Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with formatting

How to get Word links to work like on Wikipedia?

freddymungo — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:47:34 -0800

How could one change the colors of links in a Microsoft Word document? I'm using Office 2007, if it makes a difference. As it is, any link I insert is blue and when it's been clicked on it turns purple. Can I edit these colors like I could with CSS on an HTML document?

Secondly, is it possible for links pointing to files that don't exist to have a special color like red, like Wikipedia does when there's a link but no matching entry yet? All these files would be Word documents.

Thanks in advance!

Is it possible to do a global change-style in Excel?

min — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:41:44 -0800

Is it possible to automate a citation style change on an entire column in Excel, or do I need to do this by hand? I have a list of approximately 600 articles in an Excel document. There is a column for each field in the cite (author, title, journal, etc). I need to change the citation style. Currently, most cites are Smith, A. B., Jones, C. D., and a few are Smith Ann B, Jones Cathy D. I need to covert them to Smith AB, Jones CD. Most titles (but not all) are in the format Where the wild things are: a great book, but they need to be formatted as Where the Wild Things are: A great book. (Think PubMed style, with proper nouns and the word after a colon capitalized.) Is it possible to do some sort of global change citation style, or do I need to do all this by hand? Is this the kind of thing you can do with a Macro? I haven't ever set one up before. Unfortunately, importing into EndNote or a similar program that will automatically change format style isn't an option.

I'm using Excel 2001 on a Mac. I'm not a programmer. I'm looking for something that will do this relatively quickly, because I could do it by hand in a (very boring) few hours--if the solution involves hours of learning it's probably not that practical.

USB SATA HD WTF FTW?

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:58:09 -0800

Is my external HD enclosure killing drives? Or is it bad luck? I use a Mac.

I have this external enclosure for 2.5" drives. I put a new drive in there last year, but didn't use it until some months later (after loaning it to a friend). Drive was dead, and Disk Utility and Disk Warrior couldn't fix it. It was an extents error, and Disk Warrior alternatingly gave these errors: 2351, -36 and 2166, 2351.

My GF needed an external drive for Time Machine, and so we dropped in a new drive. Same errors, same lack of success with Disk Utility and Disk Warrior.

In each case, there has been no data on the drive, so I'm happy to pave them down to the lowest bits and bytes. A new drive is being sent by the retailer, but I don't want to kill it with the enclosure if it is at fault.

Is this an issue with the enclosure, or is this just bad luck with two different drives (by different makers)?

Formatting Differences in MS Word on Windows vs Mac

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:47 -0800

How consistent is MS Office between Windows and OSX? Will using MS Office on my Mac solve this formatting problem I'm having? I'm have a MacBook Pro running Leopard,and I've been using Open Office to write my papers. It's great. I love Open Office (and love that it's free). When I need to turn something in, I just save it in PDF format, e-mail it to myself, then go to a computer lab, check my e-mail, and print off the PDF document. Perfect.

The problem is that I have a professor who needs some documents turned in via e-mail, and they use MS Word. I can save an Open Office document as a Word file (.doc or .docx), and for plain text formatting that's fine, but as soon as an outline or numbered list is created, things look crazy. It seems fine when I save it in Open Office, and it's fine when I then open that document using Open Office, but if the document is opened with MS Word, the formatting is horrible.

I can buy the MS Office suite for Mac at school using my student discount (it's around $35 I think). If I install that, and use Word to create these documents, will they appear the same when my professor opens them using Word, on her Windows computer?

If there will still be differences then I'll skip the $35 and just keep going to the computer lab to tweak things.

If I save a document in MS Word on a Mac and send it to a person using MS Word on a PC, are there formatting differences?

Save the footnotes

synecdoche — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:28:28 -0800

Is there any way to solve Pages' funny behaviour with long footnotes? For a variety of reasons, I prefer to use Pages to Microsoft Word. For the most part, I'm happy with the program, but it does have one bug(?) that's really irritating: it doesn't seem to know what to do with long footnotes.

What seems to happen is this: if a footnote is longer than the remaining space on a page, Pages breaks up the text so that the footnoted word (and its footnote) is on the next page. As a result, there's a significant chunk of white space at the bottom of the page before the footnote. I think what should happen is that the footnote should be split over two pages, but Pages seems to be incapable of doing this.

I've done some googling and asked on the Apple Support Forums but haven't had any luck solving this problem. The only other option seems to be to convert the footnotes to endnotes but I'd like to see if I can work things out and keep the footnotes as they are what I prefer to use for this particular document.

Does anybody here have any ideas of ways to fix it? (I have submitted a "suggestion" to Apple but I doubt this is likely to get fixed before the next version of Pages, if then.)

What format is best for content that will end up in Wordpress?

bingo — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:48:49 -0800

in what format should I have contributors submit pieces to be posted later in wordpress? I'm running a sort of magazine website built on Wordpress, and I'm acting as publisher. I don't want to ask the contributors to log in and write their own posts, partly because I don't want anyone to post anything unfinished by accident, and partly because many of the contributors don't have much experience with HTML formatting.

I'm willing to do all the back-end work myself, but I've been trying to figure out what format to ask the authors to write in. I get submissions in various formats now... in Word and pasted directly in email being the two most common formats.

There are two main problems:

1) If I copy and paste directly into the Visual WP editor, then the document always retains formatting that I don't want, and I have to go into the HTML editor and pick it out, which is tedious.

2) If I copy and paste directly into the HTML editor, I lose some formatting that I want to keep, such as boldface and italics. Then I have to go back through the document and apply the proper formatting to everything that needs to be bolded or italicized, which is tedious.

So far, there's only one way I've found to do it quickly, which is to paste the text into Word, then save as an RTF, then copy and paste from the RTF into the WP Visual editor. However, my mac just died and I'm on my backup computer, a netbook with no optical drive, and I don't have Word, nor do I want to deal with getting an external optical drive to install Word. I have OpenOffice. But (learning experience) .rtf files in OpenOffice retain formatting that .rtf files made in Word do not. So that doesn't work.

Surely, this is not an uncommon problem? How do other people solve it?

Word 2007 Help

orsonet — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:47:53 -0800

Can you help me figure out how to change the color of the line down the right side of the page in this document? It's from a template and I don't know how "grab" the line to change it. If it can't be changed, can you remove it?

Email: katiesullivan@gmail.com

Thanks!

Journal of Inappropriate Articles to Include in a CV (2009) "In Defense of Sex in Public Places" Submitted.

Hwaet — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:46:55 -0800

A former professor and I are meeting tomorrow, as she's writing me a recommendation for getting a PhD. She's requested that I bring a CV along with my writing samples. I've been employed as an editor, freelance writer and blogger for the most of my post-undergrad career. None of my articles are particularly serious or scholarly. What's the best way to format this info in a CV? I'm aiming to get a (very) interdisciplinary degree in English or American Studies, so I feel like my bloggy contributions in the online world of arts and criticism is a bit more noteworthy than if I were going to study Renaissance theater. My professor noted that she's most interested in my papers, but I'd still like to show up with a detailed CV in case my employment history is relevant.

Most of my writing is celebrity interviews, blog posts for online, mainstream political/cultural magazines, movie reviews, and bar reviews. I've been gainfully employed as a freelance editor for many magazines at once, but I've never been, say, an associate editor on a masthead. I'm totally uninitiated in the arts of writing a CV and have no idea if I should mention specific articles I've written even if they're unrelated to my current endeavors. As I've been out of school for maybe 3 years, this is the bulk of my experience, so I'd rather not sweep it under the rug and turn in a 3/4 page CV.

Are there any templates for people in my situation? Am I overthinking a request from a professor who'd just like to familiarize herself with my post-college activities?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Reformatted OS 9 iBook Won't Boot

jimmyjimjim — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:02:23 -0800

After reformatting an OS 9 ibook, it won't boot (I get flashing question mark). Yes, I chose "install OS 9 drivers" when reformatting! And I need to fix this in an hour.... I had a fully functional iBook running system 9.1.

Using Firewire Target Disk Mode, I transfered its files (dragging via finder) to my macbook (which runs Leopard), and used Disk Utility to erase the iBook and reformat it (mac os extended, including system 9 drivers). I also chose the "zero out" option for the erasure.

I then transfered the files back to the ibook. And upon restart, the ibook is showing a flashing question mark.

I redid the process (skipping the zero out)....with identical results.

I do not have OS 9 install disks. And this computer needs to be on an airplane to an orphanage in Columbia in two hours. Help....?

I'm a printing/graphic design fraud.

Classic Diner — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:29:35 -0800

HELP! I've been bluffing for years about my graphic design abilities, technical knowledge, and general printing skills. Please recommend some books so I can actually understand what I am doing. I really need to learn the words so I can communicate properly with others. SVG, PDF, vector, rip, 4/0, CMYK, outlined fonts, flatten files are terms I don't really understand, and there are dozens I don't even know I should know. I'd like to find a book to get started on my education.

I'm not looking to become an instant graphic design professional, I need to be able to talk to them and not be completely out of my depth every time I open my mouth.

There may be classes in my future, I'd like to be able to pick the right ones.

I have me an xls table, I do!

monocultured — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:59:09 -0800

I have an xls file I got from a survey I created on Google docs. Now I want to make it pretty without copy-pasting every bloody cell into an Indesign document… So, using Apples Numbers, I'm trying to change a ≈30×20 table which looks like this:



__________| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |

Timestamp | A1 | A2 | A3 | A4 |

Timestamp | B1 | B2 | B3 | B4 |

Timestamp | C1 | C2 | C3 | C4 |

Into something that looks like this, with each question on a separate page:

Q1:
A1
B1
C1
D1

Q2:
A2
B2
C2
D2

etc.

As well as a version with each timestamp/user on a seperate page:

Q1:
A1

Q2:
A2

Q3:
A3

etc.

Having looked through the Apple tutorials on Numbers as well as browsing the Google docs forums, I'm stumped. Oh ye wizards of tabular data, aid me in this time of need!

I could use Neo Office or any other data-shuffling method (maybe this can be manhandled by egrep in Textwrangler?) as long as I get a result that is printable / pdf-able.

All the answers are of different lenght, (as in B1 might be "yes" while B2 is three paragraphs long) which need to be accounted for. If there's a way to set type, style and so forth at the same time, that would be dandy!

Quick and easy solution for reformatting Word documents from manual formatting to Styles?

Jacqueline — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:14:07 -0800

Quick and easy solution for reformatting Word documents from inconsistent manual formatting to Styles? I am helping someone combine 5 Word documents into 1 book with consistent formatting, a Table of Contents, chapter-specific headers and footers, page numbering, etc. If it matters (for text formatting) the documents are all in French. There are 300+ pages.

Problem: The original source documents were all manually formatted (inconsistently!) and thus each one seems to have 100+ different Styles, with only a few (or sometimes one) instance of each Style. The original document authors also did other fun things like use tabs or spaces to position text instead of tab stops or indentation.

Right now it appears as if I will have to go through the document page-by-page, reformatting the text into a consistent set of Styles. Or wipe out all formatting and start from a clean slate. Is there a quicker, easier way to do this or are we just screwed?

If we are screwed, do you think that wiping out all the formatting and applying Styles to the unformatted text (using the original documents' appearance as a guide for different sections, header levels, etc.) would be the fastest way?

I am using Word 2007 and she is using 2003, are there any 2007 formatting features I should avoid because they won't be backwards-compatible?

(Also, I am relatively new to working with Styles in Word so any other large document design/formatting tips you'd like to share would be much appreciated! :))

Please let me know, thanks!

What Excel formula to achieve desired result?

mccn — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:39:29 -0800

What formulae do I need to cause Excel to highlight a cell on one worksheet if the data is found in a different worksheet? Formulae I have attempted (using named ranges) under the cut. have two lists on two separate worksheets in the same workbook in Excel 2003. I would like to apply conditional formatting so that if Sheet 1 contains a value in Sheet 2, the relevant cell on Sheet 1 will be highlighted.

I have figured out one way to do this, but it is arduous and requires conditionally formatting each line in Sheet 1. I have created a named range for the relevant cells in Sheet 2 (as a hypothetical example that might make common sense, “Poisons”). Then, for each row in Sheet 1, I apply the following conditional formula:

=COUNTIF(Poisons, A4)<>0

This does indeed apply the formatting if a name on Sheet 2 appears in Sheet 1. (So if any of my ‘foods’ listed on Sheet 1 contain a “poison” listed on Sheet 2, they’re highlighted bright red.) I can use the format painter to extend this format to additional cells, and it seems to work. But I would prefer to have a formula that does not go cell-by-cell. Especially because my data is in different columns and I add to it and change it daily, so I may miss something just because I didn't format-paint the whole dratted sheet. Isn’t there a formula that will search in Sheet 1 and highlight anything in the range on Sheet 2, as a whole?

I had also tried the following, which I thought should work on the sheet as a whole. I created a second named range for the relevant cells in Sheet 1 (“Foods”). Then I applied conditional formatting to the entire sheet as follows:

=COUNTIF(Poisons, Foods)<>0

I copied a few cells from the “Poisons” section into the “Foods” section to confirm the formula would work, and no change in formatting occurred. So this didn’t do it. Any suggestions?

How do I view .csv files IN Firefox in a nice fixed-width column format?

shmooly — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:11:14 -0800

How do I view .csv (comma-separated values) files IN Firefox in a nice fixed-width column format? By default Firefox asks me what to do when I ask it to open a .csv file (some may have it set to open in Excel). I downloaded the lovely Open in Browser Firefox extension , and this lets me open the file as source in Firefox, so I'm halfway there.

However the top row containing the fields doesn't match up with the values since it's being displayed as plain text, as opposed to a spreadsheet-like format. My question is: is there any way to view .csv files inside Firefox, in text, with nice grid-like formatting?

Why do I want to use Firefox and not Excel or some other application? Because I'm monitoring a long-running process that's outputting a .csv file and I want to periodically be updated on its progress, check the values, etc. without causing read-write conflicts. While there's probably things outside of Firefox, I would prefer to keep it inside the browser.

Thanks!

Word formatting problem

sulaine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:33:09 -0800

MS Word formatting issue: it applies any changes to entire document. How do I make Word only apply formatting changes to the selected text? If I highlight one word or sentence or section and try to change the format (bold, change font size, add bullets) it will apply the change to the entire document. Then when I hit undo, it removes the change from the document except for the selected section.

What gives? How do I fix it?

How to write a compelling pitch for a reality show?

Elle Vator — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:37 -0800

Dear Hivemind: Where can I find examples of treatments for Reality TV shows? I have experience writing treatments for film, so I'm already on the right track in terms of describing character or writing synopses... but I'm a bit at a loss as to what points must be hit, in what proportion and in what sequence in a Reality TV Treatment. I've worked in reality before and I'm fascinated by the genre, so I know what goes into a show similar to this. That said, I also know that I've never written a treatment for this format and I could really use some guidance.

Here's how I'm picturing it:
-logline
-expansion on logline (short paragraph)
-nuts and bolts stuff (length of season, length of episode, basic production premise, audience/market brief... too much? not enough?)
-background of the concept (establishing main characters and reasons why the show is being made and will be awesome)
-more detailed breakdown (consisting of...?)
-> season synopsis
-> episode breakdown
-> overall result of the first season and possibilities for subsequent seasons
-team bios
...all about ten pages of well-spaced text (with the first page created as a stand-alone one-sheet) before we add pictures.

I know I'm on the right track, kinda/sorta... but my uncertainty is having a negative effect on my creative process. Me? I'm a writer who's been given a great opportunity and a fascinating concept which I've been consulting on for a while. I'd rather not go boldly in the wrong direction on this, if you know what I mean! I think what I need is to see is some sample documents and/or get pointed to a book or article that breaks it down how the document is formatted in a general way.

Tips? Answers? Illumination of any sort? I'd really appreciate it. :)

how do i do the switcheroo on a text list?

edjusted — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:45:46 -0800

I did a dumb thing. I put together a book list in this format: first-name last-name (tab) book-title Note that there *isn't* a comma between the author's first and last name. Is there any "computer magic" I can perform to change it to this format: last-name first-name (tab) book-title The list is just in text format, for what it's worth. I'm on a Mac but also have access to a PC. I'd rather not have to cut-n-paste the last names, it's a pretty long list.

How to get rid of the line above the endnotes in microsoft word?

jefsolo — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:57:55 -0800

In ms word, in endnotes, there's this little two-inch line in the upper-left corner to symbolize that you're in "footnote land," even on the second page of the endnotes and after. It's the same line that's at the bottom of the page before a footnote. Is there any way to remove this line? I have a mac, but I think the same issue comes up with PCs. I need to get rid of this line to fulfill the formatting requirements to post my dissertation, so any help would be much appreciated!

Replacing Windows

pilibeen — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:38:34 -0800

I'm thinking of getting rid of Windows XP and switching to a Linux distro....and I have some questions. I've used Xubuntu on an old laptop in the past, and have been relatively happy with it. My desktop, which has XP on it, is a ~5 yo Dell XPS 400, with the original XP install. It's really started to creep the last year or so, and it takes forever for the thing to startup, and apps to load - when they finally load they frequently crash. When I run the occasional antivirus/antispyware program I usually come up with something that needs repaired/quarantined.

So is this a good candidate for a complete wipe of windows? I have Wubi installed and the performance of Ubuntu doesn't seem that great. Could this be because of my shoddy windows partition?

If I should just clear Windows, how exactly should I setup my partitions on the new Linux install? I've heard of people making a separate partition for their home folder or something, so it makes upgrading easier. Does this make sense?

Finally, I basically just use my desktop for surfing, word processing, playing mp3's, and watching movies. Is Ubuntu a good candidate for this - or is it mostly bloat? Would I be better off with something a little more customizeable? My highest priority would be speed, but I'd also like a distro that looks clean and modern. I don't need any fancy rotating cube effects, etc.

Thanks for the help

How to get around Excel macro warning.

emjay — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:18:34 -0800

How to bypass Excel macro warning or alternative to macro. Working in Excel and need to "highlight" when others replace a formula with a manually entered value.

For different reasons, this complicated, multi-sheet, multi-user spreadsheet cannot be locked or protected as 2 dozen individuals make periodic changes to it and since they often enter information incorrectly, we want some formatting to make the errors stand out when they enter it, or for the oblivious, make it easier for the reviewer to catch the problems.

I do not want alternatives to Excel (Open Office, Google, etc) nor do I want recommendations to use something besides a spreadsheet.

What I need is an easily implemented patch/fix to disable the macro warning (A Digital signature is not an option) or an alternative, non-macro, way to implement the same setup below.

NAME is defined as "FormulaCheck"
which Refers to "=GET.CELL(48,INDIRECT("rc",0))"

The affected cells are formatted with a standard RED Fill Color
They are then Conditionally formatted with Formula is "FormulaCheck" with the conditional format to be a fill color of pale blue with no other conditions (FormulaCheck is a True/False)

This allows for the formula to display the normal visual look and formatting when all is well and if someone enters data manually that overwrites a formula it will stand out in RED. The intent is so that the user, or the reviewer will easily be able to locate the screw-ups.

The problem with this older macro language is that it also requires the user to click on "enable" or "yes" or some variation to allow macros to run whenever they open the document. This is done by the many individuals a few times a day.

My google-fu has failed me and I need some alternative to disable the macros or to try it in VBA (which I'm really not familiar with.)

Bonus points if it is easy to implement so that I can document the use for other spreadsheets the users may want to try this on.

Latex filter, no, the other kind of latex

jonesor — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:36:51 -0800

Latex filter (not that sort). I'm using Latex (with TexShop and Bibdesk) and I need to format a bibliography in a particular way. Please help! I need to format the bibliography so that each reference simply follows on from the one before, without a carriage return.

i.e. like this:

1. Bloggs, F. 2000 Working can be fun. Journal of Work Science 10:30-45. 2. Doe, J. 1999 Camels for beginners. Camel Racing Press 34:56-76. 3. Giles, F. 1987 Sheep are woolly. Farmers Weekly. 4:67-90.

Rather than this:

1. Bloggs, F. 2000 Working can be fun. Journal of Work Science 10:30-45.

2. Doe, J. 1999 Camels for beginners. Camel Racing Press 34:56-76.

3. Giles, F. 1987 Sheep are woolly. Farmers Weekly. 4:67-90.

Are there any style files out there that accomplish this? Or ones that can be easily edited to do it?

I'm a total beginner at this...

Title page info on a title page-less paper?

jroybal — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:41:22 -0800

ChicagoManualofStyleFilter: I'm trying to figure out what Chicago dictates (is there even guidance here?) for proper setup of title page info for a short paper of perhaps five pages or less without a title page. That is to say, how does the information that would go on a title page get formatted when one isn't used. Name/date/course/prof/etc., moved to the top of the first page. Can anyone point me to a specific section in the manual? Bonus question: I know what it vaguely looks like (LastName PageNumber), but I'm also looking for specific guidance for last name and page number info in the short paper's header. Thanks!

@#$%#$ Word!

ottereroticist — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:29:30 -0800

MS Word 2004 for the Mac: Annoying unexpected behavior when editing tables. WTF Filter: Copying and pasting rows within a table unexpectedly results in separate tables.

For example, if I select three rows, and either drag or cut&paste those rows to a different point in the table, the three rows are inserted as a separate table, not as rows in the existing table.

The new table is contiguous with the original one, with no paragraph mark between them. But if I choose Select Table, the moved rows are not selected. Instead, they have a dotted outline of their own, along with their own "handle" (little box with arrows at the upper left corner).

This is causing formatting and display problems. More importantly, it is causing me to doubt my sanity.

I have been using Word for many years and this version since 2004, and I consider myself an expert user. And yet I've never seen this behavior before.

I expect Word to move the rows within the table, not to create a new table. Could Word really have just started acting this way? Or have I just never noticed this behavior before?

Most importantly, how can I reliably cut and paste rows of a table within that table without seemingly creating a separate table?

(Version is 11.3.5, if that matters.)

Formatting charts in Illustrator CS3

special-k — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:03:16 -0800

How do I format an entire data series for a chart in Illustrator CS3? I’m new to illustrator and am having a hell of a time formatting a graph. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to format an entire data series at the same time. Say I have a bar chart with two data series, A and B. I can’t just click on A and change the color for all the bars and the legend at the same time. I have to click each individual bar, and then the legend and change the color, which seems very tedious and needless.
I also have plenty of line charts where I have to select each segment of each line to change the color, which is way more frustrating. I’m sure there’s a simpler way, I just don’t know how. Can anyone tell me a simpler way to do this?

Bonus: Know of any blogs/video tutorials where I can learn to get better at making charts in Illustrator CS3? Book suggestions are also welcome.

Thanks!

I just want the pop up to go away.

misanthropicsarah — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:07:17 -0800

You know the pop up format menu that comes up in Word 2007 when you highlight something? How do I turn that off? This thing. I want it gone. It annoys me. I googled around and looked thru some old posts here, but I just can't find anything about how to disable it or turn it off.

I'm sure there's a simple answer, but I don't know what it is.