When you use Microsoft Office, you generally stick to the things you know how to do. Depending on when you learned how to use Office in the first place, a LOT could have changed from then until now. The main basic functions are still there, and it can be hard to explore the application when it does what you need it to do so well. There are a ton of things that will make you more productive in your use of the program though, that we thought we’d let you know how to utilize them.
Magic keystroke
If you are working inside any Microsoft Office products like Excel, Word or Powerpoint, chances are you’ve repeated a task more than once. Especially in an excel document, you could be repeating inserting a row or changing colors in cells. You can easily repeat the last command you sent to the program by pressing F4.
Edit PDFs
In the past, if you wanted to open a PDF to edit it, you either had to own the full Adobe Acrobat product or pay an expensive program to convert the file. Now Microsoft Word is able to convert PDF files into an editable Word document. You simply need to open the PDF file from within Word and it will open. Sometimes the translation can get a little bit lost, but most of the file should be pretty close to the original.
Recommended Charts
Within Excel, it can be hard to pick exactly the right chart to present the data you have entered. Within the insert tab on an Excel file, there is a button called “Recommended Charts.” Pressing this button will allow Excel to analyze the data, and recommend the best charts to help you show that data.
Copy & Paste
When pressing ctrl-C and ctrl-V seems like just so much effort, you can also press the F2 key to accomplish the same task. Simply highlight the text you want to be moved and hit the F2 button. Then place your cursor where you want the text to be moved to and hit enter. 4 button presses have now been reduced to 2!
Open a Copy
Speaking of copying, when you want to open a working copy of a file, without disrupting the original, you can right-click the file within word’s Open dialog. There will be a small pop-up offering to open or open a copy of the file. Using this function will open a copy of the file and save that copy to the same folder the original file in which the original file is located.
Consult Wikipedia
The reference tools within Word have really grown up over the years. Now considered “Smart Lookup” you can highlight any word within a document and you can view the definition, search the web for that word, and see the Wikipedia entry for that word. Using the researcher option, you can delve even deeper into the topic and have a full search engine right within your Word document.
These tips are really just a small portion of the features hidden within Office applications. Clicking around through the various menus of the programs can open up a whole new world of functions you never knew existed! Soon, you won’t even know how you lived without these features.