Tips and Tricks

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Tips and Tricks
MS Word

• For National Board Candidates

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An in-depth look at MS Word

• Some quick tips to help in your quest

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• Lets begin by organizing your NB work into
  folders
• Right click anywhere on your desktop and click on
• New
• Folder

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Name the new folder NBPTS
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Open your NBPTS folder Right click and select
New and then Folder
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Rename this folder Entry 1
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Make a new folder for each of your entries Make
other folders for your standards and for your
scoring rubric
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The first time you save a new document

• Select File then Save As
• Make sure that you save your work either on your
  desktop or under My Documents
• Make sure that you save your work under the
  correct entry

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Make sure to save your work under NBPTS in the
correct entry folder!
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After you have saved a document the first time

• You do not have to select Save As again
• You can just click on the icon on the upper left
  grey bar that looks like a floppy disc

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Remember Even Jesus Saves!

• After the first time you have saved a
  documentremember to save often

• You never know when the lights may blink and you
  could lose a lot of work

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Set up all of your documents before you start
typing! Go to File Then select Page Setup
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Change the margins to 1
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To set line spacing go to Format Then to
Paragraph
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Under the Indents and Spacing tab Change line
spacing to Double
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Using all of the page

• Word is set up to automatically group sentences
  and paragraphs
• It will drop a sentence on to the next page and
  leave space at the bottom of a page
• This is called Widow/Orphan control
• You need to disable this control for every
  document
• Its easy!

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Under the Line and Page Breaks tab Uncheck
Widow/Orphan control
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Save even more space

• Put your candidate ID and the title of the page
  in the Header space
• This will be outside the page margin and will not
  take up space in the writing area

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Under View Click on Header And Footer
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Select Center
Type in the page heading (optional) and your
candidate ID Then use the space bar to move the
text to the right and left margins The text will
appear in gray scalebut it will print out
correctly
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Page numbers

• Number each page in Entries 1, 2, and 3
• Do not insert page numbers in Entry 4
• Entry 4 must be hand numbered

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Under Insert Select Page Numbers
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(No Transcript)
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Two more quick tips

• Look under Format Tabs and change your tab
  settings from .5 to .25
• It is OK to use digits for numbers instead of
  spelling out numbers

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Now lets check out some of the Tools MS Word
gives us

• Find
• Find and Replace
• Auto Correct
• Thesaurus
• Readability Scores

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If you are like most of us, like you use some
words like too muchlike, you know, like.

• You can search and find words that you use too
  often and replace them

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Under Edit Click on Find
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This will search the document and highlight that
word every time it is used. You can then decide
if you want to edit that one word.
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Click on the Replace tab. This will search the
document and highlight that word every time it is
used. You may then decide to replace the word
with another. You may replace individual words or
chose to Replace All.
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In digital media, use one space after a period,
not two. In the Find what window, type in a
period followed by two spaces In the Replace
with window, type in a period followed by one
space Then select Replace All
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Auto Correct

• If you have a word that you commonly misspellyou
  can use the Auto Correct tool to find and correct
  that word every time
• This will eliminate the red underlien and save
  you time
• Auto Correct is under Tools in your grey tool
  bar

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Type in the word the way that you usually
misspell it, then click Add and OK.
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• To use the Thesaurus
• Highlight a word and right click in the middle of
  the word
• Select Synonyms
• Then select Thesaurus

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To find your Readability Scores Select
Tools Then Spelling and Grammar
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Click on the Options button in the Spelling
and Grammar window
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Put a check in the Show readability statistics
box
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After you have finished each Spell Check The
Readability Statistics box will appear
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One last tip

• You will be use up a lot of black ink printing
  draft copies of your entries
• If you printer has the option.
• select grey scale on your print screen. It
  will save you a lot of ink.
• Just make sure you change back for the final copy.

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Assessment center tips

• Practice your keyboarding skills
• Purchase a typing skills refresher program
• You must be able to think and type at the same
  time
• Use bullet points and/or lists
• Go to www.nbpts.org and check out the practice
  tests
• Time your self at home

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Remember to

• Breathe
• Exercise
• Eat
• Sleep

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Good Luck!!!!