Many people out there might be wondering why you’d complete Microsoft online courses when programs like Word are seemingly pretty easy. Well, an Office 365 course isn’t about learning all the simple functions. It’s about learning all of the hidden tips and tricks that turn a simple word processing program into a powerful business tool.
Here are 11 hidden Microsoft Word features you might not know about.
Watermarks
There are a few different reasons you might want a watermark on your document. Firstly, if you’re sending a draft document to a number of people, you may want to identify it as a draft. A watermark is perfect for this. You might want to also just enhance the document with words such as ‘Confidential’ or ‘Urgent’. At the same time, a watermark can be used as a form of authenticating a certain document – showing people it’s your own original work.
It’s easy to use too. Just click on the Page Layout tab and find Watermark. There are pre-set options available or you can customise your own.
Digital signatures
Many people are concerned about sharing and collaborating with Word documents because they can be so easily altered. It’s why many people save their files as a PDF because it’s much harder to edit. But what if you want to send someone a document for collaboration, meaning you actually want them to edit it? You might also want them to know that the document is authentic.
In the File tab, go to Protect Document and you’ll find a range of options. One of those is ‘Add a digital signature’. This provides an encrypted signature that confirms the work is original. If the document is edited in any way, the digital signature is removed, so you get a great guarantee of legitimacy.
Translations
Are you using different languages in your document? It’s not uncommon, particularly in academic writing, to include translations of certain pieces of text. Of course, if you’re bilingual, you might just be able to type in different languages easily. However, even that presents its own set of problems due to different lettering or symbols. So, the other option is to leave Word altogether and find an external translating program, such as Google Translate. Copy and paste back into your text, and you’re done.
But why go to that trouble when you can manage translations right there in your Word document? Under the Review tab, you’ll find a translation option, making it easy to highlight certain sections of your text. You can choose between translating the entire document, a small selection, or even using the Mini-Translator. There are plenty of languages to choose from, making it super easy to include different languages where required, or even translate unfamiliar languages on a document that you’re reading.
Adding equations
Ever tried adding equations into Word manually: It’s extremely difficult, especially if they go over multiple lines. If you’re doing academic writing such as mathematics, chemistry or physics, you’ll no doubt need to include equations at one point or another. Well, Word actually makes this easy for you.
All you need to do is click the Insert Tab and find Equation. This opens up an equation toolbar and you get a whole host of options including different symbols and even a bunch of equation pre-sets to make it really easy. It won’t help with the calculations, you’re on your own there, but you can definitely write them nice and easily with Microsoft Word.
Password protection
We touched on digital signatures before, and in the same section (the Protect Document in the File menu), you can protect your work with a password. This prevents anybody from opening the document without your unique password.
This is terrific for sharing confidential or sensitive information, however, you do need to be extremely careful that you type the password correctly and keep it written down somewhere else. Unlike many systems, there’s no ‘Forgot Your Password?’ function and you won’t be able to access the document at all without the correct password.
Changing the case of text
One of the most common errors people make when typing is to leave the caps to lock on when you don’t want it. If you’re a touch-typist, or even just extremely quick, you likely don’t look at the screen for long periods of your typing. So, you end up with lines and lines of capitalised text which was never your intention.
Well, help is at hand – you don’t need to delete it all and start again. In your Home tab, there’s a Change Case button that looks like ‘Aa’. This allows you to change everything back to sentence font. Or for headings, you can capitalise the first letter of each word. There is a range of options. Another handy trick is to highlight your text and press Shift + F3, which toggles through a range of case options.
Historical clipboard entries
We all know about using Ctrl + C to copy a selection of text, and Ctrl + V to paste it elsewhere. But did you know that you can actually access previously copied selections from a menu? This can speed things up in a number of situations, especially if you do a lot of copy and pasting, or you’re adding links, drawing information from other sources etc.
In the Home tab, you’ll see the word Clipboard, with a small arrow beneath it. Click the arrow and you’ll open the Advanced Clipboard. Here you can see all of the previously copied items while working on your document. This beats searching for text and copying again!
The art of kerning
Kerning, for those who don’t know, is the selective adjustment of the spacing between the letters or characters in a piece of text. It’s used to make your text look better, which some fonts need more than others. Your basic fonts already look pretty good, but many of them don’t have great spacing. Word doesn’t perform kerning automatically, but you can set it up for yourself.
The pop-out arrow in the Font section of your Home tab takes you to the font options section. Click on the Advanced tab, and you’ll see an option to use ‘Kerning for fonts. Click the box, and it’s done! You can also get to this section by highlighting some text, right-clicking and choosing ‘Font’.
Inserting screenshots
Many people think they have to go through a whole tedious process to add a screenshot into your Word document. For example, if you were creating an instructional guide, you may want to highlight certain sections of a website or piece of software to show somebody the steps of performing a task. Normally, you’d have to go to the page you want to screenshot, take the screenshot, open the picture in another program and then insert it into Word as an image.
Well, you don’t need to do any of that. In the Insert tab, simply click Screenshot, and a list of available screens comes up. You can take the whole screenshot, or alternatively choose a screen clipping tool to make a selection of a page.
Using symbols
Have you ever tried to insert different symbols into Word? You know, the ones that aren’t on your keyboard? It’s usually an enormous hassle – think foreign currency symbols, copyright or trademark symbols. There are easy shortcuts for them if you use them all the time, but most people don’t. Plus, some of the shortcuts are extremely complex and there’s no way you would remember them all.
Luckily, the Insert tab of your Word document gives you a Symbols tool. Find all of those sneaky symbols right there and include them quickly and easily into your document.
Selecting text with similar formatting
In the Home tab, you’ll find another useful feature which appears as a cursor arrow and the word ‘Select’. Here, you can select all the text of a similar type in your document and edit the style accordingly. For example, if you want to edit all of the headings in a document, this is the place to do it. It’s great for making certain types of text bold, changing the case, or changing it in any other way you can think of.
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