In my last post, I mentioned that I need to learn to do something new every day. I sort of implied that it’s a new years resolution or something. It’s not. I actually believe that I do learn something new every day, even after almost a half century spinning around on our little blue pixel in space.

Sometimes I incorporate what I learn into my life. More rarely, I am still conscious of what it was by the end of the day. So my new years resolution is to try to keep track of the things I learn. One thing every day.

Have you ever checked out OddTodd? It’s a fun site. He does a thing called his Daily Fact I Learned From The TV. It’s cool. And in the spirit of ripping off that premise, I propose to offer you – my indefatigable Reader – a daily what I learned today. Except I probably won’t post it every day. Maybe I’ll keep a list and post them once a week.

Assuming I succeed at all. I’m taking odds.

The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

Here’s my first episode of What I Learned Today and it’s a double for your money. 

… And by the way, I didn’t say these were going to be funny. I’m just a writer. I’m not OddTodd or Ze Frank.

Quick Tip for Showing/Hiding Mark-up (reviewing elements) in MS Word 2003.

When I’m working on a document, I often insert comments using the reviewing functions in Word. Sometimes I use Track Changes, so that all my editing markups appear conditionally until I finish the editing job.

There is an option to have the comments and tracked changes appear as balloons in the right column, or not. It’s nice to be able to turn the comments balloons on and off, so they’re not always in your way, right?

It’s always been my habit to go to the Reviewing Toolbar, click Show then scroll down to Balloons. A slow method.


Yesterday I learned that if you go to View > Markup, you can easily hide all the balloons, and the changes. This shows you the document without comments, and with the changes that you have made but not yet finalized. In other words, the final document without markups.That’s faster.

Today I learned that on the Reviewing Toolbar, there’s an option to select how you want to view the document. You can see the Final Showing Markups, the Final, the Original Showing Markups, or the Original. That’s a lot faster, and easier.

Sweet!

Well, let’s see what I’ve learned in a week or so, right? Maybe I’ll learn how I’ve been using Word for 15 years without knowing those obvious functions were there.