Recover Unsaved Documents in Word 2013- Tutorial

Recover Unsaved Documents in Word 2013: Overview

            A new feature in Word 2013 allows you to attempt to recover unsaved documents files. If you want to see if Word has automatically saved a copy of an unsaved document that you were working on, then select the “File” tab within the Ribbon and click the “Open” command at the left side of the backstage view. In the area to the right of the command panel, select the “Recent Documents” command.

            Then look at the bottom of the pane that appears to the right. You should see a button far at the bottom of the “Recent Documents” section. Click this “Recover Unsaved Documents” button to launch an “Open” dialog box that displays any copies of unsaved documents that Word has recovered. Note that it may be helpful to sort the files shown by the “Date modified” column in order to display the listing of recoverable files by date, as the file names will not be of very much use in determining their content.

            You can then choose the copy that you wish to recover from the list and then click the “Open” button within the “Open” dialog box to reopen the recovered copy. If you successfully recover unsaved documents, you should then save the file that you recovered.

Recover Unsaved Documents in Word 2013: Instructions

1. Select the “File” tab in the Ribbon and click the “Open” command at the left side of the backstage view.
2. In the area to the right of the command panel, select the “Recent Documents” command.
3. Click the “Recover Unsaved Documents” button at the bottom of the “Recent Documents” section in the far right panel to launch an “Open” dialog box that displays any copies of unsaved documents that Word has recovered. It may be helpful to sort the files shown by the “Date modified” column to display the listing of recoverable files by date, as the file names will not be of much use in determining their content.
4. You can choose the copy to recover from the list and then click the “Open” button within the “Open” dialog box to reopen the recovered copy.
5. If you successfully retrieve the contents of the file, you should save the file you recovered.

Recover Unsaved Documents in Word 2013: Video Lesson

            The following video lesson, titled “2.10- Recovering Unsaved Documents- 2013 Only,” shows how to recover unsaved documents in Word 2013. This video is from our complete Word 2013 training, titled “Mastering Word Made Easy v.2013-2007.” A picture of the training interface is shown below the video lesson.

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How to Create a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word

by Bob Flisser

When you’re creating or editing a long document, you’ll probably have to create a table of contents. That might sound like a chore, but fortunately, you can do it in just a few clicks. Then, if you change the document, Word can update the table of content instantly. Best of all, Word includes hyperlinks to the various sections in your table of contents, so it isn't just a visual aid for printed documents, but also is perfect to make easy-to-browse online documents and PDFs.
Creating the table of contents itself is simple, but the tricky part is getting it to work the way you want. In this tutorial, I'll show you everything you need to make a simple, auto-generated table of contents, and then get it to look the way you want in every version of Microsoft Word.

Screencast

You can follow along using your own document, or if you prefer, download the zip file included for this tutorial. It contains a document called The Age of Einstein.docx, which is a public domain physics textbook (credit to the author, Professor Frank W.K. Firk).

Creating Your Table of Contents

There are a few ways of creating a table of contents, but only two that you’ll ever use

• Create them automatically from built-in styles
• Create them from your custom styles

These methods work mostly the same in Windows and Mac.
Using built-in styles is the fastest and most common technique, and using custom styles takes only a little more work. Sometimes, you’ll want to use both techniques in the same document. Once you have a TOC in a document, you can format it with its own styles. You don’t want to format the TOC like regular text, because the formatting can easily get wiped out.

How the Textbook is Organized

Before doing anything to the document, let’s see how it’s organized. Page 1 is the title, page 2 is blank and will hold the TOC, page 3 is the preface, and after that comes the text. As you scroll down, notice that headers and subheaders are formatted.

The textbook has level 1, 2 and 3 headings

The best way to see the structure of the document is with the Navigation Pane (Document Map Pane in the Mac version).
In Windows, go to the View tab, then click the check box to enable the Navigation Pane.

The Navigation pane is a great way of looking through a document

On the Mac, click the Sidebar button to show it. If the Sidebar is showing thumbnails, reviewing tools or the Search pane, click the Down Arrow next to the Sidebar button and select Document Map Pane.

On the Mac, use the Document Map Pane to navigate through a document

Go back to the Home tab if you’re not already there. Keep your eye on the Styles box on the ribbon, and click the items in the pane to navigate through the book. Notice that the items with whole numbers – like 2. Understanding the Physical Universe – are formatted as Heading 1, and items with decimals – like 2.1 Reality and Pure Thought – are formatted as Heading 2. There are also a few decimal items – like 4.5 Space Travel – that are formatted as Heading 3.
Tip: when creating a document, the shortcuts for applying the Heading 1, 2 and 3 styles are Ctrl-Alt-1, Ctrl-Alt-2, and Ctrl-Alt-3 (and Command-Opt-1, Command-Opt -2, and Command-Opt-3 on the Mac).

Generating a TOC Using Built-In Header Styles

Word can now turn those Heading styles into table of contents entries. Click at the top of page 2. (Tip: in Windows, press Ctrl-G, type 2, then press Enter. On the Mac, press Command-Opt-G, type 2, then press Enter.)
In Windows, go to the References tab on the ribbon, click the Table of Contents button on the left, then choose one of the two built-in tables from the list. Note that the thumbnails show that Headings 1, 2 and 3 will be included.
It’s almost the same on the Mac. Go to the Insert menu, choose Index and Tables, then pick one of the formats on the left and click OK. This dialog box also shows that Headings 1-3 will be included.

You can insert a table of contents just by clicking one of the samples

As soon as you choose one, the TOC gets inserted starting on page 2, and Word automatically inserts a couple of more pages, so it all fits. In Windows, you can Ctrl-click one of the items, and it will hyperlink to the item in the document.

A table of contents is a field that you can update. In Windows, fields have a gray background.

This works great, but there’s one problem. Before the Introduction, there is a Preface that should be included in the TOC. And just before Appendix A1 is the heading for the Appendix, and that should also be included. But they weren’t, because they’re both formatted with a custom style called Large heading, and custom styles don’t get included in the default TOCs. The second method of creating TOCs will fix that.

Creating a Table of Contents from Custom Styles

Word can include any styles in a table of contents. We just have to tell it which ones to choose. And we can update the table, rather than having to delete it and start over.
In Windows, go back to the References tab, click the Table of Contents button, then near the bottom of the menu, choose Custom Table of Contents.
On the Mac, go to back to the Insert menu and choose Index and Tables. In the Table of Contents section, click the Options button.
This shows that the Heading 1 style will have TOC level 1, the Heading 2 style will have TOC level 2, and the Heading 3 style will have TOC level 3.

Word uses its built-in styles to determine what goes into the table of contents

Scroll down to the bottom of the list, then in the box for Large heading, type a 1 to make it level 1. TOC levels can come from more than one style.

To include a custom style in the table of contents, assign a heading level to it

Click OK in the Options dialog, then OK again in the TOC dialog. When Word pops up a message asking if you want to replace the table, choose Yes. The Preface and Appendix are now both included in the table of contents.

After adding custom styles to the TOC list, text formatted with those styles will appear in the table

Manually Updating the Table of Contents

There are other times when you’ll want to update the table manually. This is handy when you change the text of one of the headings and want the change reflected in the table of contents.
Scroll down to page 4, and at the top of the page replace PREFACE with FORWARD. Make sure it still uses the Large heading style.
Go back to the top of the TOC and click in it. Note that it has a gray background; that means it’s a field, and fields can usually be updated. Click the Update Table button either on the TOC itself (that button doesn't always appear) or on the References tab, and the first entry changes to FORWARD. On the Mac, right-click the table and choose Update Field from the pop-up menu.

Update the table of contents with either of the Update Table buttons or by right-clicking the table and selecting Update Field.

Now that the table of contents displays the correct text, we can apply nicer formatting.

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Modifying Table of Contents Styles

Each heading level of the table of contents has its own style that’s automatically applied. All we have to do is change the formatting of the styles to change the table’s appearance.

1. In Windows, in the References tab of the ribbon, click again on the Table of Contents button and choose Custom Table of Contents, near the bottom. On the Mac, click Insert > Index and Tables. On the left side, choose the format you already applied, then click Modify. Everything else works the same way as in Windows.
2. In the Table of Contents dialog, click Modify, and another dialog appears, showing style names and formatting for the TOC heading levels.
3. Select TOC 1.
4. Click the Modify button just below it, and the Modify Style dialog appears.

Use the Modify Style dialog to choose the heading levels you want to format.

Format the style with Arial or Helvetica, 12 points, bold. Then click OK.

Modifying the style of a TOC item is the same as modifying the style of any other text in Word

• Repeat for the TOC 2 style, and set it to Arial or Helvetica, 12 points, normal.
• Repeat for the TOC 3 style, and set it to Arial or Helvetica, 11 points, normal.

The table of contents should now look like this:

After editing the table of contents styles and updating the table, you'll see the new formatting

Conclusion

When you have a long document, you don’t have to fear creating a table of contents. Whether you’re using Windows or a Mac, you can insert one in just a few clicks, then use the same dialog box to change the formatting.
Remember not to apply formatting directly to the table, because it can get wiped out if you replace the table. If you make any changes to the document itself, remember to click the top of the TOC and update it. Leave a comment below if you have any trouble making or tweaking your table of contents.

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Microsoft Word Text Effects 101

by Vaclav Krejci

Most of your Word documents are likely set in standard, drab Times New Roman or Calibre typography, perhaps with the occasional cheesy Word Art thrown in for variety. Yet Word actually includes a number of text effect tools that give you everything you need to make beautiful art from your words.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you everything about you need to create the text effects you want in every modern version of Microsoft Word, using its advanced type and formatting features. Once you’re done, you’ll know the tricks that I used to make Word templates that were featured in Microsoft’s Art of Office site.
Let’s get started.

Setting Up a New Page

Start by creating a new document by either clicking File > New, or pressing the Ctrl+N shortcut. To set the properties like the page orientation and the page size, jump into the Page Layout ribbon.

Setting your page layout.

If you plan to print your document and you already know the final paper size, it is important to set it as a first step. Why? Microsoft Word lets you to easily scale any object, but some properties, like the outline width, remains unchanged. Font size also stays the same during the resizing, and has to be updated manually. Working in the final paper size right from the beginning helps save time in the future.
There are two things you need to know about the Page Layout ribbon before we set the final page size values. First, the Size dropdown menu contains only the paper sizes which are possible to print with the currently selected printer. In other words, you cannot set an A3 paper size when your printer can only print up to A4 documents. To fix that, you can jump to the File > Print menu, and change the printer to a different one for a second, for example the Microsoft XPS Document Writer which is a "virtual printer" that only saves files locally to your computer.

Choosing an alternative printer.

Don't print anything, but once you've chosen a different printer, go back (using the left arrow in the top left corner), open the ribbon Page Layout > Size again, and the list of the available sizes should be much larger now.

A full list of page sizes.

Then, the other thing worth noting is that the drop-down menus for Margins, Orientation and Size may not be enabled all the time. If you have a Text Box placed and selected inside the document, some Page Layout options will be disabled. I'm specifically pointing this out, because we will use Text Box objects all the time, and jumping to the Page Layout ribbon and seeing those options disabled can be quite frustrating.

Faded page layout buttons when selecting a text box.

Now, you know how to always be able to set a page Size to A4 and Orientation to Landscape. Your page is now setup the way you'll want for your custom word art, and you'll know how to tweak it again next time.

Choose page orientation

Changing the Font and the Font Size

Now, it's time to add your text and start tweaking it. Type anything you want, select the text, and pick the font and size you want. Most of the text effects look best in large sizes, so do not be afraid to use either the Increase Font Size button, the Alt-Ctrl-: shortcut, or the font size dropdown menu to make the text really big. If the maximum value of 72 pt is not enough, you can type in any number you want, for example 250 pt (only type the number). You can also use non-integer values, such as 198.5 if you want to get the largest possible text without wrapping.

Tweaking your extra-large fonts

What Is Kerning?

When a type designer creates a font, every letter has its own width set to make sure the gaps between the letters are even. This works fine in most cases, except for the combination of letters with less "rectangular" shapes, like "V" and "A". Thus, type designers add “kerning” features, which defines that those two letters when placed next to each other will have the gap smaller (or bigger). In a perfect world, an application uses this kerning and everything looks fine. Well, in a perfect world.

Kerning adjusts the space between letters depending on their shape.

If you only need to know one thing about kerning, remember this—it should be always enabled, but it is off by default in Microsoft Word. To turn it on, open the Font dialog (Ctrl+D) Advanced tab, and check Kerning for fonts X points and above. When you check this checkbox, a current font size is filled into the edit box, but you probably want to change it to 1 pt instead—just to make sure it will be really enabled all the time for any text. For more information about the kerning, see Quick Tip: Typography Skills, Basic Kerning.

Set your font kerning.

It is important to know that the kerning has to be enabled this way also for every Text Box in the document. If you accidentally or on purpose delete everything in your document (Ctrl+A, Delete), the kerning is again turned off.

Standard Text Effects in Microsoft Word

Before we start adding our own text effect, let's briefly take a look what Word offers us in the Text Effect and Typography dropdown menu on the Home ribbon. There are 15 pre-defined text effects with different outlines, fills, shadow effects, and some of the presets also include 3D effect. The colors of those presets always reflect the selected color theme.

Traditional Word Art in Word.

You can jump to the Design ribbon and select a different color scheme from the Colors dropdown menu. Jump back to the Home ribbon, open the Text Effects and Typography dropdown menu, and it should look a little bit different.

A slightly different set of Word Art

This is nice, but unfortunately there's no way to adjust those presets. The items in this list cannot be edited or deleted, and you cannot add new presets. Those 15 presets can be helpful if you need a nice looking header and you only have two minutes of your time, but you will learn nothing new about the text effects just by using them.

Text as a Body Text vs. Text Box

The text can be placed in a document in a two different ways. The usual way is to create a new document and start typing - we can call this text a "body text". While the text effects can be added to this body text quite easily, they are limited and thus using a body text is not preferred option.
The second way is to use a Text Box object and write into this text box. To insert a new Text Box, select Insert > Shapes > Text Box, and draw a new text box the same way you draw for example a rectangle.

Adding a Text Box

The text placed inside a text box has several advantages. It can be moved around the document freely without any restrictions (even off the document or over the margins) and it can be rotated. Moreover, some additional text effects like the 3D rotate options are available.
If you do not like the default appearance of the text box—especially the white fill and the black outline—both can be easily set to none on the Format ribbon. Use the Shape Fill and the Shape Outline dropdown menus.

Tweaking your text box

To select a text box with no fill and no outline, click over the text which will show the text box borders as a dotted line. Clicking over this dotted line to select a text box should be easy now.

Changing a Page Background

The standard white paper color may seem a little bit boring for our text effect, and it may be a good idea to set it to a different color. Go to the Design ribbon, and from the Page Color dropdown menu, select some dark gray color. As for any other color dropdown, the first two columns with grays are still the same, but the eight columns on the right side change depending on the chosen color palette. After changing the background, the black text inside the text box is almost invisible now, but that is fine, we will fix it in a minute.

Change your page background

The Almighty Format Pane

The Format ribbon allows us to format the text box as well as the text itself. There are dropdown menus for the text fill, outline, and all the other possible effects, and there are submenus and submenus and submenus. It is definitively not an easy way to tweak the effects, and we only have access to the limited number of presets and options. There is a better place to adjust the setting—the Format Pane.
The Format Pane is an essential pane for setting all the advanced options, yet there is no standard way how to display this pane. In short, every "More…" item on the Format ribbon (More Lines, More Gradients, More Textures) opens the Format Pane, but since we have the Text Box inside our document, we can as well right click the text box border and select Format Shape.

The formatting panel in Word

Before we move on, remember there is only one Format pane, but the content of this pane changes depending on the selected content. It is different for the text box, for a body text, and for an image. I say it to prevent any confusion, because the name of this Format pane also changes, it can be Format Shape, Format Text Effects or Format Picture. Because this will be our base station for setting all the effect, it is a good habit to keep this pane open all the time.

Setting the Fill and the Outline

With the background color set and a Format Pane still opened, select the text box, type in any word, for example “Effect”, keep the font to Calibri and set the size to 72 pt. In the Format Pane, select Text Options, open the Text Fill settings and change the Text fill from the Solid Fill to the Gradient Fill. From the Preset Gradients dropdown menu, select a yellow top spotlight. This will create a subtle shading, as if there was a light source shining from the top.

Tweaking your text fill in Word

To make the text a little bit more interesting, we will also add an outline. Change the Text Outline from the No Line to Solid Line, raise the Width to some bigger number, for example 3 pt, and change the Color to white.

Adding your text outline

The outline is nice, but too strong. We can open the Compound Type dropdown menu and select Double, which will split the outline into two, one visible over the text, and one outside the text. To get rid of the ugly joins, change the Join type to Round instead of the default Bevel.

Tweaking your text outline

All we need to do now is to increase the Transparency to make this outline less visible. A value around 60% seems to be just fine.

Setting Transparency

Adding Some More Effects

With the text box still selected and the Format pane still opened, switch to the Text Effects tab. As a first effect, we will add a simple drop shadow below the text. Open the Shadow effect properties, and from the presets dropdown menu, select Outer: Offset Bottom. Because the page background color is quite dark, the effect is quite subtle, which is fine, and probably does not need any additional tweaking.

Adding a shadow

If you want, you can also try to add a Reflection effect. Select any preset, but increase a Blur value to make the reflection less visible and not too distracting.

Adding Reflection

In just few steps, we have a nice looking text effect and we can call it done.

Your finished, customized Word Art

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Sharing the Document - .docx vs .pdf

When sharing your document with your friends, you can choose between two main formats. The Word native .docx, or Adobe Acrobat .pdf file. The document saved in .docx format keeps the effects fully dynamic, but depending on the used effects, the other side often needs to have the latest version of Microsoft Word installed. Otherwise, the document can look different (and most likely ugly).
The biggest advantage of the document saved in a .pdf format is that it will look exactly the same on every device, in any application. However, you lost the ability to edit the text effects, and probably also the ability to edit the text. Microsoft Word can export as well as import the .pdf files, but the edibility of the text with the applied effects is in most cases lost. For more information, please read How to Edit PDF Documents in Microsoft Word.
To save the document in the .docx format, simply hit the save button—it should be the default format. To save the document as a .pdf file, select File > Export > Create PDF/XPS, then choosePDF in the filetype drop-down when saving the file.

Export your text in PDF format

Conclusion

We have only scratched the surface of the text effects in Microsoft Word, but you should have a solid knowledge of the Word basics needed for the future effects. Here is a list of the main takeaways:

• When possible, set the paper size as a first step. Resizing the objects afterwards can bring unexpected complications.
• Most text effects look best in very large sizes.
• Always be sure to enable kerning when working with text in Word.
• There is a difference between the "body text" and the text placed inside the Text Box. For text effects, text placed inside the Text Box is preferred.
• The Format Pane is the best place to change any formatting—make sure to have this pane visible all the time.
• Share your creations in Word .docx format to keep the edibility, or Adobe Acrobat .pdf format to make sure everything will look the same at all times.

Enjoy creating your own text effects using these steps, and leave a comment below if you have any trouble making your own text effects in Word!

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