Split screens in Word for Easy Reading

[Euphonium]

This is something I found today: pressing Alt+Ctrl+S splits screens in Word so you can read tossups and bonuses without scrolling excessively. Thought this might be helpful to all the electronic readers out there!

[dtaylor4]

In older version of word, one can go "Window -> New Window" to achieve a similar effect.

[Eddie]

Another thing that I like to do is to have one copy of the packet open in MS Word and have another open in Windows Explorer using the preview button. It's a bit more of a hassle since you have to Alt-Tab after every question, but some people prefer having a larger window so you can zoom in and make the text bigger.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Yes.




In Office 2007, the non-shortcut for this is "View -> Split"; on Mac Word it's "Window -> Split"; in Adobe PDF you have to settle for "Window -> New Window." Doing this is an essential step to reading on screen, which can easily shave 3-4 minutes of the time it takes you to complete a round. (At a certain point, my conditioned response to anyone on a laptop asking "How do I--" became to instinctively declare "WINDOW -> SPLIT." It's not wrong much of the time.)

[UlyssesInvictus]

I prefer to use Eddie's strategy, mainly for the font thing he described and since alt-tab feels more natural. I don't even bother with Explorer--it takes 20 seconds to Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, open a new Word file, Ctrl-P, and scroll to the bonuses. Same with pdfs, though in that case I might have to copy the original file.

[Cody]

Using View (or Window in Adobe) -> New Window is objectively better because you can then position the windows side-by-side if you have a large enough screen and/or are not hard of sight. This lets you have way more questions on the screen at once and is far less annoying than a split window (your horizontal resolution is always much better than your vertical resolution, so you aren't wasting a ton of space this way). On Windows this is easily achieved using the Win+Left and Win+Right key combinations on each window.

[Auks Ran Ova]

If you do prefer the horizontal split and don't want to deal with alt-tabbing, Foxit Reader is a much better option for PDFs, because in addition to not running like hot garbage, it allows you to split-screen one document like Word.

[ScoBo]

I always double-clicked the little horizontal line that appears above the scroll bar to split the screen, although this doesn't appear to exist in Word 2013. Nice to know there is a keyboard shortcut for that.

It also helps to hide the whitespace that appears at page breaks in the default "print layout" view by double clicking the space between adjacent pages. (I can't find a keyboard shortcut for this. Ctrl-Alt-N to go to draft view seems to achieve a similar effect acceptable for packet reading)

I don't read off a laptop very often since most area tournaments still use paper, but when I do, I've always set up the screen to show split screen tossups and bonuses, probably because it seems more efficient to have both on the screen simultaneously. I zoom in so that the text is decently large while still ensuring the top half shows at least one full tossup and the bottom half shows at least one full bonus. I scroll down to the next tossup while I'm starting to read the lead-in to the bonus (and vice versa) so that I can seamlessly transition to the next question. This does require using the mouse to (at a minimum) switch between the two halves, and does require a little multitasking since I'm scrolling one half of the packet while reading the other. I can see how the Alt+Tab method could eliminate needing to touch the mouse and keep my focus on one half of the packet, so I may have to try that at the next paperless tournament I staff to see if I like that better.

For those who prefer the Alt+Tab method, in Word 2007 (and presumably later) you can go to View -> New Window (or press Alt - W - N in that order) to get a second Word window with the same document, without having to make a second copy of the document or use a presumably less flexible "preview" view.