Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

Learn to use the Reveal Formatting pane to look beyond surface formatting.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the Word document used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Reveal Formatting.docx
60.8 KB

Quick reference

Reveal Formatting

Learn to use the reveal formatting pane to look beyond surface formatting.

When to use       

Digging deeper into document formatting can be done with the Reveal Formatting pane. Occasionally, you just need to know “why” something looks different inside a document.

Instructions

View the Reveal Formatting Pane: Shift F1

  1. Click the links in the pane to open the corresponding dialogue boxes in order to make changes to the format.
  2. At the bottom of the pane, click the “Distinguish Style Source” so that you can match the format to the corresponding style in the Styles Gallery.

Add the Reveal Formatting button to the Quick Access bar:

  • Click the Quick Access drop down arrow at end and choose More Commands
  • At the top of the next box, instead of Popular Commands, choose All Commands
  • Scroll to find “Reveal Formatting” and double click to add to the panel on the right. Click OK.
Login to download
  • 00:05 When you reach an advanced level of Word,
  • 00:07 you've got to be able to see the codes in the background and the formatting.
  • 00:10 And so on the home ribbon there's this button called the show hide button.
  • 00:14 I really work with mine on all the time, or as much as possible.
  • 00:18 But it looks a little busy, you've got the paragraph marks,
  • 00:21 you've got the polka dots between the words which are space bars.
  • 00:24 You've got little arrows, in fact, right in front of this line,
  • 00:27 because that arrow by the bullet represents a tab.
  • 00:30 And so the interesting thing, though, is there's actually more detail available
  • 00:34 behind the Reveal Formatting pane, which is Shift+F1.
  • 00:37 So if you press Shift+F1 on your keyboard
  • 00:41 you will open up the reveal formatting pane and
  • 00:43 now wherever I click, it's not just going to show me the background codes.
  • 00:48 It's going to tell me everything about it, exactly what kind of font,
  • 00:51 exactly what language is being typed in, the paragraph alignments.
  • 00:55 Everything right here on the lists.
  • 00:56 Now granted I can get the same information simply by looking up at my toolbar
  • 01:01 on my ribbons.
  • 01:03 But the reality is that it's just really
  • 01:06 nice to be able to see it sometimes on the reveal formatting.
  • 01:09 So I'm gonna scroll down to the table of contents, I'm gonna click right here and
  • 01:13 look what happened, it actually changed.
  • 01:16 So no matter where you're at, see it's even telling me paragraph style TOC,
  • 01:20 Table of contents one, align left, indention.
  • 01:23 I mean, you can really see the details of what's happening,
  • 01:26 so if you have to reverse engineer a document that someone else sent you,
  • 01:30 this would be the most detailed way to do it.
  • 01:34 But honestly, we rarely don't go in here because a lot of us are gonna forget
  • 01:38 about the shift F1, we're gonna totally forget that it's even available.
  • 01:42 So, one of the best ways to make sure you don't forget about it
  • 01:45 is to add it to your Quick Access Bar.
  • 01:48 So, I'm gonna go ahead and close this right here and on my Quick Access Bar,
  • 01:52 and again, video number two was about the Quick Access Bar.
  • 01:56 If you haven't watched it, please do, there's some great information there.
  • 01:59 On that drop down arrow at the end of this, I do have more commands.
  • 02:03 When I activate that, this comes up and opens up to popular commands.
  • 02:08 On the right is everything that's currently on my quick access bar,
  • 02:13 on the left are the popular commands available and they're alphabetical.
  • 02:16 But if we scroll down and looking for reveal formating,
  • 02:19 it's not even there because it's on Popular Commands.
  • 02:24 So at the top, I hit this drop down arrow, and I choose All Commands.
  • 02:29 All commands shows me everything that is available in here.
  • 02:32 Now I want to make sure to click into the left hand side,
  • 02:36 cuz I don't want to stay active up here.
  • 02:37 Cuz I'm gonna type the letter r,
  • 02:39 that will take me as close as possible to reveal formatting.
  • 02:42 I wish I could type my way there but they won't let me.
  • 02:45 So I type the letter r and now I'm just slowly scrolling through.
  • 02:49 I'm looking for reveal formatting, I generally scrolled right passed it.
  • 02:53 Let's see, there it is.
  • 02:53 Reveal formatting.
  • 02:56 Once you find it, simply double click, and
  • 02:58 then land at the bottom on the right hand side.
  • 03:00 Double click, there it is.
  • 03:01 Reveal formatting.
  • 03:03 Now, I'm gonna go ahead and hit OK to this.
  • 03:06 And as you can see,
  • 03:07 I have a brand new button on my click access, called reveal formatting.
  • 03:11 Now I'm more prone to use this, because it's handy and right there.
  • 03:14 So click it Turns it on and click it again and turns it off.
  • 03:20 So just like that you're going to use this more often
  • 03:23 simply because we took the time to add it.
  • 03:25 So please do that.
  • 03:26 You'll be a better better Microsoft Word user
  • 03:29 when you can really dig into the background codes of your documents.
  • 03:33 Thank you.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course