It's All About You and Your Needs...the Status Bar

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The Status bar runs across the bottom of your Word document and it can tell you a lot about your document or just a little. The infomation you see depends on what you've turned on or off. Word comes with default settings. Lots of users live with the default settings because they don't know how to change the settings...or even how to look up how to change the settings. Since the Status bar can go a long way toward making your life easy, it's worth the time to look at and adjust it so that it's all about you and your needs.

To see the settings list, right-click in the Status bar. Entries that are checked are enabled and probably visible. Entries with no checkmark are not enabled. On your list, go down the list and click options to turn them on or off. Checked options are turned on while unchecked options are turned off. The list above shows the information I like to see on my Status bar.

Lots of the options are convenient. For example, I like to have the following infomation showing:

• Page tells me the page number of the document where my cursor is located.
• Page x of x tells me how many pages are in my document.
• Words tells me how many words I have in my document.

In addition to information, I can display active buttons. For example, I like to have the Track Changes button on the Status bar.  I can click it on the fly to turn on/off Track Changes and not have to use the ribbons.

If you want more information on what a particular option might offer, look up Status bar in the Help. So there you have it...how you look it up. So go adjust your Status bar and make it all about you, you, you!