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Using Microsoft Word is something most of us will do everyday, be it in our jobs or at home. Word is irrefutably user friendly, but are you getting the most out of this program? From page breaks to format painting, Word has a wide range of handy functions that can improve & simplify your desktop publish (DTP) experience, because who needs the head ache of cleaning up a formatting mess when there are so many far more delightful ways to spend your time? To get started, here are five of the functions you can use to ensure you are making Word work for you:


Page breaks: when editing a lengthy document, the spacing between pages and sections can become a skewed if you have initially set out your document utilising the return (enter) key. Adding new content, be it text or images, to a document that has been spaced out using the enter key can leave huge unwanted blank spaces throughout the document. To avoid having to go through your entire document and manually delete your initial spacing, you can save yourself the headache by getting into the habit of making use of the page break function to separate parts of your document that you wish to appear on a new page.

How? Insert > Break > Break Type select radio button 'Page Break' > OK

Or alternatively, the shortcut key is CTRL+Enter.


Format Painter: this is a super nifty little time saver. It is basically a copy & paste function for formatting of text. Say for instance you have a slab of text that is Arial, Size 9, Hot pink with 1.5 line spacing 4pt before & after. You have another slab of text you would like to look the same. Rather than going through all the formatting functions to select each of those variables, you can highlight the text with the formatting you are wishing to copy and then highlight the text you need formatted & just like magic, you've got your formatting sorted in the click on a button (rather than say 32 clicks).

How? The formatting painter looks like a little paint brush, you'll find it on the standard toolbar (View > Toolbars > Standard)

Highlight the text with the formatting you want to copy > click the format painter icon (you’ll know you've switched the function on as you will see a little paintbrush appear next to your curser) > highlight the unformatted text & watch it change to your selected formatting style.


Convert > Text to Table: Has you boss given you a mess of text & figures and instructed you to make a table from it? Thankfully, there is an easier way than manually copy & pasting the data. This function also works for changing data in tables to straight text (Table > Convert > Table to Text).

How? Select the text > Table > Convert > Text to Table > fill out the variables (how many columns & rows you want and how you would like your text to be sorted into those columns) > watch your data become a table at the press of a button.


Sort: Need to sort some data, say, alphabetically? Don't do it manually! There is a magic button for this too.

How? Table > Sort > Select your variables (ie. Ascending or descending?) > OK


Shortcuts: We all make good use of CTRL+C and CTRL+V, but do you use another function a whole lot? One that doesn't have a built in shortcut key? Say for instance, merging cells in a table. Rather than going long hand and selecting the cells you wish to merge and then going Table > Merge Cells. You can set up a keyboard shortcut to make this function quicker & easier for you to use.

How? To set up keyboard shortcuts follow these instructions:

Tools > Customize > Keyboard (down the bottom next to Close) > Select the category your function exists in and then select the function itself from the commands list > Once you've found & selected the function you want to assign a shortcut to, place your curser in the "Press new shortcut key" field > Click the keys you wish to make as your short cut, for example CTRL+R+T > Make sure the "Save changes in" field has "Normal.dot" selected (this is the blank template for each new document you create and by selecting this you will make the shortcut available for use every time you create a new document) > Click 'Assign' > 'Close'



Of course this is just a small sample of the handy tools available within Word… Which Word function do you think is the most fabulous??