WAVY BLUE UNDERLINES?

[PJ]

My Documents in WORD 2007 are now plagued by wavy blue underlines,
particularly my CV, which has every single word underlined

I believe the underlining is due to the way I set it up with STYLES in early
Word 2003 format, but STYLES are now much more complex (and I don’t
understand them).

Word 2007 Help is a nightmare – I search for ‘underlining’ and get answers
for every single Microsoft application, so I search for ‘Word Underlining’
and get every answer to do with Word. If I search for "Formatting
consistency" the first answer is how to format a floppy disk followed by
pages of equally unrelated results. As someone who has used Word for over 15
years and has written a search engine, I must admit that Word 2007 has beaten
me into submission.

And I now have the dilemma that if I send my CV to any potential employer,
MS Word will tell them that I am completely illiterate despite having an MSc.

How do I send out my CV without the blessed underlining??

Philip

 

[Greg Maxey]

PJ,

Blue wavy underlines are supposed to show contexual spelling errors. E.g.,
I went to Tom and Jerry's to give them there presetns. "there" is a
contexual spelling error.

Or, and I think in your case:

Mark formatting inconsistencies Select this option to mark formatting with
a wavy blue underline when it is similar to, but not exactly the same as,
other formatting in your documents. To use this option, you must also select
the Keep track of formatting check box.

Office Menu>Word Options>Advanced>Editing and uncheck "Keep track of
formatting"

You might also consider formatting your CV with No Proofing applied.

 

[PJ]

Thanks Greg for this, I have made the changes and the blue wavy lines have
gone, however, will they now appear on any recipient's PC, if they open my CV
in Word?

As a project manager in one of the world's largest organisations I cannot
understand how Microsoft can release a change on the 1st March that has
inadvertantly affected perfectly good documents, and then not put in place
any help files to advise users on how to manage the completely undocumented
new feature.

As someone who is testing Office 2007 I really fail to see how I could even
start to recommend it to anyone. And even if I did, this is the third time
that an undocumented release has affected my work (the first was when style
management was dramatically changed, the second when Word form fields
couldn't be secured). And the Word 2007 Help facility is so poor, in fact its
much worse than that!

I am really not a happy user, and if I had been given this in my corporate
surroundings would have lynched my IT Manager by now.

PJ

 

[Greg Maxey]

PJ,

<however, will they now appear on any recipient's PC, if they open my CV in
Word?

I don't know (but I hope not, and don't think so.) You might ask a friend
to set up his/her PC with those settings and send the CV to them to see.

I am not a head hunter or HR specialists, but I would think that you could
minimize potential embarrassment with you CV using some of the following
steps.

1. Keep the formatting simple. Define a style and stick to it. If you are
consistent with your formatting then there can be no inconsistencies.
Right?

2. Use the spell checker and contexual spell checking as a first check of
spelling, let a friend or you spouse etc, read it as a sencond check (a
third probably wouldn't hurt), then select the text and use the Set Language
feature to "Do not check spelling or grammar." This way the users language
settings won't have an influence.

3. Convert the Word document to a PDF. Send the PDF and keep the Word
document to yourself.

I don't have an inside with Microsoft and no influence. I have felt some of
your pain wrt Word2007, but the longer I use it the better I like it. Good
luck.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Wrt spelling and grammar (not formatting inconsistencies), see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MasterSpellCheck.htm, which has a table
of the possible settings. Hide Spelling/Grammar Errors in This Document
should do what you want.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org