21 Microsoft Office Basic Tips

No matter how long you’ve been using Microsoft Word, you can always learn new techniques to help you work faster and smarter. Here are some of our favorite Basic tips and tricks for Word 97/2000/2002(Office XP)/2003.

1. Learn to use Undo – Make a mistake? Press [Ctrl]Z or choose Undo from the Edit menu right away. Keep pressing [Ctrl]Z to backtrack through and undo the most recent editing changes you’ve made.

2. Save often – Press [Ctrl]S or click the Save button on the Standard toolbar. Save your work frequently. You can also instruct Word to automatically save your work periodically. Open the Tools menu, select Options, click the Save tab, and activate the Save AutoRecovery Info Every option. You can specify an interval from 1 to 120 minutes.

3. Quickly move around in a document – To move to the top of a document, press [Ctrl][Home]. To move to the bottom of a document, press [Ctrl][End]. To go to the top of the next page, press [Ctrl][Page Down]. For the top of the preceding page, press [Ctrl][Page Up].

4. Open menus and select commands from the keyboard – Press [Alt] plus the letter that’s underlined to open a menu, such as File, Edit, View, and so on. Once a menu is open, you don’t need to press [Alt] to select a command; just press the underlined letter of the command you want to select. Here are some common examples: Quick Print Preview: [Alt]F,V. Quick Save As: [Alt]F,A. Quickly reopen the first document in the most recently used file list: [Alt]F,1.

5. Fours ways to select a block of text – Use the mouse. Just click and drag the mouse to select text. Use [Shift] plus the arrow keys. Hold down [Shift] and press an arrow key to select text in the desired direction. To select a word at a time, press [Ctrl][Shift] and the left or right arrow key. Use the mouse with the [Shift] key. Move the mouse pointer away from the insertion point position, hold down [Shift] and click to select all the text between the insertion point and the place where you clicked. Frustrated when you try to select text with the mouse past the bottom of the currently visible page and Word leaps past what you want to select? Those are the times to use [Shift] plus the down arrow key instead of the mouse.

6. Select a word – Double-click on it. If a space immediately follows the word you select, the space gets selected, too. Punctuation is ignored.

7. Select a sentence – Select a sentence. Hold down [Ctrl] and click anywhere in the sentence.

8. Select a paragraph – Triple-click within the paragraph or move the mouse just past the left margin of the paragraph. When the pointer changes to a right-pointing arrow, double-click to select the whole paragraph.

9. Select a table – Select a table by holding down [Alt] and double-clicking anywhere in the table.
10. Select cells in large tables using the keyboard (Word 2002/2003) – As the size of a table increases, the harder it becomes to use the mouse as your sole means of navigation in a table. For example, to select a column with the mouse, you need to move the pointer along the top gridline of the first cell in the column until it changes to a down arrow and then click. However, using the keyboard simplifies this process. Position the pointer anywhere in the column, press [Alt], and select any cell. To use the keyboard to select an entire table, click anywhere in the table and, with Num Lock off, press [Alt]5 on the numeric keyboard. Like Excel, Word XP and Word 2003 also let you press [Ctrl] to select nonadjacent cells. For example, to select columns 1 and 3 using the keyboard, press [Alt], click somewhere in column 1, press [Ctrl][Alt], and click somewhere in column 3.
11. Select all the text between the insertion point and… – To select all the text between the insertion point and the end of the current line, press [Shift][End]. To select the text from the insertion point through the end of the current paragraph, press [Ctrl][Shift] and the down arrow. To select the text from the insertion point to the end of the document, press [Ctrl][Shift][End].

12. Select multiple, non-contiguous words (Word 2002/2003 only) – Select a word, then hold [Ctrl] and double-click an additional word or words. This will select the words regardless of whether they are adjacent to each other.

13. Select an entire document – Press [Ctrl]A. This is handy when you need to change the font or add or remove formatting. Once you’ve selected the entire document, apply the formatting to everything and either leave it applied or apply it again to remove it. For example, suppose some text in your document is underlined and you want nothing underlined. To avoid spending time visiting each underlined section of text and un-underlining it, select the whole document with [Ctrl]A. Press [Ctrl]U to apply underlining to the entire document and then press [Ctrl]U again to remove the underlining. Be careful when you use [Ctrl]A. If you accidentally press [Delete] or type a keystroke and erase everything, don’t panic. Just press [Ctrl]Z or choose Undo from the Edit menu.

14. Find multiple instances at once (Word 2002/2003 only) – You can use the Find command to count and highlight the occurrences of a particular word. Open the Find dialog box by pressing [Ctrl]F or going to Edit | Find. Type the word or words you want to locate in the Find What text box. Select the Highlight All Items Found In: check box. Press [Enter] or click the Find All button and Word will display the number of instances of that word occurring in your document. It will also select them so that they’re easy to spot and edit.

15. Grow font, shrink font – Here are three quick ways to change the size of selected text: Choose Font from the Format menu and specify the desired point size. Click the Font Size button on the Formatting toolbar and select an entry from the drop-down list. Or use the Grow Font and Shrink Font shortcuts, which are [Ctrl] plus the close- and open- square bracket characters, respectively.

16. Rename an existing document – Use Save As. When you need to use an existing document as the basis for a new one, don’t overwrite the old document. As soon as you open it, press [Alt]F and then press A. (Or open the File menu and choose Save As.) Then immediately type a new name or change some part of the old one.

17. Print envelopes – Want to address your envelopes in the printer? Type an address in a blank document or in a letter. Open the Tools menu and select Envelopes And Labels. (Word XP users choose Letters And Mailings and then select Envelopes And Labels.) In the Envelopes tab, enter the return address if you want one, and click Print.

18. Expand your vocabulary – Word has a built-in thesaurus. Press [Shift][F7] or open the Tools menu, select Language, and then choose Thesaurus. Word will display a list of synonyms for the word you’ve selected or the word closest to the insertion point marker.

19. Make friends with the right mouse button – Don’t be afraid to right-click on a block of text or a table cell. The shortcut menu offers immediate access to some handy formatting options.

20. Paste plain text – When you copy and paste text from a Web page or another document, the text brings its formatting into your document. To get around that behavior, copy the text and place the insertion point marker where you want to insert the copy. Then, open the Edit menu, choose Paste Special, and select the Unformatted Text option.

21. Print multiple pages of a Word document on one sheet (Word 2000/2002/2003) – If you regularly print large documents or send printed copies of them through the mail, you can save on both paper and postage by using Microsoft Word’s Zoom feature. With Zoom, you can print as many as 16 pages on a single sheet of paper. To print four pages to a sheet, do to File | Print, in the Zoom section, select 4 Pages from the Pages Per Sheet drop-down list, make any other print selections, and click OK. Zoom automatically reduces the scale to fit four pages on each sheet. Zoom reduces the size of your printout without changing the document’s format or page layout settings.