Adding, modifying and deleting Quick Parts

Yesterday you blogged about the “Organize and Delete…” feature of Quick Parts. I cannot seem to find that option. Can you tell in short how Quick Parts work?Sure, no problem!

Adding a Quick Part
Type and then select the text that you want to add as a Quick Part. On the Insert tab on the Ribbon press the “Quick Parts” button. Add the bottom of the menu that pops-up you can select “Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery…”

In the new menu that pops-up you can specify some details. In general you’ll only add a name for the Quick Part. I sometimes add a short description if the Quick Part is quite long and the name can’t specific enough. Categorizing your Quick Parts is also a good idea when you have over 10 Quick Parts. Otherwise you’ll spent some time searching for it and the Quick Parts are not that quick anymore Unless you have a very specific need, you can leave the other options in their default value.

Modifying a Quick Part
Modifying a Quick Part is not that straight forward as there is no edit option. Still, editing is possible if you first insert the Quick Part. Then make the modifications you want and then add the Quick Part to the Quick Part gallery by the method described above. If you save it with the same name you’ll be prompted with “Do you want to redefine the building block entry?” Of course you need to press “Yes” here and you’ve succesfully modified your Quick Part.

Deleting a Quick Part
The delete function for Quick Parts is a bit hidden as well. When you press the Quick Parts button and right click any of the Quick Parts (doesn’t matter which one, it doesn’t have to be the one that you want to delete) another menu pops-up. Here select “Organize and Delete…” In the new dialog you’ll see all your so called Building Blocks which you can delete.

If the “Organize and Delete…” option is not available you need to switch your message format to HTML format as mentioned in my previous post.

Building Block Organizer
Just some extra information. The Building Block Organizer shows more than just your Quick Parts. It will also show personally defined AutoText, Headers, Footers, etc… You can sort them by pressing the Gallery column.