Let's Hear it for Incompetence! Quiz

Answer: Justified alignment

Justified alignment will line up the text on both sides of the page. Left aligned will just have the left-hand side in a straight line down the page, and right aligned will do the opposite (line up the text on the right-hand side of the page). Centered alignment will 'draw' a line down the centre of the page and align the centre of each row of text to this line.

Answer: Margins

Adjusting the margins on the page will reduce or increase the white space around the edge of the text of a document. Adjusting margins can also be useful when creating templates for use with company letterheads or other printed pages. Instead of pressing the 'enter' key several times before starting a document, a person can just go straight to the correct place on a blank document and start typing.

Answer: Header

Inserting a picture or text into a document's header or footer will ensure that it will appear on each page of the document, and in the same place. You can do this manually but on a document with multiple pages, is it really worth the effort? What if your boss decides he wants to change it slightly and your document is now up to 40 pages? What a nightmare to fix! If it's in the header, it only needs to be changed once and those changes will reflect throughout the whole document. Think of the time saved!

Border will put a nice border or line around your text either in a table, paragraph or the page. It could be used for putting a single border on the top of the page but can't really be customised as far as your own logo or artwork is concerned.

Mail Merge will be no help in this case.

Answer: Send the following text to the next page

A 'page break' will send all the text after it to the next page. This is useful if I have half a paragraph on one page and half on the following page. A 'page break' at the start of the paragraph will ensure that I have the paragraph starting on the next page. Random information alert! - a small part of the paragraph (usually just one line) 'left' on a previous or subsequent page is called an 'orphan'.

Answer: Mail Merge

Mail Merge will help you address your letters. As long as you have set up your database correctly it is simple to add in address blocks and put all kinds of individualised information into a letter. This is a fantastic tool because you only really need to put in the effort of writing one letter, not one hundred.

You could possibly email your letter - if you have the email address of every person in your database - but if you are entering individual information, you'll still need to use a Mail Merge to get this done.

Answer: Yes

Restricting editing is simple if you know where to look. You can restrict your document so that people can fill in forms but you must put form fields in first, this is a little trickier but extremely helpful in business. This will let people only select or type in areas that you have designated. You can even put a password on the document so that only you can edit the form. This stops people changing your form to suit their own needs - when you designed your form in a particular way for a particular reason in the first place!

Answer: Themes

Using document themes is a quick and easy way to get all your documents looking similar. 'Themes' cover the colours used in the document (heading and text), particular sets of fonts, as well as some page layout options. If you don't like the themes on offer, you can always download more or create your own.

Styles covers text formatting, fonts and colours but not page layout in the same way as 'Themes'. The benefit of using 'Themes' over 'Styles' is that with the click of one button you can change your entire document to another theme. 'Styles' won't do this, you have to select each style and change it manually.

'Clip Art' will put a cute little picture into your document whereas 'Cover Page' will insert a cover page into your document matching your chosen theme.

Answer: Comment

Adding a comment to a document will allow me to add notes to the document regarding specific areas of text. Rather than me just changing the document (which could offend the other person) I can comment on their work and maybe suggest another way of writing a particular section. It's then up to the other person if they want to use my comments or not in the document.

I can track changes to do a similar thing but the other person would need to be able to view the changes and know how to accept or reject them. And remember, the question asked how to suggest changes without actually editing the document, Track Changes relies on someone making changes to, or editing the document.

Spelling and Grammar would only check the spelling and grammar depending on which dictionary you have active. It is useful but usually won't tell you how to re-write your document, it won't tell if your wording is terrible if you have used correct sentence formation.

A footnote is used for referencing items within the document, it wasn't designed to be used for proofing purposes.

Answer: Watermark

A watermark saying 'DRAFT' can easily be added to the document and it will show up on each page. This ensures that people who read it electronically or print it out will be looking at the same information and will realise that it's a draft document.

A post-it note is only any good if you are printing the document out and giving it to people in hard copy. But what if it falls off?

Version numbering is usually used for a document once it has been released. It can be changed manually in the document properties.

Changing the page colour could work but can cause eye strain on the person reading it or waste a lot of ink if someone wants to print out your 200-page document.

Answer: All of these choices are viable options

All of these options would work to protect your document against unwanted editing. MS Word has had the ability, since the 2007 version, to save in a pdf format which doesn't allow any editing at all to a document (unless you have a separate pdf editing program). Pdf format will also allow someone who doesn't own the MS Word program or some kind of reader program to access and read the document.

Protecting the document with a password, or marking it as final will allow people to still read the document in MS Word format. Protecting it with a password will allow editing in the future if needed whereas marking the document as 'final' will make the document 'read-only' so no changes can be made at all.