So You Think You Know How to Use Microsoft Word?

As an IT trainer I find our most popular courses are usually advanced MS Excel, with Microsoft Project following a close second. Advanced Word is some way down the list and we hardly ever run foundation Word courses.

I believe the reason for this is that Microsoft have done a pretty good job of making Word easy to use at a basic level and many people feel confident in teaching themselves. However, there is a fundamental problem here best summed up by the old adage: "you don't know what you don't know." In other words, you cannot teach yourself about features which you don't know exist!

The great shame is that many people are not getting the most out of the software which they have paid a significant amount of money for. Many of the little know features relate to efficiency and saving time on tasks, precisely the areas we need to know about in order to be at our most productive. And in business saving time means saving money. Let's take a look at some of the features which users are often unaware about.

Using Styles
Most users are familiar with the extensive range of formatting tools which Microsoft Word comes equipped with. However, few people are taking advantage of styles, which is one of the most powerful tools you can use. Essentially, a style is a collection of formatting attributes which are named and saved. Word 2007 comes with a large gallery of pre-defined styles on the 'home' ribbon. To use these styles, select the appropriate text and then simply click the style to be applied.

One of the most significant aspects of styles is the ability to modify and update them. Let's say that you have laid out a Word document with a number of different formatting styles, main headings, sub-headings and body text etc. If you decide to make changes to any of these elements, you will have to go through the document and edit them individually if you have simply formatted the text directly. However, if you have applied styles to the text, it is only necessary to modify the style itself and all instances where it has been used will be updated automatically. This can save a considerable amount of time and effort, particularly with large Word documents.

Using Levels
Another feature which is often overlooked due to lack of understanding is that of levels. Levels give a document structure which can be modified and updated rather like styles. Levels create a hierarchy within the document, starting at level 1 and continuing through to level 9. The pre-defined styles within Word each have an associated level, so heading 1 for instance has been assigned level 1, heading 2 has been assigned level 2 and so on.

One of the main reasons of creating a document with a heading structure is that it can be used to drive other useful tools; one of the most significant being the table of contents. This easy to use feature will automatically create a table of contents based upon the levels within the document. So heading 1 will appear as a section title with heading 2, 3 etc indented below. Page numbers are automatically assigned and can be updated automatically if you edit the document. This can save a huge amount of time and is for me one of the most useful features within Microsoft Word.

I hope this article has given you a little insight into some of the lesser understood, but empowering features of Microsoft Word.