How to Add Your Signature to a Word Document Using Building Blocks and Quick Parts
Suppose you need to add your signature to a Word document. What’s the best way of doing it? Why, Building Blocks and Quick Parts, of course! These little-known features in Word can help you to add signatures, text, and other objects to your documents quickly and easily. In this tip, learn how you can take advantage of these tools to work more efficiently in Word.
What Are Building Blocks and Quick Parts?
In Word, Building Blocks are simply pre-defined objects – including images and text – that you can save and subsequently recall in any document. Examples of Building Blocks include standard paragraphs that you might need to insert into a contract or proposal, images, preformatted headers and footers, cover pages, watermarks, biographies, and even signatures. Once you save an item as a Building Block, inserting it into a document requires as few as three clicks of the mouse!
Quick Parts are a subset of Building Blocks. When you save a Building Block, you can choose into which choose which Gallery you want to store it. Galleries are simply groupings of Building Blocks that facilitate organizing and retrieving your saved content. Quick Parts are simply one type of potentially many Galleries. When you store content as a Quick Part, you can recall it and insert it into your document very quickly.
How Do I Establish A Building Block?
Creating a Building Block is very easy. To do so, simply create and add the content you want to store as a Building Block to a document. For a signature, write it on a sheet of paper and scan it, so you have an image from which to work. Alternatively, if you have a touch-enabled device, you may be able to use a stylus to create an electronic copy of your hand-written signature.
After adding the content to the document, select it. Then click the Insert tab of the Ribbon, Quick Parts, and Save Selection to AutoText Gallery. Upon doing so, the dialog box pictured in Figure 1 appears. In that dialog box, add a Name for your Building Block and be sure to indicate that you want to store it in the Quick Part gallery. Click OK to complete the process.
Inserting Content Stored As A Quick Part
Once you have created your Quick Part – including storing your signature as a Quick Part – you are ready to insert it into any document. To do so, simply click on the Insert tab of the Ribbon, Quick Parts, select the Quick Part you wish to insert. Upon doing so, Word adds the Quick Part to your document. Once added, Word treats the Quick Part like any other content – that is, you can format it, edit it, and manipulate it using any technique you desire.
Summary
Building Blocks and Quick Parts are among Word’s best features, yet most users remain unaware of these tools. When you choose to store content that you use repetitively – such as a signature – in the Quick Part gallery, you can insert that content very quickly and easily into any Word document. Therefore, we suggest spending a few moments to explore the power of Building Blocks and Quick Parts. Once you do, you can use them to add your signature to a Word document – or any other content for that matter – with incredible ease!
For information on new features added to Word 2019, please click here to view an article published by Microsoft.
Are you interested in learning more about Word’s best features? If so, consider participating in K2’s Best Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint Features. For more information, please click here.
