cursor

CTRL + End

Moves the cursor to the end of the document

CTRL + Home

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the document

CTRL + Spacebar

Reset highlighted text to the default font

CTRL + 1

Single-space lines

CTRL + 2

Double-space lines

CTRL + 5

1.5-line spacing

CTRL + ALT + 1

Changes text to heading 1

CTRL + ALT + 2

Changes text to heading 2

CTRL + ALT + 3

Changes text to heading 3

ALT + CTRL + F2

Open new document

CTRL + F1

Open the Task Pane

CTRL + F2

Display the
print preview

CTRL + F3

Deposit copied data into Spike

CTRL + SHIFT + >

Increases the highlighted text size by one

CTRL + SHIFT + <

Decreases the highlighted text size by one

CTRL + SHIFT + F6

Opens to another open Microsoft Word document

CTRL + SHIFT + F12 Prints the document

F1

Open Help

F4

Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+)

F5

Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word

F7

Spellcheck and grammar check selected text

or document

F12

Save as

SHIFT + F3

Change the text in Microsoft Word from

uppercase to lowercase or a capital letter at the beginning of every word

SHIFT + F5

Back to Last Editing Point

SHIFT + F7

Runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted

SHIFT + F12

Save

SHIFT + Enter

Create a soft break instead of a new paragraph

SHIFT + Insert

Paste

SHIFT
+ ALT + D

Insert the current date

SHIFT +
ALT + T

Insert the current time

ALT + Mouse Drag

Used for selecting arbitrary rectangular area.

How many of these shortcuts were you already using? Did you find any new shortcuts of
your interest? Please let me know which are your favorites. Also, feel free to ask if you
have a question. I will be happy to try and help you. Thank you for using TechWelkin.
5 Shares
Facebook
Twitter

Google+
LinkedIn
StumbleU
Delicious
reddit

More Useful Articles on TECHWELKIN:

1. How to Remove Leading and Trailing Spaces in MS-Word
2. How to Type in Hindi and Other Indian Languages
3. How to Vertically Middle Align Text in a Div
MS-Office

Lalit Kumar is a web explorer and founder of TechWelkin. He loves finding useful things on Internet and knows how to put
them together to create a bigger solution. He is passionate about technology, languages and literature. Sign-up for email
newsletter for receiving technology tips.

Comments
1. Pramod Saigal says
Ctrl+Shift+M reduce left indent
Ctrl+Shift+T reduce left hanging indent
Ctrl+N Open a new Document

Ctrl+O Open an existing document

Ctrl+G Go to a particular page, section, paragraph etc.
Ctrl+D Gets you to Font window and character spacing
Ctrl+W Save and exit
Ctrl+A to select entire document for cut, copy and paste

How to Invert, Reverse, Transpose a Table in MSWord

Sometimes we need to transpose (invert or reverse) a table in MS Word. Learn
how to change columns into rows and rows into columns of Microsoft Word
table. It can be done with the help of MS Excel.
Sometime ago I had written a piece on how to reverse a list (numbered or unnumbered) in MS-Word.
A similar question came to me yesterday. This was related to inverting a table in Microsoft Word (i.e.
change rows into columns and columns into rows). This particular transition is called transposition.
Lets see how we can go about transposing a table.
There are two methods to achieve this goal. One is a clean (and therefore preferred!) method and then
there is another one that I would keep in the category of hacks. I will talk only about the clean method
and it goes like this:

Transpose function of a table in Excel.

Step 1:
Open your MS-Word document that contains the table you want to reverse. Now, in the document,
locate the table you want to act upon.
Step 2:
Select the entire table by clicking on the plus ( + ) like sign on the top-left corner of table. Press Ctrl +
C to copy the content of table.
Step 3:
Open a new Worksheet in MS-Excel and place the cursor in cell A1 (the first cell)
Step 4:
Press Ctrl + V to paste the Word table content into Excel. The spreadsheet will automatically and
neatly arrange pasted data in various cells to recreate the exact table.
Step 5:
Select the just pasted table in Excel and paste it in another cell. This create a copy of table Excel.

Excel menu showing Transpose option.

Step 6:
Click on the down arrow given on the Paste button in the Home tab of Excel. A menu with several

options will drop down. From this menu select the option of Transpose. And there you go! The table
in Excel will invert like a magic.
From the dropdown menu, you can also Paste Special option. It will open a dialog box wherein you
will have the option to Transpose the table.
Step 7:
Select the reversed table and again do Ctrl + C to copy it. Go back to MS-Word and paste the table by
pressing Ctrl + V