Word 97—Ease of Use

Automation

Automatic Hyperlinks

Users are always looking for an easy way to point readers to related information and generally accomplish this by including file location pointers in their documents. Word makes accessing your file location pointers easier - as you type, Word automatically resolves UNC path names and URL’s to live hyperlinks, giving one click access to related information.

Type: www.microsoft.com
Result: www.microsoft.com

Click on the live hyperlink and Word launches your web browser and takes you to the World Wide Web location.

Automatic Email Address Recognition

Word recognizes email addresses such as username@microsoft.com and converts them to hyperlink fields. Clicking on the mail address launches a mail note with the email address filled in the Send field.

Lead-in emphasis

Word automates the most common manually-applied formatting to lists. Users often apply rich formatting to the main idea for each list item. Word automatically detects the formatting applied in the first list item and applies it to the next item’s main idea.

• Word 97 is smart! It does the work for you.
• Word 97 is cool! It makes your documents look amazing.

Word picks up the manually applied bold and italics formatting on the first bulleted item and turns it on at the start of the second item. When it encounters punctuation marks like “!”, it automatically turns off bold and italics for the subsequent text.

Background AutoFormat

Word’s AutoFormat now provides automatic formatting for people still used to typewriter emphasis and formatting. You don’t have to change your typing habits, Word translates common typing patterns to richer formatting on the fly:

• *Bold* becomes Bold
• _Underline_ becomes Underline

And, Word makes it faster and easier to add tables and change margins without ever taking your hands from the keyboard:

• If you type +----+----+, Word automatically creates a table with a column for each pair of + signs.
• Backspace to change alignment - Backspacing at the beginning of text that is centered changes its alignment to left, and backspacing on right aligned text changes it to center alignment.
• Smart space conversion to indent - If Word detects leading spaces that correspond to the left margin of a bulleted or numbered paragraph above, we automatically change your left indentation for you.

I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.