Border Lines in Word & Outlook

OK, I've been bad. Let my blog -

which I used to update fairly frequently, though not the multi-posts-per-day, at-any-hour-of-the-day type thing that Steve Clayton does. Maybe that's why he wins awards and I don't :)

- wither and dry up. I got a new job about a year ago which means I'm now less hands-on with technology (ie. am now dispensable middle-management overhead), and that's certainly not helped.

Anyway, New Year's resolution is to try to keep it up to date a bit more, with tips & tricks, snippets of interesting news and maybe the odd essay on stuff that I think might be important.

Making lines in Word & Outlook

Today's tip is something I came across by accident and use all the time. Since modern versions of Outlook use Word under the covers as their editor, it applies all through the program. It's a way to create "Border Lines" quickly.

My favourite use for it is when you're updating a meeting in the calendar and you want to give the attendees a short explanation of why you're moving the time, changing the agenda etc. Best place to do that is right at the top of the body text, and a nice line between the original and what's new provides clear separation.

The tip is - if you type three dashes "---" and press Enter, the Word engine replaces the dashes with a horizonal line that spans the width of the document/appointment/email. Example:

Some wisdom

---

Some more wisdom

... hit enter at the dashes and it becomes

 

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Great tips, thanks Blake!

• Anonymous
  December 12, 2008
  The comment has been removed