Very Useful Microsoft Word Tips

Using MS Word effectively can be very helpful in completing documentation jobs on time with professional touch. I have included a few tips that I have found very useful and handy while I am using the application.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Selecting whole paragraph: triple-click on mouse button anywhere in the paragraph or press 'Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow' at the beginning of the paragraph.
• Increasing Font: Ctrl+Shift+> or Ctrl+]
• Decreasing Font: Ctrl+shift+<  or Ctrl+[
• Capitalizing: select the word or group of word and press Shift+F3. Pressing repeatedly makes the word (s) change from all-small to first letter capital to all letter capita to all small and so on. Can stop in the position that is desirable. 

Special Tricks & Tools 

• Automatic Table of Contents: change the style of the section or subsection headings into 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2' etc according to their level. Then, on the suitable place of the document, insert the Table of Contents. This automatically arranges the table of contents with respective order of section heads, sub-section heads etc with their respective page number. 
• Cross-referencing: add bookmark in the desired location to be linked to. While referring or linking to that bookmarked position, go to the linking position and insert hyper-link to the respective bookmark. Note that the bookmark can be named. So, give a suitable and easy-to-remember name to the bookmark. 
• Citation and Bibliography: 
• Input your reference material details into the 'Manage Sources' section of the references feature. 
• Cite the source you want by inserting citation to the reference document or material inserted earlier in the source set. 
• To better manage this, can use citation management tool such as Mendley or Zotero etc. 
• Once citations are done, can add bibliography in the suitable section (usually the end)
•  Automatic Numbering of Tables and Figures 
• Add caption to the figure or table with auto numbering.
• Once all figures and tables and captioned with automatic numbering, add the list of tables or figures at the suitable location. It is similar to adding table of content. Just keep in mind that each figure and table that needs to be listed in the tables are to be captioned properly using the caption too. 
• To add caption, right-click the respective figure or table and choose 'add caption'.

20 December 2018

Updated: 25 Dec 2018