pctechguide.com

We mentioned a few great Microsoft Word hacks in our last post. We wanted to follow up and share some more that can help improve productivity.

1. Continue where you were

Microsoft Word remembers where you left off when viewing and editing a document, and you can easily return to that place by clicking on the bookmark icon in the scroll bar. If it does not appear in your version of Word, you can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Shift + F5 keys on your keyboard at the same time to toggle between the last positions of your cursor.

2. Delete like a pro
   If you want to delete a large block of text, the easiest way is to select it with the mouse and then press the delete key, but if you are engrossed in writing and do not want to take your hands off the keyboard, you can delete whole words (instead of letters) if you press Control + Delete on the keyboard at the same time.

Similarly, if you want to “un-delete” or recover what you have just deleted, you don’t need to resort to the old Control + Z to undo, but you can press Alt + Delete to see how the words and letters you have deleted come back to life before your eyes.

3. Remove all formatting from a document
   Sometimes a document can have a mess of different text formatting, especially if you have been pasting fragments from other texts or websites. You can remove all formatting by selecting the text and pressing Control + Space. No more bold text, or different fonts.
4. Pasting text without formatting
   But there is another way to avoid getting into a mess of formatting when pasting text that will make it unnecessary to go around eliminating these formats. And it is an option that allows you to paste the text you have in the clipboard, but without preserving the formatting and limiting yourself to paste only what is the text itself.

All you have to do is have the text copied to the clipboard regardless of its formatting. Then, in the Home tab click on the down arrow below the Paste option. In the various options you will see, click on Keep text only, which is the one where the clipboard icon with an A appears.

5. Select text arbitrarily
   Here’s a very curious trick. Usually, when you select text in Word, you select the words and columns from the point where you start to the point where you finish. But there is also a method to select only the letters inside the area you draw with the mouse regardless of whether you are splitting words or phrases. To do this, hold down the Alt button before and while you click and select the text.
6. Crop the page where you want

Formatting a document so that the page starts and ends where you want can be a bit of an ordeal if you try to do it by creating blank lines. A better way to do this is to insert a Page Break. You will find the option in the Insert menu, by scrolling down the options to the first button, Pages.

However, once you learn the keyboard shortcut, Control + Enter, which does exactly the same thing, you will hardly ever use the previous menu again. To delete a page break, simply delete the text around it until it disappears.

7. Add links faster

Creating links to web pages in a Word document is not very fast. First you have to select the text, then go to the Insert tab, click on Links and finally on Link. Ha7na faster way, pressing at the same time Control + Alt + K on the keyboard (or Control + K, if your Office is in English).

This keyboard shortcut opens directly the box to insert hyperlinks in the text you have selected at that moment, and you can use it without changing the Office tab, so once you learn it you will never use the menus again.

8. Turn text into a table

Creating a table in Word can be tricky for some people. The good news is that in Word you can turn a block of text into a table, as long as the text is written with some logic. For example, with text in different columns separated by commas, tabs, spaces or other characters.

Select the text you want to convert into a table and go to Word’s Insert tab. Click Table and you will see an option called Convert text to table. Word automatically detects the number of rows, columns and the separator, so all you need to do is click OK to generate the table.

9. Easily create rows and lists
   Word helps you apply simple formatting to your document, automatically replacing some words. For example, if you type three hyphens, they are automatically converted into a horizontal separator line after you press Enter. Similarly, if you start a sentence with an asterisk, it is automatically converted into a list. These are other automatic corrections that Word applies:

• — becomes a horizontal line

• text creates a bulleted list
  text creates a numbered list
• text creates a hyphenated list
  (c) creates a copyright © symbol
  (r) creates a registered ® symbol
  (tm) creates a Trademark symbol
  1/2 and other fractions become its symbol, like ½