Radical Focus

August 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Radical focus seeks the time, place and tools to work without distraction. Some of us can find it at those times of day when no one else is awake, when the phone does not ring, and email and other message sources are quiet. Night owls can find it, some before and at the crack of dawn, others after all go to sleep. It can be found during the day, but one must construct artificial walls, configuring and honoring the Do Not Disturb signs physically and virtually.

We may find radical focus on a blank sheet of paper, a clean desk, the removal of physical clutter mirrored in the removal of mental clutter. Perhaps I am especially inspired to write in these terms sitting in a hotel room, in the quiet of an early morning, my last of a visit to Las Vegas. Here, curiously, there is radical focus in a different way. The floors of the casinos focus immerse one’s senses in the cues and attractions of gambling. Low ambient light, no view of any outside world, no clocks, and a sea of flashing lights. The “streets” of shops in one luxury mall after offer the same. The Forum at Caesar’s goes one step further, creating a scene worthy of The Truman Show, its vaulted ceiling with trump l’oeil sky of permanent twilight blue and clouds.

Radical focus can be found on the computer and tablet screen, but the tools to do it may be hidden. Keystrokes, unheralded, may reveal an almost magic removal of visual clutter that can enable radical focus. For Windows users the clicks and keys that “show the desktop” minimize all open Windows, removing the distraction of multiple overlapping applications. For Windows 7 and 8 users, the keystroke combination WINDOWS KEY and D does the same.

This quiet morning brings the inspiration of full screen writing. It is the closest experience on screen to a blank piece of paper, and seems a refreshing return to focused writing. On an iPad, writing in Docs To Go, the Settings tool offers a Full Screen Option.  In Word 2013, one can hide the ribbon, but the choice in earlier versions to support full screen, blank page editing seems to have disappeared. Still, with ribbon and ruler hidden, the distractions are reduced, but not as radically as I seek. An option to hide the Status Bar also seems to have disappeared. The Windows option to AutoHide the Task Bar removes a distracting element.

The most radical blank page I have found recently is the Word Press option for “Distraction Free Writing Mode.” Add the full screen option in the browser, and no distraction from the text appears on the screen. Visual and mental clarity arrive.

It seems a shame that I took 30 minutes trying to find the same experience, unsuccessfully, in Microsoft Word 2013.

 

 

Filed Under: Technology Fluency For Lawyers

The Next Book on the Shelf – Essays on Paths to Learning and Understanding, Then, Now and To Come

August 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

On an August morning in 2013, over 2,000 at the International Legal Technology Association’s first keynote address, futurist / visionary Scott Klososky pressed the crowd for memories of technologies past, as he shared visions of the future. “Remember”, he said, “when you entered a library (his emphasis) and pulled a drawer from a cabinet of drawers, drew out an index card (still his emphasis) and read the number 189.11. What was that number?” To the great relief of those of us of a certain age, many in  the crowd murmured “Dewey Decimal System.”

The thoughts of “library”, “card catalogue” and “Dewey Decimal System” roused me the next morning to begin here  series of essays on the physical and virtual paths to learning, understanding, sharing that we have experienced, are now experiencing and may experience in a present and future flooded with technologies that did not exist, and were hardly imagined in my childhood. I welcome your company on this journey, through responsible comments and discussion.

Pocantico Hills Central School housed a public library that doubled as our elementary school library, and the setting for my first encounters with the Dewey Decimal System. The “old building”, opened in 1932, a gift of John D. Rockefeller, whose family’s estate surrounded the school, and whose father’s decisions to purchase all of the commercial establishments in the hamlet of Pocantico Hills meant that the school was the only non-church public building. The library then, with its rich, dark wooden shelves, housed a few thousand books, both those for the school and those for the adults living in the school district. So a second grader, eager to read, could begin not only to pull those cards, but to explore the shelves of books to which they led.

The number led to a shelf, and a book. In the pages of the book, perhaps, the answer to the question, the story sought, by the search of the card catalogue. (I know, the most common spelling now is “catalog.”)  The Next Book on the Shelf (and perhaps the next, and the next), to the left or the right, though, could bring unexpected delight and insight, its subject close, but not quite the one revealed by the search of the card catalogue.  The accidental, serendipitous paths of discovery that could be found in the Next Book’s table of contents and index enriched my thoughts, ideas, connections and knowledge.

Near the door of that long room, on the bottom shelves, the volumes of the encyclopedias beckoned – World Book (supposed accessible even to elementary school readers), Americana (our more contemporary response  to the mother books) and the mother books themselves, the Encyclopedia Britannica. Look up an article to start, but find it and begin to turn the pages. The alphabetized collection of topics was not as orderly as the shelved books, but the sense of discovery perhaps stronger.

Skip ahead to college at The University of Chicago and the opening in 1970 of its Regenstein Library. The card catalogues were now wood and steel drawers, and the catalogue alone occupied more space that all of that school/public library. Regenstein opened its stacks, and the shelves and their Next Books grew extraordinarily in number. So did the richness of the Library of Congress classification.  It felt that one could spend a lifetime exploring those shelves, discovering not just one author’s answer or thoughts, but several, even dozens, devoted to just QB  – Astronomy.

When we opened the book, signposts and maps of tables of contents led us through volume and chapter, editorial guides to learning and discovery. Sometimes the path was direct – finding an answer quickly. Often the path was fractal, bending and curving along a path that accumulated associations intended and accidental, or whole new paths triggered by opening the Next Book on the Shelf.

Skip again now to this computer, sitting at this moment in a hotel room in Las Vegas, with its wireless connection to the Internet accomplished through the Personal Hotspot created by my iPhone. So vast compared to Pocantico Hills, though the smell and feel of the wooden shelves and catalogue drawers is a fading memory that I struggle to conjure.

Here (or anywhere I can connect to the Internet), perhaps I can restore and renew my library experience at the Digital Public Library of America. I will take that tour in the next essay.

These memories trigger many questions about the experience of the computer and Internet driven life we have created. When we study and learn by Google search (substitute Bing, Yahoo or perhaps Dogpile), have we (and especially our children) lost the kind of mental exercise made our thinking strong? Does our new experience suffer from the resistance to “disease” that monoculture commercial agriculture suffers?Is Search at blazing speed a false substitute for study?

Far more to consider than can be packed into one essay.

Filed Under: Next Book on the Shelf

Technology Fluency for Lawyers™- A Continuing Legal Education Curriculum

July 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The practice of law once required fluency in Latin. With or without Latin, 21st Century legal practice requires fluency in technology. Comment 8 to Section 1.1 of the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct now states:

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and education and comply with all continuing legal education requirements to which the lawyer is subject.

Technology instruction for lawyers can be frustrating – classes peppered with jargon, not grounded in the experience and reality of law practice. Too many classes feature The Demo – not quite working – displaying confusing undocumented procedures. The Technology Fluency classes include concepts, strategies, tools and methods for professional use of technology in law practice. Each session will be accompanied by a handout detailing and illustrating the content, together with resources for additional study. An enhanced version of the handouts with live links to resources will be available online. Technology Fluency classes may be adapted to reference the technologies in use at the firms or departments where it is presented. Technology Fluency classes are delivered on site or remotely at law firms or departments that arrange for them. Charges depend on the number of classes given, not by the number of participants. In Pennsylvania, qualified law firms may self-administer classes, or classes may be administered through the Insurance Society of Philadelphia.

Practice Safe Computing (1 hour)

Professional responsibility, client service and common sense demand care and attention throughout the use of technology in law practice. Recent legislation and increased client expectations and scrutiny make security procedures a requirement for law practice today. Even if the dangers of “Reply to All” and Word Metadata seem familiar,  reinforcement of safe computing practices helps all lawyers. The proliferation of technology’s tools – from desktop protected computers to smartphones, tablets and tools nearly everywhere, all the time – create potential security risks and opportunities for discovery. The class will offer guidelines for safe, secure technology use.

Mastering Messages; Taming Tasks (1 hour)

Email messages have turned into the kudzu of professional life – planted as if a quick sprouting ornamental vine, but growing, seemingly without limit. Now email strangles, disrupts and fragments the work day (and nights and weekends). The class will focus on strategies, methods and tools to –

  • Reduce the stress pervasive with e-mail.
  • Save time wasted by the e-mail inbox.
  • Move from message to action.
  • Sustain professionalism when writing, distributing, storing and managing e-mail messages.

Key strategies include underused or overlooked tools, including calendar and tasks to convert e-mail traffic to actions.

Profiles in Metadata – A New Balance (1 hour)

Like medicine, metadata (hidden information in documents and files) in the wrong doses and used incorrectly, can poison, compromising client confidentiality and reputation. Metadata, used intentionally, helps lawyer and client work together accurately, promptly and efficiently. The class teaches how well-planned and descriptive metadata profiles can balance client service with risk protection. The class features careful use of Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature, taking advantage of improvements available in Office 2013/2010, together with the capabilities of third party products for metadata control. The class builds on content included in the American Lawyer Media Webinar,  “You Let What Go Out – Protecting Today’s Transactional Lawyer”. The live presentation of the webinar qualified for CLE in New York, California and Illinois. The webinar may be viewed by first registering at http://info.law.com/Microsystems_Registration.html.  Then view the webinar at http://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=lobby.jsp&eventid=508015&sessionid=1&key=E145E82210EF42D07A7670836960E08F&eventuserid=68520232.

Managing the Deal – Time, Tasks and the Closing Checklist (1 hour)

Lawyers need to manage all their deals, and most transactional lawyers have had a tool right in hand, the Closing Checklist. Yet, for many, it remains a Microsoft Word document, and the tasks and responsibilities that carry the deal and bring it to a close are scattered in personal calendar and task entries, (too) many email messages and more Word documents.

Legal Project Management has grown as a discipline that offers ways to address these issues, but can be daunting and too difficult to staff, with technologies daunting to master.

The class will review the needs to be served when managing deals and offer strategies, methods and responsibilities for using tools at hand, including ones already in Outlook and possible with SharePoint.

 

Drafting Documents – Dangers and Empowerment (1 hour)

When documents travel from lawyer to lawyer, inside or outside of law firms and clients, their structure and formatting can fail suddenly, exploding from the accumulation of cuts and pastes. A document’s “true history” may be lost, scattered in a storm of email messages. Editing on mobile devices adds new dangers.

The class shares approaches and tools to minimize, correct and repair these risks, and maintain an accurate and complete version history.

Technology has empowered drafting since word processing began, and especially when lawyers learned to write and edit documents with all ten fingers. New technologies allow thorough real-time checking of the “grammar” of complex documents, especially the defined terms of transactional documents. What was tedious and manual now approaches the experience of radar and laser enhanced adaptive cruise control in a high performance car. Meet the demands of time and quality work with these tools and methods.

Putting iPads to Work (1 hour)

Can the iPad and its tablet cousins  replace laptops? What are the capabilities of both devices? Is it feasible for users to perform their daily work on an iPad? The class will identify which users might be candidates to use iPads instead of laptops, explaining the applications, tools and support they might need. The class will explain how to identify and manage risks and inefficiency of editing documents on an iPad that originated in Microsoft Office. The class will also explore tools and techniques that take special advantage of the iPads portability and integration with iPhones, particularly for data collection and due diligence away from the office. The class will incorporate content presented a session entitled The iPad as Laptop Replacement at the 2012 International Legal Technology Association’s conference and published in Technology Property – iPads and iPhones: Tools for Practice, Probate and Property, September / October 2012, Vol. 26 No. 5, p. 48, a publication of the Real Property, Trust and Estate Section of the American Bar Association. The article may also be viewed at http://www.blacksbergassociatesllc.com/2012/10/01/ipads-and-iphones-tools-for-practice/

Persuasive Presentations (1 hour)

Point: PowerPoint has finally come of age, 22 years after its introduction. The new visual tools and formats in PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 make it still the “best presentation tool.” Counterpoint: “We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint.” (The New York Times, April 26, 2010). Casualties attributed to “Death by PowerPoint” number in the millions. Synthesis? Keynote (on the iPad) will overtake and replace PowerPoint (on the laptop). Perhaps the best answer – all and none of the above. Could we imagine a brief, a closing argument to a court or jury using PowerPoint? Whether meeting with clients or colleagues, presentations are ubiquitous and expected. Shuffling a slide deck alone does not create an effective presentation. The class will use its own topic as a model for creating, documenting and presenting content effectively. A printed handout will support the class, with an explanation of its own preparation. We will put PowerPoint to work to demonstrate and document drafting, editing and presentations. Graphics – the heart of most presentations – can enhance, inform, engage and inspire inquiry. Many achieve little of those goals. A tour of those that do will illustrate how visual tools can be harnessed for law practice. This class can be presented by itself or together in a series with Data Stories.

Data Stories (1 or 2 hours)

We grow up delighted, educated, excited, and entertained by excellent narrative. Excellent fiction, fantasy, biography, movies, television (even music) rely on master storytellers. Data and numbers – gathered, listed, charted, illustrated – can be brought to life when framed as narrative, making their story clear. Those stories can inform and persuade juries, judges, clients, even colleagues. We will explore the world of Infographics and Data Visualization, drawing on the seminal work of Edward Tufte, the Yale Professor whose work defines excellence in the use and abuse of informational graphics, who coined the term “chart junk” and invented sparklines. We will share excellent data stories from sources such as The New York Times, Google Finance and Bloomberg News and examine how these techniques can be put to use in the practice and business of law firms. Excel can be used to create well narrated, data rich stories. The class will include demonstrations of these tools and techniques, including the implementation of sparklines in Excel 2010 and 2013. The two hour version of the class provides indepth instruction of the use of the techniques.

Collaboration – Strategies and Tactics (1 hour)

As clients insist on more (legal work) for less (fees), mastery of the practices and technologies of collaboration may be more than competitive advantage. It may now be a key survival factor for private law practice. Today’s engagements span time zones, countries and continents. A mass flowering of new, highly connected technologies, driven by cloud computing, mobility and the “consumer revolution” of technology tools and programs, creates new opportunities to lower the cost to connect lawyer to client and, where appropriate, lawyer to lawyer. Yet lawyers must sustain their professional responsibilities for zealous advocacy of their client’s interests, and protection of confidentiality. They are their clients must abide by law and regulation, in the U.S. and around the world, for data privacy and custody. These demand a careful balance between professional responsibility, client service, technology services and lawyer and staff competence. This session provides an overview of the methods and issues involved with rapidly changing tools that permit work together, across the boundaries of lawyers, law firms and clients. With an explosion of capabilities from mobile devices and cloud connections, as well as the arrival of the wealth of connections afforded by social media, these concerns are immediate and fully pressing.

Technology Fluency for Lawyers™ is a trademark of Blacksberg Associates, LLC.

Filed Under: Technology Fluency For Lawyers

Technology Fluency For Lawyers – A Conversation, An Imperative. A History, A Future.

July 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I get tech support from my grandchildren.

A paraphrase of Theodore Olsen’s opening statement at a keynote speech for  Legal Tech NY, February 2013

More than thirty years has passed since the early 1980s arrival of word processing  began to transform the practice of law.  With the passage of waves and generations of technology and lawyers, there remains a chasm separating the leaders of law practice from the technologies and technologists that support them. Ted Olsen’s admission, before an audience of legal technologists, no less, expresses that too well.

Lawyers should have lost all excuses for lack of facility with technology in their practice. The American Bar Association’s 20/20 Commission recommended, and the House of Delegates adopted, changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, including this Comment 8 to Rule 1.1:

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and education and comply with all continuing legal education requirements to which the lawyer is subject. [Emphasis added.]

We lawyers often  pride ourselves on tradition in our methods of practice. Some still – or, more likely, imagine they can – print every important email message, store and access it in a paper file. Even those who might aspire to do that can no longer take the time, in the face of the volume of messages, nor work with clients or colleagues with paper files.

Technology now has become pervasive and ubiquitous. We connect nearly everywhere, to everyone, nearly all the time. To stand out in the practice of law today and tomorrow,  we need more than familiarity, more than facility, more than literacy in technology. We need fluency. We need to speak, to write, to employ technology with the same ease, the same intuitiveness, that would make us fluent in a second language. For that matter, we need to be fluent in the technology of law just as we became fluent in the substance and procedure of law through our training in law school, in our practices and in our continuing legal education.

Our fluency as lawyers with the technology that serves us must be matched with a fluency in the practice of law by our technology staff. Advances in technology, whether in collaboration, mobility, security, storage, retention, or matter and project management, all require us to bridge the barriers to understanding that arise when neither lawyer nor staff are fluent in the language of the other.

The conversation beginning here will explore what it means to be fluent, the opportunities to achieve fluency, and the gains achieved with fluency. Welcome to the discussion. Please write responsibly.

Bob Blacksberg

Filed Under: Home Page Column 1, Technology Fluency For Lawyers

Contact Us

May 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment

215.920.0302

Blacksberg Associates, LLC
233 Fitzwater Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147-3304

Right click  on link to Download VCF

Bob Blacksberg at Linked In

Filed Under: Home Page Column 3

Persuasive Presentations – Resources and References

December 17, 2012 by

Visual Stories and Examples

The New York Times has become a leader in visual explanations, rich in data and highly interactive.  A recent example, Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots.  A classic—How Shifting Plates Caused the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

Slideshare is a social network of presentations and closely connected to LinkedIn.

Visual.ly offers a marketplace for visual designers. . Whether  for inspiration or purchase, it offers access to contemporary presentations and visualization.

Google’s finance page deserve a thorough look for their ability to present and convey significant amounts of information. A company stock page, such as Comcast’s, packs in stock prices, news, related companies and related graphics.

Edward Tufte’s work remains a seminal source for visual explanation. His laceration of PowerPoint, though several years old, remains a good read. His one day course, next nearby in New York on February 3 and 4, 2013, is a very special experience for both presentation and content.

Stock Photos and Illustrations

Clip Art in Microsoft Office is old and tired. Many sites offer professional graphics for purchase, with strong indexing. They are not free, but can be purchased for prices ranging from low to moderate. iStockphoto offers an especially broad and well-indexed collection.

Whimsical illustrations, such as the one on the first page , enliven a presentation or handout. I enjoy the work of  Tom Fishburne, “Marketoonist.”

 

Graphic Tools

For word clouds, the free Wordle site works very well. Though the developer calls it a “toy”, Wordle can be a very effective tool for illustrating concepts and data.

Geolocation can be explored in depth at BatchGeo, which offers significant free capabilities, amplifying the value of Google Maps and Google Earth, as well as paid premium capabilities when needed for  industrial strength presentation.

Beyond PowerPoint

Prezi is the new kid on the block for presentations. While I have only touched it, I am not yet certain that it will be effective in illustrating the issues that matter in the practice of law. It may be worth the free exploration.

MindJet has a strong following as a brainstorming and outlining tool. It can also be used for presentations.

On (and off) an iPad

Apple’s presentation program Keynote utilizes the iPad very well, and can transfer presentations back and forth to PowerPoint. The fluidity of illustration on the iPad is very attractive, and Keynote shows that well.

iPad apps offer a wide range of capabilities for illustration. Some of the more informal ones can be very effective. Paper by 53 offers a very intriguing and attractice drawing environment for sketching and illustrating ideas. Drawings can be exported and used inside and outside an  iPad (Paper and PowerPoint, anyone?)

An iPad is a very portable presentation tool for one-on-one discussion. With the Digital AV Adapter or the VGA adapter, an iPad can be connected directly to a projector.

 

Filed Under: CLE Materials

Touching Windows 8 – A Tale of Two Tablets

October 26, 2012 by

What better day to begin the story of Windows 8 than October 26, the “official release.” Freshly equipped with an “almost tablet” – a Sony VAIO Ultrabook T13124 from Staples, we can put Windows 8 to work. Perhaps not just yet to real work, since I am composing this post on my desktop and well-worn Microsoft keyboard.

Note: All puns are intended.

These posts will explore the touching experience of Windows 8, and compare it especially to Apple’s iPad and iOS. I choose not to pursue Windows RT tablets at this point. After well more than a year now of iPad use, my hope for Windows 8 is that it will provide the kind of touch interface that has made consuming content so effective on the iPad, while providing access to full strength writing editing and file management using Windows tools. While the iOS has been exciting for its implementation of touch and the clarity and focus of the software on it, the difficulties with working with the file system, as well as the difficulty retaining full fidelity to documents created and edited in Microsoft office, has inhibited any recommendation to use an iPad as a replacement for a laptop.

Setup; Turning On

A most attractive part of the iPad experience is that it is ready to do something the moment one turns it on. That is true in day-to-day use, and it is most true when one first buys the device. Yes, it was necessary to input the password for our home WIFI network. Apps needed to be purchased, but that could come as needed, and did not delay touching the screen to do something.

The new laptop has been churning away for somewhere around 30 minutes setting itself up, the last 10 minutes devoted to the installation of Office 2010 .  We are still in Microsoft country, where a message to reboot to complete setup was hiding behind a dialog indicating that Office 2010 was completing setup. I did want a PC, not an iPad, didn’t I.

In 15 months of use of iPads I have restarted them perhaps 10 times to clear stuck programs. I don’t want to even try to estimate the number of restarts my Windows based PC’s have experienced – though far too many of them resulted from a bad SSD drive on my desktop.

Hidden from sight

If you have been persuaded to connect your new computer and settings through the cloud, your Microsoft Account password stands in the way of starting the computer. I am all for security, and rigorous passwords. The program and app 1Password govern my life on PC, iphone and iPad. Yet the startup screen hides the login, requiring a swipe up before it appears.

The Start  menu  hides, too. Sorry, I meant the All Apps button, available anywhere, with a swipe up from the bottom. I did not mean to confuse that with the Start Tiles.

Deep in the Design

I feel urgent to learn the rules, understand and absorb the design that drives these two experiences of touching a computer screen.

Each of the software giants has documented and published, not very loudly, their touch interface design principles.

For Apple, look to the iOS Developer library and its Human Interface Principles. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Principles/Principles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH5-SW1

For Microsoft, look at the Windows Dev Center and the Windows User Experience Design Principles. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd834141.aspx

These deserve very careful study, since they expose very significant differences in the principles guiding iOS and Windows. To compete with 100 million iPads, Windows needs to be at least very good, if not superlative, in user experience. Next time, we will dig in.

 

 

 

 

Before

Filed Under: (Re)Enabling - A Blog, Windows 8 Tagged With:

Word of Law No. 12.1 – Keystrokes for Styles

October 23, 2012 by

“Getting over” typing (Word of Law No. 12) does not mean discouraging effective use of the keyboard. The debate over mouse versus keystroke techniques is ancient. My answer is simple. You’re both right!

An organization should offer both mouse and keystroke based methods for using its word processing tools and standards. Whether or not this invokes the Disabilities Act, users vary in their comfort and effectiveness in using the mouse and keyboard. They should not be forced to work one way or the other. Even users who are comfortable with both keyboard and mouse may find it effective to work in each mode under different circumstances.

Several of you have asked about strategies for assigning keystrokes to styles. We can explore those techniques and use it as a starting point for a more global approach to keystroke standards for an organization.

There are two strategies for assigning keystrokes to styles. As in earlier columns, we will concentrate on the use of paragraph styles. One strategy assigns a keystroke shortcut for the style. The second assigns an alias to the style name.

Keystroke shortcuts can be assigned to styles using the Customize Keyboard dialog. This can be accessed through the Modify Style dialog (Format|Style|Modify) or the Customize Dialog (Tools|Customize). Keystroke assignments can use ALT, CTRL-ALT, CTRL, CTRL-SHIFT and even CTRL-ALT-SHIFT combinations. Note that the Customize Keyboard dialog defaults to storing the assignments in Normal.dot. That makes the assignment “global” for that user. For an organization, it is often desirable to incorporate global customizations, such as keystroke assignments, in a separate template that will be loaded as a global template. Under most circumstances, such templates should be stored in the Word startup directory. Then they will load automatically when Word starts.

To assign keystrokes in such a global template, that template must be opened for editing, and the Customize Keyboard assignments be assigned to that template. The global template must contain all of the styles for which keystrokes are to be assigned.

Perhaps more important than these techniques is a consistent strategy for the keystroke shortcut assignments. A thorough strategy needs to balance the desire for a system within an organization and the standards of the outside world, including the keystrokes assigned by the default installation of Word. To track and manage these assignments use the Word Command “ListCommands.” This built-in command creates a table of all menu and keystroke assignments in effect (including those in any global or attached template). To run it from the Macros dialog, set the Macros in box to “Word Commands” and choose ListCommands from the list. We have found it very helpful to sort the table both by the name of the command and by the modifier, then keystroke.

There is no single prescription for assigning keystrokes to styles. Some factors to take into account include avoiding writing over or confusion with Windows and Word wide standards (CTRL-C, CTRL-S, etc.) and assigning consistent keystrokes for related functions. Some of our clients use a consistent modifier, then a mnemonic assignment. This approach may require the use of two key shortcuts. To assign a two keystroke sequence press the keystrokes or combinations of keystrokes in succession. For instance, all styles can be assigned to the modifier CTRL-SHIFT. Then Body Text could be CTRL-SHIFT B,T. Heading 1 through Heading 9 would be CTRL-SHIFT H,1 through CTRL-SHIFT H, 9. Personally, I use Body Text and the Heading styles so often that I assign Body Text to ALT-B and Heading 1 through Heading 9 to ALT-1 through ALT-9.

When keystrokes are assigned to paragraph styles, the style can be applied very quickly to the paragraph. If the cursor is anywhere in the paragraph and the selection is collapsed, the keystroke will apply the paragraph style to the whole paragraph. If more than one paragraph is to be changed, be careful to select the entire paragraphs, including the following paragraph marks.

The second method of shortcut access to styles involves setting an alias for the style name. For instance, Heading 1 through Heading 9 might have the aliases H1 through H9. To create the alias, modify the style name by adding a comma and the alias name after the name of the style. To use the alias as a keystroke shortcut it is necessary to have a toolbar with the style pulldown list visible. The formatting toolbar that ships with Word includes this. Then, with the default keystrokes in effect, CTRL-SHIFT-S will highlight that pulldown. Type the alias, then ENTER and the style will be applied in the same manner as described in the preceding paragraph. If that pulldown menu is not in a visible toolbar, CTRL-SHIFT-S brings up the same dialog as the menu item Format|Style. That list of styles only responds to the first letter of the name and ignores the alias.

From an organizational viewpoint, this approach to style shortcuts is harder to maintain as an organization wide standard than the keystroke assignments. The style name aliases are stored in each template, so that a consistent approach would require that styles always include the alias name in each of the templates.

Either way, a consistent organization or business area wide assignment of keystroke shortcuts can promote the easy, accurate and consistent use of styles.

All of the functions described in this week’s column worked in both Word 97 and 2000 on my computer.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

 

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 17 – Word Wish List

October 12, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Early in the summer, many of you offered suggestions for improvements to Microsoft Word. The following suggestions seem intriguing.

Layout

Several readers requested support for logical page subdivision of physical pages. This would be in addition to the tables or labels workarounds.

Improve line spacing, especially for equations and sub or superscripts. A reader suggested that a possible solution to the line spacing problem would be to provide a paragraph property that basically tells Word to turn off its “don’t overlap objects in one line with another at all costs” feature. This would allow the user to take responsibility for any overlaps and let them correct this problem.

Support portrait headers or footers on landscape pages. This would allow proper orientation for page numbers and other header or footer information in documents with a mixture of landscape and portrait orientation.

Views

After scrolling through a document in Print Preview, support exiting with the cursor moved to the matching location in the document instead of the location of the cursor when entering Print Preview.

Allow screen display of revision markings separately by author, and to review revisions sequentially for a particular author only. The reader suggested that an author can preserve all revisions in a marked up draft, while focusing temporarily only on those changes proposed by a particular colleague or adverse party, for example.

Tools

Allow Word to be able to sort by other than the first word in a field.

Improve spell checking:

(a) Offer an option to recognize a possessive form of a word marked to be ignored or have added to the custom dictionary in its nominative form.

(b) Suggest replacements for weird misspellings that arise only because a single character, adjacent on the QWERTY keyboard to the intended one, has been struck.

Searching

Support stronger find/replace wildcards (pattern matching). The reader commented that that pattern matching in Word 97 might generate a “pattern too complex” message more frequently than Word 95.

Offer conditional searching that would include “find occurrences of foo that are occurrences of foobar”. Example, Find all occurrences of “From:” that are not “^^pFrom:” (ie. “From: at the beginning of the sentence”)

Printing

Allow sections to print to different printers. This would assist with documents with some color diagrams, especially if the color printer is either much slower or more expensive than the black and white printer.

Add sections to the “Print what” choice in the Print dialog. On large, multi-sectioned documents, it would be very helpful to print the current section.

File Management

In the File Open dialog, offer automatic scroll down or filtering based on letters or numbers entered in the File Name field. There is no matching in Word 97. In Word 2000, the File Name field autocompletes to the nearest matching name, but the file list focus does not shift to highlight the matching file.

These are a few of the ideas offered by the readers of this column. Thanks again for the thoughtfulness of your comments. Rereading those e-mails reminded me how many issues have been raised. Please keep writing.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

 

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 15 – Inside the Style Gallery

October 12, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Word of Law No. 14 touched on use of the Style Gallery. It deserves deeper exploration. We explored how a document acquires styles and their settings from the template which gave birth to it. On creation of a document, that template becomes the document’s “attached template.”

The Style Gallery permits the settings of the styles in a document to be changed by copying the styles from another template. In a default installation, the Style Gallery can be accessed from the Format menu. The Style Gallery itself is a fancy display tool that has a simple result. When a template is picked, the resulting command, as described last time, is “ActiveDocument.CopyStylesFromTemplate (Template Name as String).” This can only copy those styles that are in the indicated template. That step automatically overwrites the settings for any of those styles that are in the current document and adds the styles in the copied template that are not in the current document. It will not change any styles in the current document that are not in the copied document.

The Style Gallery displays all of the templates that are located in the file locations for User Templates and Workgroup Templates in a single alphabetical list. If an organization has taken pains to organize its templates in a set of practice area related folders (such as Corporate or Litigation in a law practice), the list in the Style Gallery will not display that organization, since all of the templates in the subfolders join the single alphabetical list.

Effective use of the Style Gallery and template development generally can be helped by the creation and maintenance of a set of templates whose only purpose is to serve as a container for the styles for a class of documents. For example, there could be “Blank Correspondence,” “Blank Agreement”, “Blank Policy Manual” and “Blank Report.” These should contain the full set of styles that should be applied to those documents, obedient to the naming conventions in the Laws of Styles (Issue 4.20). To make these most easily visible in the Style Gallery list, their name can be preceded by a non alphabetic character such as an underscore ( _ ) to force them to the top of the list.

The Style Gallery dialog contains a preview window, controlled by the option buttons in the lower left corner of the dialog. The first Preview option, “Document,” displays the text of the active document, as it would appear if the styles from the selected template were copied to it. When working with fairly complete documents, this option works fine. When working with blank documents, such as in template development, the second and third Preview options, “Example” and “Style Samples” can be helpful. It takes some work in template development, however, for anything to be visible when these options are selected. Without that preparation, the preview will read “There is no example for this template” or “There is no sample for this template.”

The trick is to create AutoText entries in the template titled (precisely) “Gallery Example” and “Gallery Style Samples,” respectively. Any text containing whatever selection of styles can be used in these two AutoText entries. Thus, it would be helpful to include the name of the styles used in the sample text.

The details on the use of styles just in these last two columns, as with nearly all of the issues that have been explored in this column, emphasize the critical importance for an organization to separate the regular use from development and maintenance of Microsoft Word’s tools. Users should have the tools they need to create, edit and complete their work without having to deal with the underlying complexity we have explored. If the central development staff has prepared templates properly, including tools such as the Blank templates described above, users can easily produce or modify their Word documents in accordance with organization standards. The general user can limit the time spent on tweaking their documents, often damaging consistency with standards in the process.

The central development staff should master the complexities, such as construction of templates with Style examples described above. Please do not understand this suggestion to mean that all Word development should be limited to a group closeted away from regular users. The development staff should incorporate lead users who have the skill and interest to master the features. Such users may start as testers or pilot users for the work of the developers, then perhaps even move into a development group over time.

In a future column, we will compare the use of the Style Gallery to changing the Attached Template. Understanding that fully requires the context of the other characteristics of a template.

 

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law
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