How to Apply Multilevel Numbering to MS Word Tables

© Ugur Akinci Imagine you have the following document:   You would like to insert TABLES to this text but number them starting with the multilevel number of the section they are in. For example, you want the tables placed in section number “2” as “Table 2-a”, “Table 2-b”, “Table 2-c” and not simply as…

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How to Apply Multilevel Numbering to a MS Word Technical Document

© Ugur Akinci Some documents like software or legal documents require multilevel numbering of headings that look like the following: Imagine you have a Word document like the following:   To attach a multilevel number to each heading, first make sure all your headings are assigned one of the heading styles in the style set you…

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How to Manage Signal Versus Noise in Technical Documents

Introduction Signal versus noise is an interesting and important issue in technical communication. Here is an uncomfortable fact of technical document management: as much as we’d like to base our decisions on hard evidence and numbers, we still make a number of judgment calls that rest on nothing more than a seat-of-the-pants “this feels okay,”…

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How to Line Up Numbers on Decimal Points in Excel

© Ugur Akinci Did you have a column of numbers in MS Excel that looked ugly like this: You can have a really nice looking column of numbers by centering them on the DECIMAL POINT — even if some of them do not have a decimal point. The first thing to do is to define…

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How to Configure Line and Page Break Options for MS Word Documents

Click the lower-right corner of the Paragraph pod on the Home tab: This will display MS word’s Paragraph dialog box. Click and select the Line and Page Breaks tab for the following line and page break options: Select Widow/Orphan control check-box to prevent MS Word from splitting up a paragraph such that a single line ends up displayed at the top of…

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How to Change the Page Orientation of a MS Word Document Page

© Ugur Akinci Let’s say you have a portrait-orientation MS Word document but you’d like to insert a LANDSCAPE orientation page in the middle of your document to accommodate a map or a wide table. Since MS Word does not support the “master pages” paradigm, you cannot just switch from a Portrait page template (master page) to a Landscape page…

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How to Use Excel NESTED IF Function

To reward the customer with quantity discounts for bulk purchases is a common practice in business. Consider the below situation: There are FOUR different IF statements here illustrated by the above table: (1) Here the seller is charging $10 per item if the customer purchases 100 or less items. (2) If the customer buys more…

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