MS Word

Change Capitalized Text to Small Caps

The Problem:

In every document my boss types, he formats THE HEADINGS IN ALL UPPERCASE instead of using a heading style. The Caps Lock key must be his best friend. I need to change all the headings to regular capitalization and small caps. I almost wish he were dictating instead.

The Solution:

Sorry, there's no one-click fix for this one. In Word 2003 or Word XP, select the first offending heading, then hold down Ctrl as you select each of the other headings in turn. With all of them selected, choose Format » Change Case to display the Change Case dialog box (see Figure 4-3). Choose the Title Case option, and click the OK button. Then press Ctrl+Shift+K to apply small caps. (Alternatively, choose Format » Font, check the "Small caps" box, and then click the OK button.) Word 2000 sadly doesn't support multiple selections, so you'll need to treat the headings one at a time.


Selecting Title Case in Word's Change Case dialog box makes the first letter of each word uppercase and the remaining letters lowercase. This drives writers and editors up the wall, because words such as conjunctions and short prepositions should usually be lowercase in headings. You can create a macro that applies proper capitalization to most of the words in the headings.
Figure 4-3. The Change Case dialog box is the quickest way to change uppercase text to Title Case.


Replace Spaced Indents with Real Indents

The Problem:

One of my "traditional" colleagues just loves to put four spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. I think it might be a typewriter thing. Anyway, I need to replace those spaces with a first-line indent, but I can't figure out how to do so, as there are other instances of four or more spaces in the document.

The Solution:

This sounds like a double-replace job. Replace ^p and four spaces with ^p and a distinctive stringfor example, ^pfirstlineindent. Then replace firstlineindent (or whatever) with nothing but the paragraph formatting you need: delete the contents of the "Replace with box," choose Paragraph in the Format drop-down list, specify the indentation level, click OK, and click Replace All. Alternatively, once you've deleted the whitespace (by replacing ^p and four spaces with ^p), you can use a style to apply a first-line indent to all of the paragraphs.