A toolbar to sort out your layout and styles, useful templates for Word and Excel, and a quick tutorial on Styles and formatting in Word - if you're not using this, your life's about to change.

Writers' toolbar

A Microsoft Word toolbar with five handy buttons

• HouseStyle lays out your prose to standard publishers' requirements: double-spaced, new sections flush with the margin, new paragraphs indented
• InvertedCommas changes “ ” to ‘ ’ throughout your document. It's clever: it fixes nested inverted commas “ ‘Like this,’ she said” to ‘ “Like this,” she said’; and it doesn't leave you with rubbish like d”you or doesn”t
• Submission lays out your poetry in Georgia with 1.5 line spacing, adds your letterhead at the top, and puts the title and page count at the bottom.
• Anon lays out your poetry the same way, but takes the letterhead away.
• EmailHeadings replaces your heading styles with stylish Garamond styles - because the person you're emailing probably doesn't have the fancy font you've chosen.

How to install the toolbar

• Download the file Normal.dot and save it to disk
• In Windows Explorer, go to your templates folder - eg. C:\Documents and Settings\Megan\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\
• Move the downloaded file into that folder
• When it says do you want to replace the file, click "Yes"
• Open Microsoft Word: you'll see your new toolbar

Add a letterhead

• The Submission button automatically adds your letterhead - if you have one.
• Design a letterhead in any graphics program and save it as "Letterhead.jpg" directly into the C drive

Writers' templates

	Wordcounter - an Excel template to calculate and keep track of chapter lengths, with a pie-chart display of your overall progress. It also has sheets to record timelines and character names.
	Competition cover sheet - a Word template for submitting to poetry competitions, set up as a form so you can tab quickly through

How to install templates

• Download the file: click on the name, above
• Open the file and make any changes (see below for personalising the cover sheet)
• Go to File / Save As
• In the dialogue box, by "Save as Type", choose Template
• Check the name
• Click "Save"

How to use templates

• In your program (Word or Excel), go to File / New
• Choose "General templates"
• Double-click on the template name to create a new document based on that template

How to personalise the cover sheet

• Show the forms toolbar: go to View / Toolbars / Forms
• Click the "padlock" icon to unlock the form
• Add your name, address, telephone number and email
• You can also add a letterhead in the header - if you have the Writers' toolbar, just press "Submission"
• Click the "padlock" icon to lock the form again
• Save as above (see How to install templates)

Styles and formatting in Microsoft Word: a quick tutorial

What it is

A built-in style sheet for your whole document, with settings for body text, headings and subheadings, picture captions – everything.

Why it’s useful

• You make one change and the whole document updates: no more scrolling through to change every heading
• You can use a document map to jump around a big document: great for novels, poetry collections, and books
• You can create a table of contents automatically

Using styles

All text is “Normal” by default – that’s body text Select your text then choose the style from the drop-down box next to the font box

Changing styles

Don’t make changes to the text – change the Style setting Go to Format / Styles and formatting OR click the Styles and formatting button A box will spring up in the centre or on the side Move your mouse over a style, click the down arrow, and choose “Modify”

In the new box, click “Format” to change the font, paragraph settings, numbering, etc. Some tips: don’t press “enter” to make space after headings: use the paragraph settings to say “space after” and “space before” use Numbering to set your chapter numbers, so they change automatically you can set a heading to start a new page: go to Paragraph, click the “Line and page breaks” tab, and tick “Page break before”

Document maps

Once you have headings and sub-headings, you can use document maps Go to View / Document map Now you have an overview of your document Click on any heading to jump to that place in the document

Table of contents

Once you have headings and sub-headings, you can also make tables of contents Put your cursor where you want the table of contents Go to Insert / Reference / Index and tables Click the “Table of contents” tab Choose a template, say how many levels of headings you want, and tick whether or not you want page numbers Click OK

DISCLAIMER: These widgets were built for my own use and are made available to help other writers. They contain no deliberately harmful code. However, I can take no responsibility for any damage incurred by using them. And remember: always back up your work.