13 Tips to Get the Most Out of Microsoft Word

If a large part of your work involves writing, Microsoft Word is likely one of the most used apps on your computer. But even though MS Word is a popular word processing tool, there are a lot of features that are underused and often go unnoticed.

Keep reading to find out what these features are and how you can use them.

Learn these keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are the best way to save you time and make you more productive. If you are editing documents, you will find copy, paste, cut, and select the most useful:

• Copy: Command + C if you are on a Mac and Ctrl + C for Windows
• Paste: Command + V (Mac) and Ctrl + V (Windows)
• Cut: Command + X (Mac) and Ctrl + X (Windows)
• Select All: Command + A (Mac) and Ctrl + A (Windows)

Recover unsaved drafts

Unlike Google Docs, documents do not get autosaved. This is especially troublesome on a Mac since MS Word is a third-party app and there is no autosave.

But you can still learn how to recover unsaved word document mac system creates with these 3 easy methods:

• Check Trash
• Try Auto recovery
• Check temporary files

Zoom in to view your doc better

You can quickly zoom in to a doc to avoid straining your eyes by using the slider on the bottom. Or, you can also zoom out to see how the entire document looks if you are concerned about the formatting.

Get rid of formatting

When doing research, you may want to paste sections of text from the web into your document so that it is easy to incorporate in your writing. But, this creates a formatting problem. The text you paste is in a different font, style, size, and even color.

To avoid this from happening, you can remove all that formatting easily by clicking the ‘Clear All formatting’ button.

Select copy automatically

Instead of dragging your cursor or using a keyboard shortcut, you can select text by using your trackpad.

Click once and it will select the entire word to the right of your cursor and twice to select the entire sentence or paragraph.

Insert hyperlinks easily

Instead of selecting a word and then using the URL icon from the toolbar on top, you can easily link text to a URL with this keyboard shortcut - Command + K on Mac and Ctrl + K on Windows.

Set your preferred default font

The default font on Word is Calibri or Arial. You can change this to your preferred default font instead. For instance, if your website uses Roboto, you can change the settings on Word to Roboto as well. So when you write copy for the website, you are not distracted by a different font and can see how it would look aesthetically.

Find any word easily

Try Ctrl + F to find any word in the document for Windows. Use Command + F on a Mac computer. You can also find and replace words if you have made a typo or you would like to replace a number in a report that has been updated.

Use the Help feature

If you are uncertain of how to use a feature or aren’t sure about how to get something done on Windows, you can use the Help feature to troubleshoot the issue and find step by step tutorials to help you solve your problem.

Try Smart lookup

When you need to find a synonym or a meaning for a word, you don’t need to open a new browser to do so. Microsoft Word has a Smart lookup feature that allows you to find everything you need to know about a word when you right-click on it.

Find out your work’s readability

Microsoft Word has an in-built feature that allows you to determine your work’s readability. This runs the Flesch-Kincaid test that determines what grade level can read your writing. It is recommended to aim for a 7 or an 8.

To turn this feature on, go to File and then Options. Under Options, click on Proofing and check ‘Show readability statistics’ under ‘Spelling & Grammar.’ Once you turn this on, when you check the document for typos, you will also get your readability score.

Generate placeholder content

Sometimes you may need to create some placeholder content for a presentation or a wireframe. You can use Word to do that. Type “=lorem()” without the punctuation. This will generate random text that you can use.

Multitask effectively

If your task is repetitive, you can watch videos on YouTube and work on Word at the same time with the myTube app. It plays videos in the background while you work.

To sum up

There you have it. You can use these tricks to take your Microsoft Word game up a notch on Windows or Mac and get the most out of the software.