TEXAS INGENUITY

The Nightmare

Suddenly, I found myself in a smoky, torchlit room. Around me, there were many individuals dressed in togas. Each one was pounding something with a mallet. I, too, held a mallet. On my lap was a heavy weight - looking down, I found it was a flat, square stone. Gripped in my other hand was an iron chisel, worn flat from repeated hammer blows.

I looked up and saw an overseer. "Hey, you! Why aren't you working? Get back to work. "O.K.," I replied. As I lowered my head, I noticed a sign on the wall. It said Law Office of Caesar and Antony, P.C. My job was to draft a pleading. Fearing reprecussions, I began crashing my hammer into the chisel. After several agonizing minutes, I stopped to examine my work, TO TH. I pounded repeatedly and again moved my chisel. To my dismay, I observed an imperfection. An incorrect twist of my chisel had resulted in an A rather than an E. I continued and finally glanced down to review my work. It said IN THE COUNTY OF THE YOUFRATEES RIVER. Seeing me stop, the taskmaster headed my way. "Let's see how you are coming." Proudly I held up my tablet for all to see. "Something doesn't look right." he puzzled. "Alexander, how do you spell YOUFRATEES?" "Not that way"-I heard and the entire room shook with laughter.

I now realized the true horror-I had gone back in time and seemed destined to experience eternity writing legal documents with these primitive tools. If I only had been more open to change, if I had only listened when I was told "computers are here to stay" ... if only.

Suddenly, someone grabbed my shoulder. It was my husband and I realized it was all a dream! Frantically, I jumped up and ran to the spare bedroom. I turned on the light and searched for my computer. It was there - I grabbed the keyboard and YES, the markings on the Backspace key and F2 (spell-checking) were worn away. I hit Alt-S and my macro came through. But still I wasn't sure. Desperately, I scanned the bookcase and found the familiar box with the hologram WordPerfect. I clutched the box to my chest and sighed in relief. Now I was certain. I sat down, leaned back in my chair, and drifted off to sleep.

Thank Heaven, it was only a nightmare but when I think of days past and the way we processed our work, thank the same Heaven for progress. Below are a few tips that I hope will make your nightmares go away.

A "BOX" with rounded corners. Using the 5.1 graphic PC-1.WPG, you can make a "box" with rounded corners by pressing Graphics (Alt-F9), (4) User Box and (1) Create. Press (1) Filename and type in the pathname for PC-1.WPG and press (Enter). Choose (7) size and enter the size of your choice, press (9) Edit to view the image. You will need to work with the (1) Move and (2) Scale options to enlarge and center the computer screen so that it fills the viewing area and is the only visible part of the image. The measurements for these two options vary according to the size of the box you have chosen. When you are finished, press Exit (F7), then set (8) Wrap Text Around Box to (N) No. Press Exit (F7) to return to the document screen.

Printing multiple pages. For example, you are working on a 75 page document and only want to print page 13 and pages 25 through 35. Here's how to do it.

In 5.1/5.1+, press Print (Shift-F7) and (5) Multiple pages. At the Page(s): prompt, type 13, 25-35 (notice there is no space between the 13 and 25) and press (Enter). WordPerfect will print page 13 and pages 25 through 35. In 6.0 press Print/Fax (Shift+F7) and (4) Multiple Pages. At the Print Multiple Pages dialogue box, press (1) Page/Label Range: type 13,25-35 and press (Enter) three times.

Restarting Automatic Paragraph Numbering. When you are preparing many court documents, sometimes you need to restart the paragraph numbering at 1 under a new heading. Try this.

In 5.1 you can restart the numbering at 1 by placing the cursor where you want the new section to begin, then pressing Date/Outline (Shift-F5), (6) Define, (1) Starting Paragraph Number, Type 1 and press (Enter) twice. Press (5) Para Num, then press (Enter) to insert the new beginning paragraph number.

In 6.0 you can number paragraphs with the Outline feature. Press Outline (Ctrl+F5), (1) Begin New Outline. Highlight an outline type, such as Paragraph, and press (1) Select. Type your outline. When you are ready to end this outline section, press Outline (Ctrl+_F5), (5) End Outline. Place the cursor where you want to begin the new outline and follow the same steps above. The new section will begin again with the number 1.

Viewing More Than One Screen-If you have two files open on both document screens in WordPerfect, you can view them both, on-screen, at one time. This is useful when you need to cut, copy or paste between the two documents. To view both documents at once in 5.1/5.1+, press Screen (Ctrl-F3, (1) Window and at the Number of Lines in this window: prompt, type 12 and press (Enter). You are now able to view both documents on the screen a once.

To switch between them, press Switch (Shift-F3) as you normally do. Notice that when the second document screen (the one on the bottom) is active, the arrows in the Reveal Codes bar point down, indicating that document 2 is currently active. To return the document screens to their original size, press Screen (Ctrl-F3), (1) Windows; at the prompt, type 24 and press (Enter).

To view more than one document in 6.0, press Screen (Ctrl+F3), (1) Window and (4) Tile or (5) Cascade. To switch between the open documents, simply press (Home) and type the number of the document screen you want to make active.

I would like to hear from any of you with any suggestions. If I don't get any new ideas, the next article will be on the famous "Merge" feature. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to read this (I hope) and may you receive some small benefit.

Viola (Vi) Davis, PLS, is a legal assistant and LAN administrator with the Fort Worth firm of Wallach &Moore, P.C. and the Editor of TPJ, etc.

The Nightmare

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