Formatting Word for opening files

It sounds to me--someone who's minimally proficient at Word--like you need to get reacquainted with some of its features. (But you're way ahead of the woman I knew who retyped her whole novel because she didn't know about copy and paste.)

I bet I still have my Word cheat-sheet, and I bet even though I made it a lot of years ago, the commands apply to newer versions. If you want a copy, I'd be glad to post it.

Maryn, who did not take naturally to Word

Until the Cat finds and stickies the master cheat sheet, here's the one I used. Note that I made it when I had Word 7, then updated it for Word 2002 and later Word 2003. If you run a newer version, some of these may not apply.

Block Protect Paragraph: select, Alt+O, P, Alt+F, Alt+K, Enter (Format, Paragraph, Text Flow, Keep Lines Together, OK) (see also Keep Text Together)
Bold, start or stop: Ctrl+B
Center: Select text, then Ctrl+E
Change Margins: File, Page Setup (among several methods)
Characters, foreign, mathematical, typographic: Alt+I, S (Insert, Symbol)
Comment, Create: Alt+I, A, type comment text, Alt+C (Insert, Annotation, type text, Close)
Comment, Edit: Alt+V, A, change text, Alt+C (View, Annotations, change text, Close)
Comment, View: Alt+V, A (View, Annotations)
Copy: highlight, Ctrl+C (see Paste)
Copyright symbol ©: Ctrl+Alt+C
Cut: highlight, Ctrl+X (see Paste)
Find: Ctrl+F
Flush Right: Alt+O, P, Alt+I, Alt+G, (Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing, Alignment, Right)
French é (accent aigu): Ctrl+’+e
French î (accent circonflex): Ctrl+^[Shft+6], i
Go to Page X: Ctrl+G, X
Hanging Indent: Alt+O, P, Alt+I, Alt+S, scroll down, Enter (Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing, Special, Hanging, OK)
Hard Hyphen: Ctrl+Shft+hyphen
Hard Space: Ctrl+Shft+space
Header, Create: Alt+V, H, type text and/or use Page Number button, Close (View, Header and Footer, text, Close or “x”)
Header, Edit: Alt+V, H, edit text, Close (View, Header and Footer, edit, Close)
Header, None on Page 1: Alt+V, H, Page Setup (View, Header and Footer, Page Setup)
Indent: highlight, Tab
Italics, start or stop: Ctrl+I
Keep Paragraph Together: select, Alt+O, P, Alt+F, Alt+K, Enter (Format, Paragraph, Text Flow, Keep Lines Together, OK) (see also Keep Text Together)
Keep Text Together: select, Alt+O, P, Alt+F, Alt+X, Enter (Format, Paragraph, Text Flow, Keep With Next, OK)
Keep Words Together: see Hard Space or Nonbreaking Space
Make It Fit (reduce number of pages or one page): Alt+F, V, “Page-Arrow” button (reduce number of pp) or “Page” button (File, Print Preview, Shrink to Fit)
Nonbreaking Hyphen: Ctrl+Shft+hyphen
Nonbreaking Space: Ctrl+Shft+space
Paste: Ctrl+V
Paste Special: (Pastes HTML/Internet text to word processing) Alt+E, S (Edit, Paste Special)
Print: Ctrl+P (shortcut to File, Print)
Replace: Ctrl+H
Save: Alt+F, S, [type name], S (File, Save, [type name], Save)
Save As: Alt+F, A (File, Save As)
Select All (highlight everything): Ctrl+A
Shrink to Fit (reduce number of pages): Alt+F, V, “Page-Arrow” button (File, Print Preview, Shrink to Fit)
Spellcheck: F7
Thesaurus: Shift+F7
Underline, start or stop: Ctrl+U
View Comments: Alt+V, A (View, Annotations)
View Paragraphs: Ctrl+* (Paragraph button)
View Tabs: Ctrl+* (Paragraph Button)
Word Count: Alt+T, W (Tools, Word Count)

On a lot of these, there's more than one way to execute the same command. As a leftie whose mouse is on the right, I tend to gravitate toward keyboard-based commands rather than mouse.

Hope some of it's useful. You'll find you memorize the ones you use often pretty quickly, but there are a few things I still look up.

Maryn, whose computer is getting old but still runs fine

Wow, alleycat, I didn't know a whole bunch of those. Cool!

Maryn, who has to go play with them all

That never occurred to me, Clair. Thanks for the tip.

Maryn, not too old to learn, but close