Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

AutoSummarize

Imagine this scenario: Five minutes to get to the professor’s office, and you suddenly remember that she wanted you to include an abstract (a summary) at the beginning of your thesis. Or this one: You proudly plunk your report on your boss’s desk and he says, “I’m not reading all this. Give me the 15-minute version.” Word’s AutoSummarize feature just may come to the rescue.

Unfortunately, Word doesn’t actually read your document and then write a well-crafted summary. (Maybe in Word 2028.) What Word does is scan the document for frequently used words, then string what it believes to be the key sentences together into a summary. (“Key sentences” are those that include those most common words.) In other words, you’re best off setting fairly low expectations for this feature. Think of AutoSummarize as something that helps you come up with a rough summary; you can (and should) edit the summary later.

POWER USERS’ CLINIC: Using a Template as a Startup Item

Word automatically unloads any global templates you load (other than the Normal template) when you quit Word. When you open Word again, the Normal template is the only global template automatically loaded.

If you want to make the AutoText entries and other attributes of another global template available all the time, you can pursue one of these two avenues:

• Copy them into the Normal template using the Organizer, as described on The Organizer.

• Turn the additional global template into a startup item.

To do the latter, navigate ...