Maria’s Guides

There’s a lot of information there.

Word 2004 (and other versions of Word, for that matter) packs a lot of information into the status bar at the bottom of the document window. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

What appears depends on the view of the document, its contents, and the features you have enabled or disabled. Here’s a quick rundown of what to expect and how to take advantage of this information:

• Page is the page number of the page currently displayed. If you’re viewing the document in Normal view or are viewing multiple pages at once, it’s the page where the insertion point is blinking or text is selected. The number that appears corresponds to the page numbering of the document. For example, if you indicated to Word that the first page is 17 and you’re looking at the second page of the document, Page will display 18.
• Sec is the section number currently displayed. This will be 1 unless you inserted section breaks in your document. Like Page, if you’re looking at multiple sections, it displays section number for the blinking insertion point or beginning of selected text.
• number/number is the current page number and the total number of pages in the document. This is based on the physical count of pages — not special page numbering you may have assigned.
• At is the distance between the top of the page and the blinking insertion point. If the insertion point is not in the window, no value is displayed.
• Ln is the insertion point’s line number, measured from the top of the page. If the insertion point is not in the window, no value is displayed.
• Col is the number of characters from the left margin to the insertion point. If the insertion point is not in the window, no value is displayed.
• number/number is the word count statistics for the document. The Live Word Count feature must be turned on for this to display. (Choose Word > Preferences, click View, turn on the check box for Live Word Count.) The first value is the position of the insertion point as measured in words from the beginning of the document. If multiple words are selected, that value is the number of words selected. The second value is the total number of words in the document. If you click these values, the Word Count dialog appears, displaying the number of pages, words, characters (no spaces), characters (with spaces), paragraphs, and lines in the document.
• Spelling and Grammar Checking status is an icon that indicates the status of the spelling and grammar checker. During a check, the icon is animated. If no errors are found, a check mark appears. If an error is found, an X appears; you can click the icon to select the first unknown word with a contextual menu you can use to correct, ignore, or learn it.
• REC is the macro recorder status. Click REC to display the Record Macro dialog and turn the macro recorder on or off. When the recorder is on, a green bullet appears next to REC.
• TRK is the track changes feature status. Click TRK to display the Reviewing toolbar and turn the track changes feature on or off. When changes are being tracked, a green bullet appears next to REC.
• EXT is the extend selection mode status. Click EXT to turn the mode on or off. When selection mode is on, a green bullet appears next to EXT and using various keyboard keys extends the selection of text in the document. (I don’t use this feature and would love to hear from people who do. Use the Comments link to share your insight on this feature.)
• OVR is the overtype mode status. Click OVR to turn the mode on or off. When overtype mode is on, a green bullet appears next to OVR and the insertion cursor turns into an overtype cursor, automatically overwriting everything to the right as you type.
• File version status is an icon that indicates the document includes more than one version. It only appears if the document has multiple versions. Clicking the icon displays the Versions dialog so you can choose the version you want to display onscreen. You can create multiple versions of a Word document by choosing File > Versions.

Other icons may appear at the far right end of the status bar when Word is saving a document with the background save feature or printing a document in the background.

As you can see, the status bar is more than just a collection of numbers and icons at the bottom of a Word document window. It can provide useful information and give you easy access to Word features.