Microsoft Word is one of the most overused and probably underutilised softwares across the board. There is so much to explore and discover to make our day-to-day working more productive. Let us see some of the daily-used tricks which make working on Word faster and more effective.
Inserting horizontal lines in Word is super simple, just enter a – (dash) 3 times and press enter and you will immediately get a horizontal line across the screen. If you want a different type of line, you can experiment with = or ~ or * or # and play around till you get what you want.
Inserting a symbol of copyright? Just use (c) and magically it will change to a copyright symbol like this ©. The same holds true for the Trade Mark symbol – enter ™ and watch it change to ™ instantly.
Para numbering in Word is something which all users MUST use. Here again, you start the first para with 1. and automatically it will start para numbering. This is most useful since it numbers all paragraphs serially and, most importantly, if you wish to rearrange your paragraphs, the numbering will change automatically. In cases where you have a large document and need to rearrange the paragraphs in multiple edits, it takes the load off renumbering the paras over and over again.
Writing fractions is very intuitive in Word. Just type it as you would want it – like 1 1/2 and it will transform into 1 ½ as you move ahead!
In all the above cases, be sure to press a space after each word to make it work seamlessly.
All accountants use Excel for Tables – we can’t live without Tables. But what if we need to insert a Table in a Word Document? There are several ways of doing this:
1. You could make a Table in Excel and Copy Paste it into Word directly. This is the easiest and most obvious. Moreover, you could make the pasted Table live in Word, meaning, if you make changes in your original Excel Sheet, the same changes would be reflected in your Word Document, live. This applies not only to Tables, but also to Graphs and Charts which are copy-pasted from Excel.
2. Creating a new Table in Word is also simple – just go to the Insert Menu and click on Table – it will show you a dummy table and you can move your mouse around and insert a Table with as many rows and columns as you like. The other option is to click on Insert Table and specify the rows and columns you want in the Table. In both cases, the Table will be inserted at the point where your cursor is currently located.
3. The next option under Insert Table is to Draw a Table manually. Just click and drag your mouse wherever you want the Table lines to be drawn, and automatically, Word will draw the Table for you.
4. Another way of inserting a Table in your document is to enter the following:
+———+————+———+ Press Enter
Here, the number of dashes that you insert will determine the width of each column. You may enter your data in the cells and move to each next cell with a Tab. When you reach the last column and press the Tab, automatically another row will be inserted and you may continue filling the cells. This way, you are not limited by the number of rows that you declare in the beginning, under the earlier methods.
Did you know that Word also allows you to sort a list of values or text or dates, one below the other? Just select the list and in the Paragraph Tab on the top, click on A?Z and voila! – Your list is sorted instantly.
In the Office 365 ecosystem, in Word Excel or PowerPoint, there is an inbuilt Clipboard which you can use across all the apps during each session and also across devices. On the Home Tab, under Clipboard in the right bottom corner, there is an arrow pointing diagonally downwards – just click on that arrow and you will get the entire clipboard history for your session.
Word and Windows also have the option to insert emojis in your documents in any text area. Just press the Windows Key + ; together and the possible emojis will pop up for you to select.
It is interesting to know that you can open most open PDFs directly in Word, and even edit them. This will work only if the PDF document is not password-protected or encrypted. However, it’s worth a try.
And if you want to share your document with others, just head to File-Transform and you will be able to publish your document on the web and share it with friends / colleagues / clients and the world at large. This could be very useful for quickly making an FAQs page or for collaboration and sharing large documents.
Now that you know what all Word can do, try these simple tricks and enhance your computing experience with Microsoft Word. Happy Wording!
