|
 Microsoft Word is the world’s most popular word processor, and justifiably so. Even complete novices can pick up the basics in a few minutes.
But behind the apparently simple-looking interface is a powerful and sophisticated program that is worth getting to know. What frustrates many users is the way so many useful features are hidden away on obscure sub-menus or lost in the awful Word Help utility. This is to help round up some little-known wrinkles that make Word easier to use. It may also encourage you to experiment with some of the program’s less well publicised features.
But many of them work on earlier versions. We begin with a really useful hidden feature called the Work menu. This puts a button on the Toolbar, called Work, which gives single-click access to documents that you are working on or need to access frequently. Begin by right-clicking in any empty area of the toolbar (or go to Toolbar on the View menu) and select Customise. Choose the Commands tab, scroll down the Categories list and select Built In Menus. Now move to the Command list in the right hand pane and move down the list to Work. Click and hold, and drag it to one of the toolbars, release the mouse button and it will be inserted into any position you choose.
To include a document on the Work menu simply open it and click “Add to Work Menu” on the Work menu. In case you don’t get on with the Work menu and want to get rid of it, or change any aspect of your Toolbars layout, here’s how: Just open the Customise dialogue box as before, and while it’s on display you can move buttons and icons around, simply by clicking and dragging.
To delete a button or icon just drag it on to the desktop. It is not unusual to have two or more documents open at a time but when you take a break or go to lunch you have to go through the rigmarole of saving them one a time. Not any more!! Just hold down the Shift key and go to the File menu and there you will see two new commands, “Save All” and “Close All”, one click and all of your documents will be saved or closed.
Word has a powerful spell-checker but there is an abbreviated version that makes it easier to run a quick check on a document or letter. You can do this by double-clicking on the little open book icon at the bottom of the page.
It steps through the whole document, highlighting spelling and grammar errors like the normal spell-checker but with a much simpler (and smaller) menu type display. Word also has quite a decent thesaurus but it is buried away on the Tools menu, unless you know this simple keyboard shortcut.
Highlight the word with your mouse and press Shift + F7 and a list of alternatives will appear. Incidentally, you can highlight a word either side of the cursor by pressing Ctrl + Shift + right/left arrow key. Ctrl + Shift + up/down arrow highlights text above or below the cursor a paragraph at a time. If you spend a lot of time working on documents or manuscripts, it can be very useful to return to the point at which you left off after your last editing session. Word automatically remembers the last three changes you made to a document and these can be recalled by repeatedly pressing Shift + F5.
Automatic “Numbering” and “Bullets” drives a lot of users to distraction, with Word inserting numbers or bullet points in lists without asking and making it difficult to undo the changes. It’s a useful feature but the trouble is that somebody at Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to enable it by default, so switch this off. The option can be found on the Tools menu. Select AutoCorrect then the “Autoformat as you type” tab and here you will find the check boxes for “Automatic Numbered Lists and “Bulleted Lists”.
Have a look around; you might also find a couple of other features that have been irritating you, such as the unasked for insertion of fractions, ordinals, symbols and underlined hypertext links that appear as you type. If you are prone to creating really fancy looking documents with a lot of elaborate formatting you can sometimes lose track of the fonts and styles you’ve used.
To view the attributes of a block of text, highlight it then go to the help menu and click “What’s This?”. The cursor now has a question mark attached and the details of anything you click on will be displayed. To switch the function off just press the Escape key. Changing margins and tab settings can be hit and miss, and not terribly accurate but you can make it a lot easier by holding down the Alt key. This makes the ruler display at the top of the page change to a precise digital readout, allowing you to make changes in steps as small as one-hundredth of a measuring unit.
Microsoft Word is the world's favorite word processing program If you don't have it on your computer, chances are you eventually will. And yet, like most software, its huge range of features and creative benefits remain hidden behind a wall of difficult and boring help files.
But not any more! MS Word MAGIC! is the latest stunning ebooklet from The Newbie Club, and it's so full of screen captures, pictures, and Newbie-Speak exercises, you'll wonder how on earth they keep the price down to only $9.95! Read all about it here It's brilliant!
|
