Use a nonbreaking space to keep words together
Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:19 AM
Learn how to keep two words together when they happen to fall at the end of the line and Word pushes the last name to the next line.
Microsoft Word
Use a nonbreaking space to keep words together
Unless you've enabled hyphenation, Word looks for a space character to determine when to wrap text to the next line. That won't always be what you want, though. You'll want to keep some words and phrases together, regardless of where they fall in relation to the right margin.
For example, suppose you want to keep a person's first and last name together, but they happen to fall at the end of the line and Word pushes the last name to the next line.
When this happens, you can keep the names together by joining them with a nonbreaking space. Just glue them together with a nonbreaking space, as follows:
- Enter the first name as you normally would.
- Instead of entering a normal space character, press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+Spacebar.
- Enter the last name.
Using a nonbreaking space, you can keep words together.
Microsoft Excel
Automatically save Excel data, or not, when exiting a workbook
Excel offers users one last chance to save changes when exiting a workbook. But occasionally, user interaction isn't necessary, and you can eliminate this step by forcing Excel to do one of two things:
- Save changes without prompting the user.
- Don’t save changes and don’t prompt the user.
There's no built-in setting for altering this behavior. You'll use one of two subprocedures. When you want Excel to save changes to the workbook without prompting the user, add the following subprocedure to the ThisWorkbook module:
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
'Save changes to workbook when closing, without prompting user.
Me.Save
End Sub
This procedure assumes you will always want to save changes.
To exit a workbook without saving changes or prompting the user, add the following subprocedure to the ThisWorkbook module:
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
'Close workbook without saving changes.
Me.Saved = True
End Sub
This procedure simply tricks Excel. By setting the Saved property to True, Excel believes changes have been saved.
You can include both in the same workbook, but you must comment out one of them, as they both use the workbook's Before Close event procedure. In addition, they work only when added to ThisWorkbook.
Microsoft Outlook
Permanently delete Outlook items using the keyboard--maybe
When you delete an Outlook item--e-ail message, contact, task, appointment and so on, Outlook moves the item to the Deleted Items folder. You control whether Outlook then empties the Deleted Items folder when you close Outlook.
That's probably adequate for most of you, but you can override the settings for individual items. To do so, press [Shift]+Delete instead of just Delete. Doing so permanently deletes the selected item instead of moving it to the Deleted Items folder.
Microsoft calls this trick a hard delete. As always, use caution when using this shortcut, as you might not be able to recover the permanently deleted item.
Might not?
Yes, might not. Permanently deleted doesn't mean completely wiped off the face of the earth. It means the item is permanently deleted from the current window. You can often find other copies, if you know where to look:
- There might be a copy of the permanently deleted item in your backup file.
- A copy of a permanently deleted e-mail might still exist in the Sent Items folder, as an original item or as part of a continued conversation.
- If you sent or forwarded the message, one of more of the recipients might have a copy on their system.
The idea that you can permanently delete an Outlook item is iffier than you might think. For most of us, it doesn't really matter, but if you permanently delete an item you probably can find a copy somewhere; whether that's good or bad depends on your circumstances.
By the way, to configure the way Outlook empties the Deleted Items folder, choose Options from the Tools menu, click the Other tab, and check or uncheck the Empty Deleted Items Folder Upon Exiting option, accordingly.
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