Word timesaving tips: Random text, quick definitions, formatting tricks and more

Word timesaving tips: Random text, quick definitions, formatting tricks and more

Make it easier to format and read long documents (and shorter ones) with these tips. Microsoft Word has many, many tricks up its sleeve. The seven here will help you through some common snags in complex documents.

Quickly change Line Spacing

You can change the line spacing on a single paragraph, page, or the entire document in two easy keystrokes. Place your cursor anywhere on the target paragraphs, then press:

Ctrl+1 to change the line spacing to single spaced.
Ctrl+2 to change the line spacing to double spaced.
Ctrl+5 to change the line spacing to 1.5 (or one and a half spaced).

Note: You must use the numbers above the alphabet keys. This shortcut does not recognize the numeric keypad.

Rand command

1. To generate random text for tutorials (like this one), graphic designs and other projects, place your cursor at the beginning of a new paragraph and type =Rand(2,3) then press Enter. The first number determines the number of paragraphs, and the second number determines the number of sentences in each paragraph. For example, the following two paragraphs were generated using the =Rand(2,3) command.
Video provides a powerful way to help you prove your point. When you click Online Video, you can paste in the embed code for the video you want to add. You can also type a keyword to search online for the video that best fits your document.
To make your document look professionally produced, Word provides header, footer, cover page, and text box designs that complement each other. For example, you can add a matching cover page, header, and sidebar. Click Insert and then choose the elements you want from the different galleries.

2. You can also insert the random text in Latin; for example, =Lorem(2,2) looks like the text below:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa.
Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim.

Quick definitions

You need synonyms to avoid repetition in your writing, but synonyms can easily stray from the precise definition. The Define feature defines words for you in just two clicks.

1. Place your cursor on any word in your document and right-click once.

2. In the drop-down menu that appears, click Define.

3. A panel on the right opens and displays the selected word with its definition.

If the panel fails to open, then you have not yet selected a dictionary app from the Office Apps Store. From the Insert tab, click the Store button. Choose Reference under Category on the Apps for Office screen. Browse through the Reference apps and select a dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster. The screen for the selected app appears. Click the Trust It button and Microsoft downloads the app to your hard drive. Now, when you right-click a word, then click Define, the Merriam-Webster dictionary appears onscreen in the right panel with the definition of the selected word.

Expand/Collapse paragraphs

Expanding and collapsing paragraphs make it easier to browse through long documents. For example, it’s easier to skim a document if all the text below the headers is collapsed. It’s also easier to read onscreen documents if the paragraphs that you’ve already read are collapsed. For extremely long documents, especially technical documents and reference materials, collapsed paragraphs are less intimidating for your readers and colleagues.
To set up this feature, you create headings that define sections of paragraphs that can be expanded or collapsed.

1. Type a few paragraphs (or use the =Rand command to create some random text). Enter a header over the first two paragraphs, then select it, and choose Heading1 from the Styles group under the Home tab.

2. Enter a few more paragraphs, add another header, then choose Heading1 again. Place your cursor on the first heading. Notice that a solid triangle appears. This symbol means this paragraph is collapsible.

3. Right-click on the first header, select Expand/Collapse > Collapse Heading and the paragraph disappears. Notice the triangle is now clear, which means there are collapsed paragraphs beneath this header.

4-5. Any subheadings (such as Heading 2, 3, 4, etc.) under Heading One will also collapse when the main Heading1 collapses.

Quick Underlines

When you want to run a line across the page, you don't need to press and hold the hyphen or asterisk key and then add or subtract characters until you fill the line. Instead, type a sentence, press Enter, then do one of the following procedures:

Press the hyphen/dash (-) key three times, then press Enter to draw a .75 point underline.

Press the underscore ( _ ) key three times, then press Enter to draw a 1.5 point underline.

Press the tilde (~) key three times, then press Enter to draw a zigzag underline.

Press the asterisk/star (*) key three times, then press Enter to draw a dotted underline.

Press the equal (=) key three times, then press Enter to draw a double underline.

Easy tricks to rearrange lists

If you have a numbered or bulleted list of items and suddenly decide that number 2 should be number 5 and number 4 should be number 2, most people just cut and paste the listed items until they are rearranged in the proper order. For a short list, no problem. But if you’re working with a long list, this can be a real headache.

1. Position your cursor anywhere on the phrase,

2. Press Alt+Shift and hold, then press the up/down arrows to move the phrase up or down on the list.

3. Now all you have to do is renumber the list.

4. Bullet lists are easier because you don’t have to reorder the numbers once the list is reorganized.

Vertical Selection feature

The Vertical Selection feature is a handy tool for making quick changes to a vertical column of characters—for example, adding or removing an attribute such as bold or italics, changing the color, font, and/or size of the numbers, bullets, or text.

You can delete the selected vertical text without also deleting the rest of the text beside it. For example, you can delete the numbers in a list, but not the list.

1. Press the Alt key, then click on the first character in the list or paragraph and drag the highlight down and over through the characters you want to modify, then make the changes.
Note, however, that you cannot sort the vertical characters separately from the adjacent text. You cannot change the design of a bullet through the Insert > Symbol menu, but you can change it through the Font menu or the Bullet menu (with some limitations).

For example, if you select Home > Paragraph > Bullet Library > Define New Bullet > Symbol, then select a “symbol” bullet from the list, only the first item in the list is affected.

2. If, however, you choose a bullet from the font option (Home > Paragraph > Bullet Library > Define New Bullet > Font)...

3-4. ...or select a picture from the Picture option (Home > Paragraph > Bullet Library > Define New Bullet > Picture), the new bullet displays on all the listed items.

5-6. You can also select the Numbering Library, and choose a nice number format for your list such as all lowercase letters or roman numerals.

JD Sartain/pcworld

Don't Drop the Potato

Many people fear that potatoes will make them fat or cause other health problems. Are potatoes really such villains? Are they any better or worse than bread, rice, or other starchy grains?

A half-baked myth
Potatoes have a bad reputation, in part, because they have a high glycemic index (GI), meaning that their carbohydrates are quickly broken down into sugar, causing blood sugar and insulin levels to rise rapidly. This, in turn, increases fat storage and the risk of obesity and diabetes—at least in theory.

A few studies have implicated potatoes in weight gain and diabetes. For instance, a 2009 study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found a link between potato consumption and waist circumference in women (but not men). Earlier data from the Nurses’ Health Study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2006, linked potato intake and the risk of type 2 diabetes in obese women—especially when potatoes were eaten in place of whole grains.

But there are plenty of caveats to consider before you drop the potato. For one, not all studies support the idea that high-GI diets—let alone potatoes, in particular—have such adverse effects. Several have found no relationship between high-GI diets and body fat or diabetes. In any case, the GI of potatoes and other foods depends on many factors, including how they’re cooked and what they’re eaten with. And not all varieties have such a high GI. Russet potatoes do, for example, but red potatoes rank moderately.

Moreover, it’s hard to separate the effects of potatoes from those of other foods in a typical Western diet. That is, the undesirable associations seen in some studies could be due to the meat, refined grains, sugars and trans fats (as in French fries) in a “meat and potatoes” diet, rather than the potatoes. People also vary in their responses to carbohydrates, and some research suggests that potatoes may be more problematic in overweight and/or sedentary people, who are more likely to have insulin resistance.

Good for weight loss?
On the flip side, some research suggests that potatoes may help with weight control. They rate high in satiety, meaning they help fill you up, so you may eat less. Potatoes also contain proteinase inhibitors, which may suppress appetite. And preliminary experimental work suggests that potato extracts may improve insulin sensitivity and decrease diabetes risk due to their polyphenols. There’s even a weight-loss supplement that contains a potato extract, which is claimed to act as an appetite suppressant, though there’s no evidence it works. More research is needed, certainly, to confirm any weight-loss potential of potato extracts.

Fully baked facts
In actuality, potatoes are relatively low in calories—just 130 to 140 in a medium plain baked potato (5 ounces after cooking). That’s more per ounce than non-starchy vegetables, but fewer than the calories in bread and rice. The problem is that potatoes are often prepared and served with lots of high-calorie ingredients. A 5-ounce potato with two tablespoons of butter and three tablespoons of sour cream has 415 calories and 30 grams of fat. A 5-ounce portion of hash browns, cooked in oil or butter, has 375 calories, while 5 ounces of fast-food French fries has 435 calories. Ounce for ounce, potato chips have more than five times as many calories as a plain potato.

Potatoes are also a good source of fiber (leave the skin on), potassium (more than bananas), and vitamin C, and they provide some protein, iron, B vitamins (notably folate), and magnesium, along with other potentially beneficial plant compounds. The more colorful the potato, the higher the antioxidants.

There’s plenty of room for potatoes in a healthy diet that’s rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes and whole grains. Eat them in moderation and go easy on the oil, cheese and cream when preparing them. By the way, sweet potatoes are technically unrelated to potatoes, but are a nutritious vegetable that provides lots of beta carotene and other carotenoids. You’d do well serving them up in place of white potatoes on occasion.

How to delete Windows File Explorer Address Bar History

How to delete Windows File Explorer Address Bar History

Every Windows user might have observed, whenever he clicks on the ‘down’ arrow or start typing something in the address bar field of File Explorer, a history of all previous locations and URLs appears before him. This could raise privacy or security concerns for some. All the URLs can be deleted by removing them via Registry Editor. In this post, we will see how you can remove or delete Windows File Explorer address bar auto-suggest history items from the drop-down menu.

Delete File Explorer Address Bar History

Press Windows + R to bring up the Run dialog box. Type regedit and hit Enter.
Next, in the windows that opens, navigate to the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TypedPaths

Once there, select the TypedPaths entry from the list of options available.
In the right-side panel, you will see url1, url2, etc corresponding to various URLs or paths. Right-click on the one you want to delete and select Delete.
This way, you can delete one, more or all of the items.
Related tips:

If you wish to delete all address bar history, in Windows 10 you can right-click on the Explorer bar and select Delete history.

To delete all File Explorer History in Windows 10, open Folder Options or File Explorer Options as it is now called, and under the General tab, under Privacy, click on the Clear File Explorer history button.

And, well, then there are always those several free junk file cleaners that let you achieve all this and more with the click of a button.

Measuring Body Weight: Beyond BMI

The body mass index is the standard method for evaluating body weight according to height. A “normal” BMI range is between 18.5 and 25. Between 25 and 30 is considered overweight, and above 30, obese (over 40 is considered extreme obesity). Below 18.5 is underweight, which can be as bad for health as obesity, especially in people over 65. To compute your BMI, you divide your weight (in kilograms) by your height (in meters) squared. Another way to do it: Multiply your weight (in pounds) by 705; divide the result by your height (in inches); then divide again by your height. This government website will compute your BMI for you.

Bear in mind that BMI, weight tables, and other indices serve only as approximate guides to evaluating weight. The cutoffs between weight categories are somewhat arbitrary. And some experts believe that the cutoffs for the normal range may be too low. Indeed, some studies suggest that BMIs in the overweight range (but not obesity) are not unhealthy and may even be the “sweet spot” on the weight spectrum in terms of longevity, particularly after age 65.

Moreover, the BMI doesn’t make allowance for some factors that affect body fatness and health. For instance, it doesn’t take into consideration how muscular you are, whether you are large- or small-boned, or whether you have lost height with age.

Perhaps most important, the BMI doesn’t gauge where your body fat is stored, which affects your health risks. If your body is apple-shaped (weight primarily around the waist), you’re at greater risk for various chronic problems, notably cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer, than if you are pear-shaped (fattest in the hips, buttocks, and thighs). It’s possible to have a normal BMI and carry too much weight around the waist and thus still be at elevated risk.

Several factors, notably gender, influence fat distribution. Men store most excess fat in the midsection, while women tend to accumulate it lower on the body. Still, women can gain abdominal fat, too, particularly after menopause (largely because of hormonal changes). Heredity and activity level also affect body shape.
While most fat in the hips and thighs is stored just under the skin (subcutaneous fat), more fat in the midsection is stored in and around the liver and other organs (visceral fat). These fat cells deep in the abdominal area are more “metabolically active” than subcutaneous fat. That is, they release certain fatty acids, hormones, and pro-inflammatory compounds, which are believed to account for some of the adverse health effects. Visceral fat increases estrogen production, for instance, which may partly explain the increase in breast cancer risk in some postmenopausal women. And by inducing chronic inflammation in the body, excess visceral fat may further boost cardiovascular risk.

To determine if you carry too much abdominal fat, measure your waist circumference: 40 inches or more indicates high risk for men, 35 inches for women, though risk starts to rise before those cutoffs.

The Power of Hope

Every few years I write about the placebo effect in this space because it’s such a crucial—and potentially confusing—player in health and wellness. The word placebo pops up just about every month in the Wellness Letter. It turns up a dozen times here in our article about reflexology.

How much do acupuncture’s apparent benefits derive from the placebo effect? That’s a key question about most complementary and alternative therapies—but also about much of mainstream medicine. Researchers and doctors have a love/hate relationship with the placebo effect. While we want to encourage it, we don’t want the benefits of our treatments to derive solely from the placebo effect. But does it really matter? And what is this mysterious phenomenon?

The placebo effect occurs when belief in a remedy or in the power of a trusted and caring practitioner actually helps the remedy work and triggers an improvement in symptoms and health. A placebo (Latin for “I will please”) is a “fake” or simulated treatment, such as a dummy pill or sham procedure, administered to someone who is unaware that it’s not a “real” treatment. As far back as ancient times it was known that the hope and expectation people experience when treated—even with a placebo—can play a large role in recovery. When it comes to pain and many other phenomena, the mind and body work together.
That makes it hard to tell to what extent beneficial results come from a treatment itself or from the patient’s positive expectations. But it’s essential to know whether the apparent efficacy of a treatment such as acupuncture is due solely to the placebo effect. The only way to find out is to test treatments against a placebo in controlled clinical trials, in which neither the researchers nor the patients know who is getting the treatment and who is getting the placebo. Even with a drug or procedure that’s more effective than a placebo, a patient’s hope and expectation that it will help can add to its effectiveness.

It’s estimated that anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of people given a placebo show some improvement for a variety of symptoms or conditions. This effect is more likely to occur when people believe that someone is trying to help them and thus expect relief, and especially if the someone is an optimistic practitioner in a therapeutic setting.

Placebos have a bad reputation because they involve deception. If I prescribe sugar pills for patients with migraines, they may have less pain for a while, but I have deceived them. Doctors are obliged to try to cure the ailment, not merely make patients feel better temporarily. But often we do both, and sometimes the latter is the best we can do. Some patients may not care if they are secretly given a placebo, so long as it helps. However, others would lose trust in their doctors if they found out. And without trust, even proven treatments may work less well.

But things are not always black or white—placebo or effective treatment. For instance, even after reading dozens of studies and reviews about acupuncture, I’m not sure how beneficial it is beyond its strong placebo effect. Still, when I was in practice I sometimes advised acupuncture and I would still do so today—at least for patients with conditions such as back or neck pain that isn’t alleviated by conventional treatment, or nausea caused by chemotherapy.

The trick is to harness the placebo effect as an ally in healing—for treatments that are of proven efficacy as well as for those of uncertain efficacy.

How to Exercise in the Car

Americans average almost an hour commuting every day, according to the latest statistics. Imagine how fit we'd be if we spent that much time exercising. You can't work in a cardio routine behind the wheel, of course. But a few simple exercises can ease stress and tone muscles when you're stopped at a light or stuck in a traffic jam:

Fist pushes
For this strengthening exercise, make fists with both hands and place them together in front of your chest, elbows out. Push your fists together. Count to five. Relax. Repeat.

Hand pulls
 For another strengthening move, curl the fingers of both hands and then hook them together in front of your chest. Keeping your fingers locked, exert pressure as if to pull your hands apart
.
Neck stretches
 Relax your shoulders. Then gently tilt your head toward your left shoulder. Hold the stretch. Then repeat on the other side.

Chest stretches
 Raise both arms with your palms facing forward until your forearms are horizontal. Push your elbows back to stretch your chest and shoulder blades.

So that we can easily do exercise even while we are driving to have fitness, have health for me.

How to reset Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 when things are broken

How to reset Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 when things are broken

In Windows 10, Microsoft is introducing many new features to make users more productive, such as a new Start menu, Cortana, new universal apps, Settings, which is the central place to configure the operating system, ultimately designed to replace Control Panel, and much more. The software giant is also introducing Microsoft Edge, the new default web browser built for the future web and to replace Internet Explorer (which it's still present for compatibility purposes).
Microsoft Edge is a completely new web browser with a minimal design that focus on web content, and like Chrome and Firefox, the software maker plans to match and surpass the features available from its competitors with extensions, web notes, tab preview, Cortana, and more.
While the web browser works quite alright without major problems, it's still in the early days. Some users may run into some issues, such as sudden crashes, slow performance, or simply it won't launch.
If you were running Chrome or Firefox, and you're having similar issues, you should try to uninstall and reinstall the web browser to try to resolve the problem. However, like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge is part of Windows 10. It's nearly impossible to uninstall the app, and even if you could, you might run into different issues.

If you are having problems with the new web browser, you can try resetting the instance of Microsoft Edge in your account to try to fix the issue you're having.
Of course, we would only recommend you do this as a last resort process, where you have tried everything else and nothing worked.

Warning: Using this guide might cause you lose your favorites, history, and settings. Before, you move forward, it's recommended that you perform a full backup or create a system restore point in case something goes wrong and to need to restore your last good known state of Windows 10.

Fixing Microsoft Edge

1- If you're running Microsoft Edge, close it.

2- Open File Explorer and type the following path into the address: 

C:\Users\UseYourUsername\AppData\Local\Packages and hit Enter. (Remember to replace "UseYourUsername" with your user account name.)

3- Select and try to delete the Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe folder as you would with any other folder. If you get a "Folder Access Denied" prompt, simply click Continue. Also, there might be some content that you won't be able to delete. If this is the case, in the dialog box, select to skip the files.

You should be able to delete most of the content inside the folder, but if you can't right-click Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe, select Properties, remove the check from the Read-only option, and click Apply and OK.

4- Once you've tried deleting all the content, go inside the Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe folder and try deleting the remaining folders by selecting all the folders, right-clicking them, selecting Delete, and clicking Yes to confirm the deletion. You may notice that you can't delete AC folder, but that's alright.

5- Restart your computer.

6- Now, were going to re-register Microsoft Edge in your account. Open the Start menu, search for Windows PowerShell, right-click it from the result, and select Run as administrator.

7- Type the following command and hit Enter:
cd C:\Users\UseYourUsername. (Remember to replace "UseYourUsername" with your user account name.)

Then, type the following command exactly and hit Enter:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" -Verbose}

If the process was completed successfully, you would see a message similar to this one:

That's all there is to it. If you want to be cautious, restart your computer one more time, and then you should be able to run Microsoft Edge again and hopefully without any issues.