What are the Best Microsoft WORD Tips and Tricks?

People use Microsoft WORD for a variety of tasks including documents, letters, reports, resumes and personal data. Some people use WORD to keep track of their favorite online casino South Africa games while others rely on it for schoolwork, family needs and to help them in their professional lives.

There are many advantages to WORD including its spell check and grammar check features, the option to format text and font, image and HTML support, page layout options and ease of transmission and archiving.

If you work on WORD you might want to know about some helpful, user-friendly WORD hacks that will make your life easier and allow you to be more productive.

Shortcuts

It can be tedious, time-consuming and awkward to try to position the mouse and click every time you want to perform a function. WORD has keyboard shortcuts that allow you to work faster while you focus your attention on your content.
One of the most important shortcuts involves selecting the text that you want to edit. To select a word, double click on that word. To select a paragraph, triple click on the paragraph.

Once you’ve selected your text you can:

• Press Ctrl + C or Shift + F2 to copy selected text to the clipboard.
• Press Ctrl + V to paste text from clipboard.
• Press Ctrl + Z or Ctrl + Y to undo any change
• Press Ctrl + X to cut selected text to the clipboard.
• Press Ctrl + Z to undo the last action.
• Press Ctrl + N to new document.
• Press Ctrl + Y to redo the last action.
• Press Ctrl + O to open a document
• Press Ctrl + Enter to insert an automatic page break

Placeholder Text

If you want some placeholder text to save your place for later attention type in = rand (P, L) and  replace the letters in the brackets with numbers for “Lorem ipsum” text. The number that you use to substitute for the letter ‘P’ will indicate the number of paragraphs you want while the number that you use to replace the letter ‘L’ will define the number of lines of each paragraph.

For instance, if you type in “ = lorem(1,5) “ you’ll get a “Lorem ipsum” text that is one paragraph long with each paragraph containing five lines of text.

Smart Lookup

Search the web for a definition, a word’s origin, synonym, etc by right-clicking on a word and then clicking “Smart Lookup.”

Font

If you’re working at the computer a lot you might start to feel that you are straining your eyes. The tabs at the top of the page give you the option to customize your text so that it’s easier to read while you work. On the “Home” tab you can increase the size of your text and change the font type and color to one that is more readable

Templates

Using WORD’s existing templates can save you a lot of time so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. WORD offers templates for resumes, documents, brochures, newsletters, calendars, invitations, certificates and more. To find the template options, click “File” on a blank document and then “New.” Browse the template options. If you’re going to be using that template often, save the template in a folder or on your desktop so that you can just use it again and again, saving it under a unique name every time that you create a different doc.

Formats

Just as you can save a template, you can save a format so you can use it again and again. If, for instance, you create a weekly report and want the format of each week’s report to follow the same format, the  “Quick Styles” function allows you to save your formatting preferences so that every time you create a document, it’s ready for you to just add in the new information.

Once you’ve formatted the first doc, highlight that text and then click “Styles Pane” under “Home.” Click the button for a “New Style” and save it under a name in order to keep it handy for future use.

Thesaurus

Any writer almost certainly knows the frustration of having the correct word right on the tip of the tongue……but it eludes. The Thesaurus tool makes it easy to find the exact word that you need – just click on “Thesaurus” under the Review tab and then insert a word that’s close to what you’re looking for. The window will immediately give you a list of related words so you can go ahead and pick out the word that you want to use.

Insert Tab

Any document can be spruced up by inserting visual aids and imagery. The “Insert” tab gives you a wide range of extras that you can insert including symbols, pictures, hyperlinks, shapes, tables, charts and graphs, cross-references, clip art and more. In addition to the visual enhancement that these elements add to a document, they’re fun to use!

Versions

Some people use Google docs because the document is updated and saved automatically but much to the relief of many a typist, WORD has a similar function.

WORD automatically saves your work, even if you forget to click the “Save” function. To access previous variations of your work, click “File” and then “Info”.  You’ll see a window that shows you several document versions. So even if you close a document accidently, write over it or have your computer close down suddenly, you will still be able to pull up an archived version.