Working Smarter with Microsoft Office

Just about everyone uses Microsoft® Office. However, how many of you have spent time really learning the program? Microsoft’s own research has shown that the average user only uses 7–10% of the features. With just a little effort, you could be doing a lot more in less time. In this article, I’ll try to help you find those things with the greatest payback on that effort.

One way to get the most “bang for your buck” is to learn things that work across applications. Then you just have to learn one thing and you can use it in several places. I’m assuming you use Outlook® and Word for sure, and probably Excel and PowerPoint®. These tips and tricks apply to all of them.

First, learn to customize your toolbars so the features you use most are just one click away. While the features most often used are in the toolbars, there are probably a few that you use that are not there. Click on View, Toolbars, Customize, and click on the Commands tab. You’ll see a list of menus on the left and the options for each on the right. Scroll around until you find the features you want to add (for example, I’ve added File, Close and Format, Small Caps to my Word toolbars). Just click on the command and drag it to where you want it in the toolbar. You should see a black line appear. Then, just let go of the mouse button. If you want to rearrange toolbar buttons, just click and drag them. Or, to remove a button, just click and drag down off the toolbar and release the mouse button.

Second, learn more ways to do things. There are at least five ways of doing most things in these programs. If you learn some alternatives, you can find the way that is most efficient for you. The options are

• 1) Menus: using your mouse, click through the menus.
• 2) Toolbars: most of the features people use are here so you can do most of your work in one click.
• 3) Shortcut keys: if you look at the menu options, many of them have a Ctrl+letter to the right. That is a shortcut key. It means you can hold the Ctrl key and press the letter to do that action. For example, Ctrl+S will save your file. Most of these keys work in all of the applications (even other Windows applications).
• 4) Right-click: this is one of my favorite things. Tricia’s Rule #2 is “When in doubt, right-click.” This will bring up a context-sensitive menu. That means it will show you the options you have based on where you right-click. Again, this works in most Windows applications, not just Office.
• Finally, 5) Alt+letter options: If you look at your menus you’ll see there is a letter underlined in each command. If you hold down the Alt key and press that letter, it will bring up that menu and then you can press the letter underlined in the menu to make your choice. While I rarely use this, there have been times when my mouse stopped working and I needed to get to my menus. (One time I even had my menus disappear but by clicking Alt+F I was able to bring up the File menu.)

Third, use the Format Painter. This is the neatest tool. If you’ve applied formatting to text (say bold, larger type size, different type face, and centered), you can apply that same formatting to other text. First, highlight what has the formatting you want elsewhere. Then, click on the Paintbrush in the toolbar. Your cursor will now be an I-beam with a little paintbrush. Just highlight the text you want to have the new formatting. That’s it. If you want to apply it to several different places, double-click the paintbrush and keep applying the formatting. When you’re done, click on the Esc key (or click on the Paintbrush in the toolbar again).

Those are a few ways to work smarter, not harder. In next month’s article I’ll give a few more tricks to get more done in less time.