Do You Have the Collection?

I hope the month of March is going well for you.

This past week I announced the release of my new WordTips Videos 2025 Collection. If you haven’t taken a look yet, this collection includes all 105 WordTips videos I published in 2025—7 hours of practical, hands-on Word instruction—remastered in HD and delivered on a USB drive, along with a 150-page transcript e-book.

It’s an easy way to have an entire year of WordTips videos organized, searchable, and permanently at your fingertips—without ads or distractions.

The best thing is that the WordTips Videos 2025 Collection is, right now, available at a full 30% discount. (The discount is available through March 18.)

https://UsingOffice.com/videos/

Check it out today!

—Allen

WordTips (ribbon) for 7 March 2026

Aligning Numbered Lists on the Period

Adding a numbered list to a document is easy. Getting that list to look exactly as you want can be more troublesome. In this tip you discover how to align the numbers in a list on the period after the number.

Read this tip »

(Thanks to Michael Avidan (MVP) for contributing to this tip.)

Understanding a Style's Priority

Word allows you to assign priority values to individual styles. This tip explains what those values mean, along with how you can change them.

Read this tip »

Macros! Macros! Get Your Macros Here!

WordTips: The Macros has all the information that you are ever going to need to help you learn the best ways to create and effectively use macros for Microsoft Word. Discover how powerful macros really are and how you can use them to make Word do your bidding. Get your macros here...

Aligning Plus/Minus Symbols

Scientific writing often involves the use of special symbols, such as the plus/minus symbol. If you want to align these symbols within a table, there are a couple of techniques you can use.

Read this tip »

Highlight Words from a Word List

Do you need to highlight certain words in a document, and aren't quite sure how to go about it? Using the techniques described in this tip, you can create a word list document and then run a macro to highlight all the occurrences of the words in that word list.

Read this tip »

(Thanks to Ken Endacott for contributing to this tip.)

WordTips YouTube Channel

Do you like to learn visually? Make sure you check out the WordTips YouTube channel. New videos are added weekly. (I typically try to add them on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

New video: Printing AutoText Entries
If you want to print a list of the AutoText entries on your system, you can do so quickly by making one change in how you print. I show you the trick in this Quick Tip.

New video: Spell-checking Uppercase Words
When Word checks the spelling of a document, it can either check or ignore words that are in uppercase letters. Here's how to throw the switch that controls this option.

Help Wanted

This section is for those having problems making Word behave. If Word is giving you fits, feel free to submit your own Help Wanted question.

If you have a solution for the problems below, click the link after the problem to send us your answer. (All responses become the sole property of Sharon Parq Associates, Inc., and can be used in any way deemed appropriate.) If your response is used in a future issue, you will be credited for your contribution to the answer.

Applying a Paragraph Style to Multiple Paragraphs Non-Destructively

I need to apply styles to the paragraphs in a document that I inherited. When I place the insertion point in a paragraph, I can apply a paragraph style and any explicit character formatting remains intact. If I select multiple paragraphs at once and apply the paragraph style, then most of the time any explicit character formatting is removed. This means I need to deal with each paragraph in the document individually, which is tedious. Is there a quick way to apply a desired paragraph style to a selection of paragraphs without disturbing any explicit character formatting?
—Maris Reynolds (provide an answer for this Help Wanted question)

WordTips is a free service of Sharon Parq Associates. You can find thousands of tips at our website and a whole lot more. WordTips is part of the Tips.Net network.

Sharon Parq Associates, Inc. • PO Box 1187 • Mountain View, WY 82939