Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Tools Menu

The Tools menu includes a mix of text tools, sharing tools, and other miscellaneous functions.

Spelling and Grammar

Checks the document for spelling and grammar errors; if Word finds any questionable items, pops open the “Spelling and Grammar” window to give you the opportunity to correct them. Keyboard shortcut: Option-⌘-L.

Thesaurus

Opens the Reference Tools palette, which lets you find synonyms or antonyms for the selected word.

Hyphenation

Hyphenates the currently active Word document, which gives better spacing between words in individual lines (see Manual Hyphenation).

Dictionary

Opens the Reference Tools palette, where you can view the selected word’s definition (see Open).

Language

Flags selected text as being in a given language. The advantage of doing this is that Word will thereafter apply the appropriate language dictionary for spelling checks and AutoCorrect entries.

Word Count

Counts up the statistics for the currently open Word document: the number of words, lines, characters, and paragraphs.

AutoSummarize

Tries to summarize the currently open Word document down to its salient points, as described on Unloading a global template.

AutoCorrect

Opens the AutoCorrect window, where you can determine what Word tries to automatically correct when it thinks it sees an error in your typing (see AutoCorrect). It also lets you enter AutoText items that will fill in automatically as you type, and it lets you set the automatic formatting that’s applied to your Word documents both as ...