MTips E-Zine

Newsletter for MT’s using MS Word

Vol 2 No 1 January 5, 2002

Laura Bryan Editor

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Table of Contents:

1. Feature Article: Table Tips for Troubling Times

2. QuickTakes-Keyboarding Tips: Table Shortcuts

3. Technical Advice: New ways to catch a bug.

4. Bloopers Doctors say the strangest things.

5. Other Sites To See: Take this site to the water cooler.

Editor's Note: Well, I hope you hadn't given up on your MTips subscription! Like all MT's, I too get covered in work! Although I started this edition no less than three times, the kids and holiday preparations kept luring me away. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to a healthy and successful New Year. Have you made your New Year's resolution? Have you resolved to be more organized, more efficient, spend more time with family and friends? Are you determined to increase your income? The solution to all of the above is learning to work smarter, not harder, and that's what MTWerks is all about! Since the number of "patient encounters" often drops the first few months of the year, this is the perfect time to solve some time-depleting problems, learn some new tricks and gear up for the deluge of work that is sure to come. I hope MTWerks can be a part of your success in 2002.

Table Tips for Troubling Times

What is your most difficult formatting challenge? Numbered lists? SOAP Notes? Echocardiograms? Physical therapy reports? Single-line patient demographics? Do you constantly use tabs and "extra spaces" to line up formatting? These situations and others can easily be addressed using tables. Once you discover how easily tables can manage your documents, you will be hooked! The next few newsletters will cover tables and specific ways to apply them to medical transcription.

We will begin with the most common problem: numbered lists. Many typists are able to use Word's auto-number feature, but many are not. Even still, lists often require tweaking to line up the text. The situation is made more difficult when justified paragraphs are needed. Word 2000 presents yet another challenge for typists with the "forced indent". (What were they thinking??) My favorite solution is to use a table. Because you can format each column independently, it is easy to maintain spacing, alignment and text formatting. For example, one column can be formatted to auto-number, one column can be formatted to type all caps, one column can be formatted justified, etc.

Here is an example:

Once you have created the table, set the table borders to "none" so table lines will not appear on the printed document as below. Note that on the Table menu, you have the option to show/hide gridlines which correspond to the table borders, but are only visible on screen.

Create the table, adjust the width and format your columns. Then insert the table into your boilerplate text (standard text) or template file (dot file). You can also save a table as an AutoText entry to insert when and where you need it. But, if you format a column with automatic numbering and insert more than one table into the same document using AutoText, the second table's numbering will pick up where the last one left off. To change this, right click on the first row of the second table, choose Bullets and Numbering and click Restart numbering. (Or better yet, record a macro to do this for you in one quick step). You can add more rows "on the fly" by simply pressing the tab key when the cursor is in the last column, last row.

A word of caution: Word counts each line of text in EACH cell as a single line. If you are using Word's gross line count for billing, tables will skew your counts. In the above example, Word reported 20 lines of text instead of 11. Character counts should not be affected.

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QuickTakes-Keyboarding Tips

Table Shortcuts

Tables are meant to be timesavers, so of course, you will want to use shortcut keys instead of the mouse to manage your tables. Here are a few for starters: the Tab key moves the cursor from left to right in a table, ALT+Home and ALT+End take you to the first and last cell in a row respectively.

And yes, you CAN insert a tab stop in a table-just use CTL+Tab!

Technical Advice

From Bob’s PCWerks

Happy New Year from Bob's PCWerks. Last time we explored a trick for Windows2000 using multiple normal templates. This time we will revisit virus protection.

With over 500 new viruses appearing each week it is critical to keep your virus definitions up to date. As Internet technology evolves so do viruses. E-mail used to be safe as long as you did not open attachments. It was the attachment that carried the virus. Today, viruses can attack from the E-mail message itself! Today's E-mail clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, and others) can display mail as html. This allows messages to have backgrounds, pictures, functional links, etc. The latest viruses capitalize on this by executing embedded script within the html message. A virus scanner with the right definitions will catch this activity and stop the process. But, what if this is a NEW virus and there is no definition yet?

Microsoft has released a service pack for each version of Internet Explorer/Outlook/Express that senses any malicious script activity, stops the process, and notifies the user, giving them the option of running the script or not. This is a great stopgap for virus-infected e-mail sent to you between virus definition updates. I strongly recommend that you download and install the appropriate update from Microsoft. Use your Windows Update icon on the Start menu or visit

For information on the latest updates from Netscape visit

Bob’s PCWerks specializes in computer services for medical transcription. Services include custom built computers and servers, upgrades, repairs and digital voice systems. For more information, see

MTWerks Upcoming Events

CAMT

Orange, California

March 2002

Plans are in the works for New Jersey, Florida, Central California, Washington and the AAMT Annual Meeting in Dallas, August 2002.

Watch the web site and newsletter for details

This Week’s Blooper:

This one falls under the category "Doctor's say the strangest things"! Recently, I heard a urologist dictate the following:

"Since the last time I saw him, though, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He has been having radiation treatments and seems to be responding well to that. Otherwise, since his last date of visit of 8/29/01, he has had no major changes in health problems."

If a brain tumor isn't a major change in health problems, what is??

Other Sites to See

How's That Again?

Have you heard these terms? Bird arm, barrel chest, glue ear, holiday heart syndrome, or kinky-hair disease (does that mean every day's a bad hair day!) If your doctor has a tendency to use slang, strange or highly descriptive terms, you won't want to miss this site. Hazel Tank has put together an astounding list of terms that you have probably heard, but have struggled to document. These lists could definitely settle a few debates around the water cooler.

MTWerks is your resource for using MS Word for Medical Transcription.

We hope you enjoy your subscription to MTips E-Zine. If you like the information here, check out our book Make It Your Own-Productivity Manual for MS Word which is full of ideas for working faster and smarter! Great for "Newbies" and Veterans, alike. To learn more about the book or the "Make It Your Own Productivity Seminar", see

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