Get to know your favourite apps a little better
Aug 18, 2007 - 08:27 AM
By Jodi Avery MacLean
There is one program that most office workers use every day of their working lives: Microsoft Word.
Even as a Mac user, I still use this word processor from the PC powerhouse. But for all the office workers who use it everyday, I dare say more than half of them (if not more) miss out on some of the best features this program has to offer.
Getting to know your favourite and most-used applications can help you in countless ways. You not only improve efficiency at the office, but it also makes using these programs much more enjoyable. Computers can be finicky enough on their own. But if you know your applications well, they can serve you well.
There are three tips I’d like to share about Microsoft Word. If you didn’t know these functions existed, play around with them. And after a short while, you’ll wonder how you could have functioned without them.
The first is a simple one on the surface: customizing your toolbar. It may be simple, but the more you make your toolbar work for you, the easier every task in Word will be. When you open Word, it gives you the basic buttons and tools at the top: open, save, print, etc. But depending on how you use Word, you can customize the toolbar to work best for you -- add chart buttons if you use this feature often, remove it the cut/paste buttons if you use quick keys instead. To access this function: grab the Tools menu, select Customize and then Customize Toolbars/Menus.
If you paste text from other documents or websites while doing research, you can often end up with something that looks like it’s written in a foreign language. Extra characters, breaks or spaces often show up and often at the front or back of each line. Removing these can be a pain. But with a special trick, you can select text vertically, instead of the normal horizontal function. To do this: hold down the ALT key and click where you want to begin then drag the mouse down to select the text.
AutoText is a great Word function that will guess what you may be trying to type and completes the word/phrase for you. You can turn it on to complete months -- type Jan and Word will guess January, just hit enter to let it finish the word. Make this function even more functional by adding your own entries. If you type your address often, your job title, or any long phrase often, you can make Word guess when you are typing it and finish the job for you. To set up an AutoText entry: type and format the text you want, select it, then hit Insert, AutoText and then New. Name the entry then hit OK. When you start to type this phrase again, after a character or two, Word will guess that you are typing it. Simply hit enter for the whole shebang to show up on your screen.
Open up your Word vocabulary and find a new level of functionality for everyone’s favourite word processors.
Jodi Avery MacLean is a writer and editor based in Toronto. To contact her, e-mail jodiaverymaclean@gmail.com.
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