Do you write a lot of texts professionally or are you studying and currently working on a scientific paper? In order to have a good effect on text in the future, we will show you some tricks that you may not necessarily find in Microsoft Word immediately.
Microsoft Word is the most widely used program for writing text. It offers many possibilities for text editing, design and improvement. Word users will certainly already be familiar with the standard functions. But the program has many more features, some of which are quite hidden. We present the best tips and tricks for Microsoft Word.
Tip 1: Customize the Design
By default, Word appears in light mode. If this bothers you, you can personalize the design via File – Options – General – Microsoft Office Copy. You can choose between a gray or dark color scheme, and there is even a colorful design available.
Tip 2: Template
Are you writing a newsletter or do you have to submit a report regularly? Word provides you with various templates for this. Under “File” you’ll find several template examples for all possible areas of the application at the top. No matter whether you want to create vouchers, write greeting cards, blog articles or generate the next annual report, you’ll find professionally designed templates here. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Also read: How did Microsoft get started? History of the technology giant
Tip 3: Save/Open PDF
Word documents have long been saved directly as PDFs. The function of opening PDFs directly in Word is relatively new. Opening works just like a Word document. A version designed for Word then appears on the screen, which you can edit and change as you normally would.
Tip 4: Focus
The “View” tab now offers the option to work in a focused manner. Clicking “Focus” makes the menu bar disappear. The word then appears like the famous blank sheet of paper waiting to be written on. There are no distractions from any of the menu functions.
Tip 5: Office Lenses
Photographing text using a smartphone is as practical as dictating text. The Microsoft Office Lens app is available for free in well-known stores. Office Lens converts photographed text into a Word document that you can edit immediately.
Tip 6: Dictate
There’s also a new dictation function in the “Start” tab. A very practical function that saves a lot of typing work, especially with long text passages.
Dictation of texts in Word now works really well and almost error-free when spoken slowly and clearly. Like a dictation, punctuation marks must be spoken. Word recognizes commonly spoken punctuation marks and automatically inserts them into the text.
Dictating text makes sense above all when you want to insert excerpts from another text in your own document. Even though not everything on the screen is completely error free, dictating the text can save a lot of time.
We explain exactly how this function works here: Effortlessly dictate text in Microsoft Word
Tip 7: Pictures and Pictographs
If you want to make your text clear, Word will provide you with suitable images, graphics and pictograms. To do this, look under the “Insert” tab for the item “Pictogram”. There you have countless freely available motifs that you can use to make your texts more diverse.
Tip 8: Screenshots
This feature integrates Windows’ own screenshot tool into Word. Under the “Insert” tab, simply click “Screenshot”. This way you can easily clip images from web pages or other sources. Image sections then appear directly in your document.
Tip 9: Insert Videos Online
YouTube videos can now be easily integrated into Word as well. This function can be found under the “Insert” tab. Click on ‘Online Video’ and a dialog will open. At this point enter the URL and a preview image for the video will appear. The video can be played with one click.
Tip 10: Draw
Perhaps just a gimmick for many authors of texts: the “Draw” tab. There are different colored pens and other drawing tools available to you in Word. You can use it, for example, to add text correction by hand or to highlight certain text passages in color.
The Freehand to Shape and Freehand to Equation features are particularly useful. The former allows you to draw a circle or triangle with a pen in the document. Word recognizes the shape and makes a clean copy. The second task should be interesting to the students. Here, complex equations and related mathematical symbols can be handwritten in a window. Converts Word input to clean text.
Also read: Sign Digitally – Edit Documents Easily and Directly on Your PC or Smartphone
Tip 11: Share
This Word feature is useful for teams working together on a document. The “Share” function is in the top right and has a blue background. Just click and share the document with individual team members. You can grant share specific editing rights if you wish. If you’ve shared text with different team members, you’ll see their changes in Word in real time. For example, you can react directly to comments.
Tip 12: Notepad
The editor is an integral part of the “Start” tab. You can also access the editor through the ‘Review’ tab.
With the editor, Microsoft Word now provides powerful support for correcting text. The new text correction function can now detect more than just typos, missing punctuation marks or grammatical errors.
The editor also checks your text for formal language, brevity, comprehensibility and word selection. How precisely Word should check your document can be set to suit your needs via File – Options – Document Verification.
The task of checking the document for similarity from online sources should be interesting to the students – Keyword: plagiarism.
Tip 13: Shortcut “Double Space”
Careless mistakes are annoying and leave a bad impression on the reader. Double spaces are definitely part of it. But especially with long text, it can take time to find the wrong spacing.
With the key combination “Ctrl” and “H” you can remove all double spaces in one stroke. A window is opening. In the “Search” field, type two spaces. Put a space in the “Replace with” field. Then press “Enter” and click “Replace All” when prompted. You have already removed all the wrong spacing in your document.
Tip 14: For Long Text – Thumbnails
Many people are probably familiar with this representation of Power Point. Scrolling through pages is often annoying, especially with very long Word text containing many pages. This is where the “Page by Page” view, located under the “Views” tab, helps. If you have selected this view, the “Thumbnail view” icon will appear on the right. With a single click, Word generates an overview of all the pages in a Word document. It allows you to jump back and forth between pages in a targeted manner. Which saves a lot of time.
Tip 15: Quick Search
The longer a text is, the more annoying it is to search for certain passages or words. However, Word does provide some shortcuts. The quick search using “Ctrl” and “F” is a very useful one. This function is useful when searching for misspelled words. Entering the word you’re looking for shows all the paths in the document on the left.
Tip 16: Translate
Word can now also translate texts from different languages into German or German text into another language. Of course, when translating into another language, the text should be proofread by the native speaker when in doubt.
Otherwise, the function is suitable for transferring texts in a foreign language to German. This way the meaning of the text can be understood quickly, even if the translation is not error-free.
Tip 17: Immersive Reader
Plastic Reader, also in the “View” tab, provides several functions at the same time. The layout of the text can be adjusted through a special menu. This increases the readability of the text.
A certain number of lines can also be highlighted. This function replaces the index finger, which helps younger beginner readers to understand the text line by line and not slip out of the eye.
The plastic reader also provides a reading function. The voice sounds very human and not at all like a computer. This function is also suitable for younger readers to become more familiar with the language, words and texts.
By the way: When you close Immersive Reader all layout changes to the text disappear again. So this function is suitable for trying out some layout effects without directly formatting the whole document.
Tip 18: Check Accessibility
You can make your entire Word document accessible. Word provides a simple function for this under the “Check” tab. Clicking “Check Accessibility” will show you where you still need to optimize your document so that even people with low vision can read it.
Also read: 25 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know
Tip 19: Reduce Document Size
Do you have a lot of images in your Word document? Then the file size can grow very quickly. Then emailing the file can be tricky. Therefore, Word now has a way to reduce the file size. Just choose File – Options – Advanced. Scroll down a bit to “Image size and quality”. Here you can adjust the size of the Word document by reducing the image quality so that it can also be sent by e-mail.
Tip 20: Turn a Document into a Website with One Click
A very useful function appears under File – Transform. By clicking “Transform” you can convert the entire document into a web page. All you have to do is select one of the design templates that appear on the right. The Unified Self interface takes care of everything else. Sway is actually an Office extension for creating reports or presentations interactively, but is suitable in relation to Word for creating a website with a single click.
