A note from Roadturn: There’s a first time for everything–and this is the first time I’ve invited a guest blogger to join the fun on the Roadturn Blog. I hope you enjoy this foray into Word wisdom by Rebecca Barden. One note: If you don’t see text in your Word ribbon, just look for the symbol Rebecca describes–then point your cursor at it, and text will appear. Let’s get to school now . . .

Whether you love it
or hate it,

Microsoft Word has a lot of tricks to make using the software easy. From formatting to custom dictionaries, knowing these tricks can make you look like a genius—and make your life so much easier.

Formatting Symbols

When you are using Word, your formatting may get messed up. Sometimes it’s hard to fix these issues without knowing what you did. Did you use a hard return after that last paragraph or a soft return? Did you use tab to indent that last paragraph, or did you just space over?

If you turn on the formatting symbols, you can see the symbol that represents each move. To turn on these symbols, click the paragraph symbol with the word “SHOW” under it in the toolbar. Knowing if you used hard returns vs. soft returns and tabs vs. spaces can help you ensure your formatting remains consistent throughout your document. If you want to hide the symbols, click the paragraph symbol again.

Formatting Paintbrush

Have you ever noticed the little paintbrush with the word “FORMAT” underneath it located in the toolbar of your Word document and wondered what it was for? This little brush will actually make formatting your document easy.

We’ve all been there. We have a paragraph or two that, no matter what we do, just won’t let us format it. If you have a paragraph or a sentence that looks how you want these other paragraphs to look, simply place your cursor in front of the correct paragraph, click the paintbrush, then either select or click next to the text you want to format. Word will then do the formatting for you.

Comments

Inserting comments is a great way to ask questions or remind yourself of something during the editing phase. For example, let’s say you’re reading a document someone else wrote and you have a question about a paragraph. Rather than send an email explaining your question and trying to describe the paragraph you’re referring to, you can insert a comment right into the document. This will highlight the copy you’re referring to and leave a comment box with your comments/questions.

To use Comments, highlight your desired text, click on the Insert drop down menu and select Comment. A dialogue box will appear for you to use to leave your comment.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are a great tool to use if you need to reference a website or another document. You can also use a hyperlink to add an active email address. Using hyperlinks allows your user to access this information without having to look for it themselves.

To insert a hyperlink into your document, highlight the desired copy you want to link, click on the Insert drop drown menu and select Hyperlink. When you do this, a display box will appear and the user can select if they want to insert a website address, an email address or another document.

Custom Dictionaries

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could tell Word’s spell checker that “blog” is a real word? Well, you can. When you are using spell checker, and it lands on a word that you’re tired of being prompted about, click the Add tab on the right. This will add the word to your spell checker dictionary, and you will never be notified about this word again.

Word has plenty of other tricks that can help you look like a genius. You can always take a quick tutorial to learn all the ins and outs of the software, or you can play around with it to see what you come up with. You will be shocked at all of the tricks you never knew existed, and you may even find yourself cursing the software less than usual.

Rebecca Barden is a technical writer and mother living in Dallas. She is a grammar fanatic and often encourages her associates to instantly proof their work using a grammar checker. She is currently undertaking a home improvement project and attempting to restore her countertops.