Get More From Notebook View

The Notebook view is now more customizable. You can make your spiral notebook look like a metallic binder, for example.

High school and college students, rejoice! The new Notebook feature is just for you. It means you can type notes during a lecture or even record the audio. (And, of course, business users can take advantage of this view as well.) You can customize the notebook and switch from the dorky legal pad to a shiny metallic note-taking view that matches the design of the MacBook Pro—just click the Customize button in the status bar at the bottom of the screen and select Aluminum. Click the Appearance button at the top of the screen to use a different notepad look. Now, go ahead: Type away like a caffeinated banshee. You can use the Quick Search box to find that one obscure reference to Albert Camus in Philosophy 101—Word marks notebook tabs that contain the word or phrase in blue and the search term itself in blue.

Use Noteflags In Notebook View

A Noteflag in Word 2008 for Mac is like a reminder—or at least an easy way to find a note (“remember to order books online”) related to what you’re typing.

Once you start using the Notebook layout view, you’ll likely uncover all sorts of useful accoutrements. For example, you can add Noteflags, which are like comments you add to a regular Word document. First, bring up the Formatting palette by clicking Electing > Formatting Palette. Look for the Noteflags section. Click the pop-up and select the flag you want, say, a green checkbox. Type in your note, such as “remember to check with professor about the quiz.” If you use the Noteflag like a task, you can click the flag when it’s done. Otherwise, they disappear off the page but can be found easily when you look through your notes later. Instead of a Noteflag, you can also insert an Entourage task into your notebook (if you use Entourage for email and calendaring). Just click the Create Entourage Task button in the formatting palette and type in the details. Now, it will appear in Entourage along with all your other tasks. Another nifty trick: Use the QuickSearch field to find any text in your notebook view. All the tabs will highlight notes that contain the word, and the word itself will be highlighted.

Microsoft told us that they will likely make Noteflags more searchable in the next release of Word for Mac, so you can drop the flags in documents and then search for them later, when you need to study for a test or find a business reminder.

Save Recorded Audio Clips for Use on an iPod

Audio clips are automatically collected for each notebook into one MP3 file you can save and listen to later on your iPod.

It’s primarily a word processor, but Word also lets you record audio clips and save them directly to your iPod. First, connect the iPod. Use the Notebook view and click the red Start Recording button. It’s useful during a school lecture or business presentation, but you can use it to record personal notes to yourself. Once recorded, you can save all audio notes (they are bundled automatically with each notebook) to an iPod. Under Tools, select Audio Notes > Export Audio. Name the audio file and click Save. Drag and drop the audio file into iTunes, then sync with your iPod. If you want to separate your audio notes, just create a new notebook and click record for each new audio notes file, then export the audio for that notebook.

Print Multiple Pages Per Sheet

Scriptwriters will love the “multiple sheets” option, which allows you to print documents as though they are a storyboard with multiple pages per sheet.

You can save a few trees and make your life easier at the same time by printing multiple pages per sheet (also see “5 Ways to go Greener”). It’s like one of those movie storyboards that you can use for reviewing a document or getting a handle on the structure of a document. Go to File, then Print and select the Layout from the pop-up menu (where it says Copies & Pages). In the Pages per Sheet pop-up, select the number of sheets to print.

Change The Default Font

You can easily change the default font used for every new Word document, whether you like Courier New or the incredibly overused Comic Sans (shame on you).

World Alternatives
Many Mac users rely on Word as much as Windows users do, but there are alternatives to Microsoft’s pricey word processor, including OpenOffice (with a new version 3 that should be available by press time) and a stripped-down writer’s tool called WriteRoom, whose claim to fame is an uncluttered full-screen view.

OpenOffice Write

OpenOffice is the most popular alternative to Microsoft Word, plus it’s totally free.

OpenOffice Write (free, www.openoffice.org) uses the X11 Unix windowing environment on a Mac, but don’t hold that against it—it still works quite well. You can also use a very similar suite called NeoOffice (free, www.neooffice.org) that does not use X11, but is perhaps not as well supported as the OpenOffice apps. Also, OpenOffice integrates well with the Linux and Windows versions, which can swap files in the proprietary odt format as easily as Microsoft Word users share doc files. We should mention one of the most common “gotchas” with OpenOffice: When you save a file as ODT, Word users will not be able to open it. However, you can fix that problem. Just select the File menu, then Save As, and select the Word 97/2000/XP format. Now, Word users will be able to open the file.

One perk with OpenOffice is that it goes well beyond the basic auto-correct options in Word 2008. For example, you can automatically delete extra spaces at the beginning and end of both paragraphs and sentences. Go to the Tools menu, then AutoCorrect. Enable the options to “Delete spaces…” before and after sentences and paragraphs. The M and T columns can be a little confusing. The M means autocorrect will only work when you “modify” existing text. The T means AutoCorrect will work anytime you type, for both new text and modifying existing text. In addition to the AutoCorrect options, OpenOffice lets you add tables and charts, insert pictures, and even has its own auto-format paintbrush (select the text that uses the formatting you want to copy, click the paintbrush, then select the text you want to format).

So what’s missing from OpenOffice Write? For starters, you won’t find the Word 2008 toolbars for formatting text, changing page elements, and Word’s bevy of chart- and table-formatting options. You also only get two basic views: one for print and one for the Web. And there’s no nifty Notebook view.