Highlight Hint

The highlighter can be an Indexer's best friend or a pain in the neck.  If you are doing Federal Census pages, here is a tip to set the highlighter once and have it stay in exactly the right place through the entire batch.

Once, you've entered the header information, place your cursor at the corner at the top of the number column.  Push down on the 'Ctrl' and 'Alt' buttons at the same time to show the highlight template.  Using your mouse, while continuing to hold those buttons, grab the corner (red anchor) of the template when the little hand changes into the two-way arrow.  Now you can adjust the red template lines to match the census sheet lines.  Next, go to the bottom of the page and adjust the left bottom of the template the same way.  Then use the navigation bar in the middle of your screen to pull the Census Page to the right corner.  Again while holding those two buttons, grab the corner anchor with the two-way arrow and move it so the red lines enclose the last line of the "Year of Immigration" column.  One last corner to do. Go to the top again and pull that right anchor into place.

Now you can Index this entire page without the highlighter straying onto the wrong line or column.  This even works well if the image isn't straight!

Thanks Ann Arrington for sharing this tip with me after someone in the 9th Ward shared it with you!  I was a little slow with it the first couple of times, but now I do that before I start and can do a batch so much faster and with more accuracy.

Send along any good tips you've picked up...