Word 2010 is a capable word processor, but some of the default settings on a newly installed copy don’t make much sense. Here’s some recommendations to improve them. More »
Rather than keep multiple files, to-do lists, and longer notes on something coming up, consider using a Word file in the “Outline View” to create a nested, expandable personal wiki-style organiser. It’s how one Lifehacker reader rolls. More »
There are free desktop alternatives (OpenOffice) and online alternatives (Google Docs), but Microsoft Word remains the king of the word-processing pack. Here’s five tricks for working with text in Word that you may not know about but that can help make your life simpler. More »
Microsoft Word has a hidden feature that most people probably don’t know about: a way to collect text on the clipboard from multiple locations, and then paste it all at once into your document. More »
Windows: If you’re running out of time on your Office 2010 trial but want to squeeze all the functionality out of it that you can, free utility Trial Extender will rearm it for you, no command line work required. More »
One of the aims of the Ribbon interface in Office 2007 was to make features easier to find, but there’s still plenty of obscure options in Word and its siblings which most people will never discover. The official Word blog runs through one such feature, Building Blocks, a catch-all category that includes pre-defined headers, footers, title pages and other components, and explains some of the ways they can be used. It’s a useful option to know about if you frequently produce similar documents but don’t want to make use of full-blown templates (though the preview function in the Building Blocks Organizer is pretty awful and definitely needs a revamp in the next version). Building Blocks [Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog]
The table formatting tools in Word 2007 might be ridiculously distributed over three separate parts of the Ribbon, but there are some pretty useful options buried in there. The Word Team Blog offers a helpful and pretty comprehensive look at the benefits of using conditional table styles, which let you set up neat tricks like rows in alternating colours that automatically adjust themselves as new data gets added. Not sure how to fix up styles in a regular document, let alone a table? Learn how to use the Styles pane for a more consistent look.
Behind The Curtains: Table Styles [The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog]When Word documents get edited by multiple people, the end result is often an unholy mess, since most people still tend to make direct formatting changes (such as adding bold and italics) rather than using Word’s Styles feature for consistency. The Microsoft Word Team blog gives a useful overview of how you can rescue a format-challenged document by using the Styles pane to identify all the formatting used in a document, and replace ad-hoc formatting with properly defined styles. This useful feature is less than obvious in Word 2007, since the option to launch the actual styles list is a ridiculously tiny arrow under Change Styles and the default is to show only ‘recommended’ styles rather than what’s actually in use, but it’s still there. How to Make the Formatting in Your Document Consistent [The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog]
