Make Office Better

Top tips for MS Office & Libreoffice

MICROSOFT WORD Stop Word indenting lists

Sometimes Word tries to be too helpful. For example, when you start a new line with a dash, it will assume you’re typing a list, then indent it and add extra spacing after the dash. If this happens when you don’t want it to, there’s a quick way to take back control.

When the first indent appears, press Ctrl+shift+n. This shortcut applies the Normal text format to what you’re currently typing, removing Word’s list formatting. Sadly, Word won’t take the hint and will repeat the indent if you start your next line with a dash.

An alternative is to turn off its automatic list feature so the indents never appear in the first place. To do this, click File, Options, Proofing, then the ‘Autocorrect Options…’ button. In the window that appears, select the Autoformat As You Type tab, then remove the tick from the ‘Automatic bulleted lists’ option (see screenshot below).

MICROSOFT WORD, LIBREOFFICE WRITER & LIBREOFFICE CALC Ensure your shared documents are formatted properly

When you’ve chosen the perfect font for a document that you’re going to share with others, the last thing you want is for the recipients to not see it as you intended. If they don’t have the same fonts installed on their computer, it will switch to their default font, messing up the layout – and if you used the font’s special characters, they’re likely to be replaced by square boxes.

To avoid this, you can embed your fonts into the document. In Libreoffice Writer and Calc, click File, Properties, then the Font tab and tick ‘Only embed fonts that are used in documents’. In Word, click File, Options, Save, then tick ‘Embed fonts in the file’ (see screenshot above). Bear in mind that you need to make this change for every document in Writer and

Calc, whereas in Word the change applies to the document you’re working on and all future documents. Microsoft won’t let you embed fonts in Excel spreadsheets.

LIBREOFFICE WRITER & CALC Create a safety net for your documents

It’s never nice saving and closing a document, only to realise you want to revert to the previous version. Libreoffice includes a tool that creates a backup of your previously saved version whenever you click Save, but you need to switch it on. To do this, go to Tools, Options, Load/ Save, then General. Tick the ‘Always create a backup copy’ box, then click OK. To find out where your backup files are saved, stay in the Options window and click Paths within the Libreoffice section. Your backup folder will be listed here (see screenshot below). To change it, click Edit at the bottom. To restore a backup, simply open it in either Writer or Calc (it will have a file extension of ‘.bak’).