Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

300 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

If the dog ate your Control key, you can also highlight the link by carefully dragging

across it, then pressing c-K (or choosing Insert→Hyperlink) to open the Insert

Hyperlink dialog box. In fact, if all you want to edit is the display text for a hyperlink,

just drag carefully across it (or Control-click it and choose Hyperlink→Select

Hyperlink) and then retype—no overnight dialog box stay required.

Similarly, you can edit graphic links without triggering them; once again, the trick is

to select the link without activating it—by Control-clicking it. After editing the im-

age using the Formatting Palette or the Drawing or Picture toolbars, press Esc or

click elsewhere to deselect the object and avoid inadvertently making further changes.

Hyperlink colors

In Word, text hyperlinks appear in blue type until they’re clicked, whereupon they

change to purple. You can change these default colors, if you like; the trick is to

change the Hyperlink style, just as you’d change any Word style (see page 147 for

instructions).

If you’re that kind of person, you can even change the color that clicked hyperlinks

change into after being clicked. Just modify Word’s built-in FollowedHyperlink style.

These new hyperlink colors will override default hyperlink colors when the page is

opened in Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator. If your colors don’t work,

it’s because your visitor has changed his browser preferences to override the color

choices that have been programmed into Web pages.

Removing Hyperlinks

To remove a hyperlink you no longer want, you have two options:

• Drag over the hyperlink text and press Delete. Both the hyperlink and the display

text or object are deleted.

• To cancel out the link while leaving the display text or object in place, Control-

click the link and choose Hyperlink→Edit Hyperlink on the contextual menu.

Click Remove Link.

Web Forms

If you’ve ever searched a Web site, taken a poll, or made a purchase online, you’ve

used a Web form. Web forms take the form of pop-up menus, checkboxes, and little

text boxes. They’re designed to collect information from the Web site visitor and

save it on a server for processing.

You can build a Web form in Word, but you’ll need the help of a Web programmer

to write the necessary CGI scripts that make the form work. (CGI stands for com-

mon gateway interface, a software convention for transferring and processing data

between Web pages and servers.)

To build a Web form, you must insert various form controls in your page—checkboxes,

radio buttons, pop-up menus, buttons, and so on—which your visitors will use for

Hyperlinks