SUMMARY: Some tips on making text in Microsoft Word XP stand out with a marquee, flashing lights, and more.

Microsoft kept the blinking and marquee light-surrounding text in Microsoft Word XP. As in previous versions of Microsoft Word, to give your text some interesting emphasis, highlight text, right-click, and select "Font". When the "Font" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select "Text Effects". A list of effects will appear such as Blinking Background, Shimmer, and Sparkle Text. Select your desired effect (You can see how it will look in the Preview area) and press "OK" to close the dialog box.

SUMMARY: Hard to differentiate between Microsoft Word XP's tiny icons? Make them bigger!

Are you having trouble seeing the icons in the Windows XP toolbar, such as the disk to save documents, the printer to print documents, etc.? If so, you can make the icons bigger.

You'll immediately see that the Microsoft Word XP toolbar icons have gotten big. If you like this, click "Close". If not, uncheck the box and click "Close".

When you click on the font combo box in the toolbar, Word XP lets you choose a different font in which to type. While providing you the name of the various fonts on your system Word XP also shows you what the fonts look like. Although this can be a handy feature - who remembers the differences between Arial and Helvetica, anyway? - if you have a slow system or a lot of fonts, it can take some time for Word XP to show you the entire list of fonts.

Luckily, there is a way to disable this feature, letting you select from a list of fonts without Word XP actually previewing what the fonts look like. Then, you can just start typing in a selected font to see how it appears.

SUMMARY: Find out how many words are in your Microsoft Word 2000 document.

Writing an essay, a business report, or an article to a magazine or e-zine in Microsoft Word 2000 that has word count requirements? To quickly find out how many word, lines, paragraphs, and pages are in the current document, click the "Tools" menu and select "Word Count".

SUMMARY: Insert Copyright symbols in Microsoft Word 2000 documents.

Microsoft Word 2000's AutoCorrect feature can be a pain at times, but in other instances it can be quite helpful. Take copyrights and trademarks for example. Normally, you would have to go through a couple of menus to insert such symbols in your documents. As long as AutoCorrect is turned on, just typing (c), (r), or (tm) in your document should result in a copyright symbol, registered trademark, and trademark symbol being displayed, respectively.