Two new articles have been added to the following categories:

• Check out the latest entry under Microsoft Excel for tips on how to shape up your spreadsheets at work.
• Take a look at the new article under Microsoft Word for advice on how to deal with the Bullets and Numbering function.

Be sure to check back later today for additional updates.

If you have ever used Microsoft Word, there is a 99% chance that you have had to use the Bullets and Numbering function. I have had to put together numerous reports, etc. that use many numbered and bulleted lists, and it has been my experience that they can be pretty tricky to get just right.  Knowing this, I thought it might be useful if I shared some helpful tips that I have found along the way.

Probably one of the biggest problems people have using Bullets and Numbering is getting the indenting right.  This can be one of the most frustrating things to format when your working on a document.  Scenario: You have created a list; however you want to indent a bullet point in the middle of the list.  How do you do this?  There are a number of ways to indent, the ones that I use are the following:

• Use the Tab Key to indent the selected line.  This should indent the selected line and change the bullet point to whatever style is set for the secondary line of bullet points (you can customize this, but usually I leave this on the default setting).
• You can right click on the bullet point you want to indent and select Increase Indent.  This should achieve the same result as using the Tab key.

To decrease the indent on a line, you can either use the Backspace key or right click on the bullet point of the line you want to decrease the indent on and select Decrease Indent.  

Another problem occurs as you’re making your list, and you want to be able to make indented sub-lists (indented bullet points) but then create a point on the level of your main list.  This is the scenario: You start making your list, then you get to a point that you want to make a sub-list.  However, once you indent the point, the next point is indented as well.  One way to handle this is to just decrease that indent of the desired point as described above.  The way I do it is to keep a point at the end of the list that I call “Filler”.  That way, I can just press enter on that point and create new point on the level that I want.  It saves a little bit of time, but it adds up if you are doing a lot of lists.

This little tip you probably know already, but if you want to indent your entire list without having any of the format change, all you have to do is put your cursor on the first line in the list and hit Tab.  This time Backspace will not help you out to decrease the indent of your list, so have your Undo button ready to fly (which it does more often than not for me) as it will actually erase your point.

These are just some basic tips for using the Bullets and Numbering functionality in Microsoft Word, look for future articles on Advanced Bullets and Numbering.