Top 15 Microsoft Word Tips & Tricks

hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you my favorite top 15 tips and tricks in microsoft word if you want to follow along with this video i've included a link to my word document in the description also if you want to jump around the different tips and tricks i've also included timestamps alright let's jump on the pc and let's get started tip number one did you know that you can turn on dark mode in microsoft word now right now on my screen there's a lot of white and this is extremely bright especially when it's getting late at night i'd like to give my eyes a break to turn on dark mode let's go up to the top left hand corner and click on the file menu within the file menu let's go all the way to the bottom left hand corner and click on account this opens up the account screen and right in the middle there's a section called office theme by default we're on the colorful theme which tends to be pretty bright we can change that to dark gray which makes my screen a little bit darker if i want it even darker than that i could select the black office theme one thing to note when i change the office theme not only will this impact word but it'll also impact all of the other office apps like excel powerpoint outlook and so on let's go back to our document i'm back in my document now and this is a step in the right direction all of the chrome looks darker but i still have a very bright and white document we can change that as well up on the top tabs let's click on the one that says design once we click on design all the way on the right hand side of the ribbon there's an option called page color let's click on that when it opens up the theme colors let's change it to black now you see that my document color changes to black word automatically changes my font color from black to white so i can see contrast on the document you might be wondering well if i change my background to black what if i print a page will it print a black background if i press ctrl p to print here you'll see that it'll just print out a standard document on a white background and that's how you turn on dark mode in microsoft word tip number two i want to show you how you can convert your word document into an interactive web page it's pretty easy to do first off let's go back up to the file menu again and click on file about halfway down there's a new option called transform let's click on that this opens up a pane on the right hand side where i can see how i can transform my document into an interactive web page i have a whole bunch of different styles that i can choose from now don't worry you're not locked into the style you can always change this later on but let's choose one to start with i'm going to select the sierra one i think that looks pretty nice next let's click on transform this gives me a little bit more information all of that sounds good let's click on transform next this opens up my web browser where i can see a preview of my word document as an interactive web page here i can scroll down i can see all of my headings and all of the content in my word document this looks pretty good to me if i want to make any additional changes i can click on edit up above and i can modify the look and feel of my web page i could also review the navigation and once i'm ready to share this with others i can click on share and i can share out my sway with the world tip number three and this is one of my favorite ones did you know that microsoft word can open any type of pdf content and allow you to edit it let's jump on the desktop where i have two example pdf files here on my desktop i have two different pdfs let's open them up to see what they look like here's my first pdf file this is a pretty standard document that's been saved as a pdf in fact i could go through and i can select the text in this pdf i'm going to try opening this in microsoft word i also have another file that's also a pdf and this is just an image within the pdf so i can't actually select the text we're going to bring this into microsoft word as well to see what will happen here i am in microsoft word now let's go up to the file menu and then let's click on open navigate to where you have your pdf file on your computer and then try opening it first off i'm going to open the pdf with text that we were able to select i get a prompt telling me that it's going to convert my pdf into a word document let's click on ok here i see my pdf file and it's now in word and i can go through and i can make edits to this document so this is an easy way that you can edit pdf files let's see how it handles the image pdf i'm going to go back up to the file menu i'm going to go to open and i'm going to select the file with the image once again i get the prompt let's click on ok wow check this out word took my image file with text on it and it extracted that text and placed it into my word document and i can now go through and i can edit all of this text so pretty awesome capability how word can take a pdf and then convert it into a word document that you can edit tip number four did you know that microsoft word has access to an extensive clipboard now most of you are familiar with copy and paste i could select an item press ctrl c to copy i'm going to go and copy another item with ctrl c and i'm going to copy yet another item with ctrl c now if i go down here and i press ctrl v to paste it'll simply paste the last item that i copied what if i want to paste the first one and the second item that i copied luckily word helps with this if we go to the top tabs on the ribbon let's click into home and then under the clipboard group there's an icon in the bottom right hand corner let's click on this to see what it does this opens up my entire clipboard and here you can see all of the different items that i copied at the very bottom of the list i see the first item i copied and at the top of the list i see the last item i copied i could click on the item and that'll very quickly paste it into my document so i have full access to my clipboard tip number five did you know that you can use formulas in microsoft word formulas aren't just limited to microsoft excel now often when i'm pulling together a word document i might have a table with some data now in the past you might have gone to excel done your calculations there copied it and then pasted it into microsoft word you no longer have to do that because you could do calculations directly in line in your word document i have a table here with all these different sales numbers and i'd like to add it up so i could see the total i'm going to click in the table in this position or in this cell and then i'm going to go up to the top bar on top and let's click on layout within the layout ribbon over on the far right hand side there's an option for formula let's click on this this opens up the formula dialog and i can now type in a formula here word detects that i have numbers above the total cell that i want to calculate and so it says sum and above it's going to take all of the numbers above this cell and it's going to sum them up now i'm not just limited to summing up values if i click down here i see all of the different formulas that i have access to for instance i could do an average i could do a count i could even do if statements here i could do min and max there are lots of different calculations that i can run i'm going to stick with some for now and let's click on ok here you see now that it summed up all of the different values now one thing that was neat too is it maintained the format from all of these different cells i had a thousands separator and i also had a dollar sign and it maintained that formatting in this cell so once again word is not just limited to typing you can also run some calculations tip number six did you know that you can sort lists in microsoft word and you can sort lists in different ways first off here i have a list of some of the largest cities in the world right now it's not in alphabetical order but i'd like to put it in alphabetical order to do that i'm going to select this list and on the home ribbon right in the middle there's an option to sort a list let's click on this here i can sort by paragraphs and i can sort by the text i'm going to sort in ascending order let's click on ok to see how this works out here it now appears in alphabetical order next i could also sort numbers so it goes from smallest to largest once again i'm going to select this list click on sort and here at the text that i've selected numbers so i'm going to sort by numbers there my list is now in ascending order and lastly i can also sort dates i'm going to select these three dates i'm going to go back up to the sort icon click on that and here it detects that it's a date format those are the three types that i can sort text numbers and dates i'm going to click on ok and here it has my dates in ascending order so really nice way to quickly sort your data that appears in microsoft word and once again this is something that you don't have to rely on excel to do tip number seven i want to show you how you can very easily collaborate with others on a document at the exact same time in the past if you wanted to work with others on a document you'd have to email to someone as an attachment they'd make their edits then they would send it back and then you'd have to merge together all the edits what a pain luckily things have gotten a lot easier in the top right hand corner there is a button for share let's click on this this opens up a shared dialog and i can now share my document with others by default it's set so anyone with the link can edit the document if i click on this i could define specific people to share it with i could even set it so maybe i don't want to allow editing and they could just view it i could set an expiration date i could also set a password back on the main screen i could type in an email address or i could simply copy a link and then share it elsewhere sharing a document's nice but you might want to simply call out someone and ask them to work on a specific part of the document or maybe you have a question for someone for instance i don't know if this sentence is phrased in the best way i'm going to highlight this sentence and then right up above in the top right hand corner there's another button for comments let's click on this once i click on comments i'm going to click on new comment this opens up a comment on the right hand side of the document and i can now type in a comment but if i want to get someone's attention i could type in at and then i can choose anyone from my organization to at mention i'm going to type in adele so adele is going to get a notification about this specific section of my document when i click on adele first off it'll mention that well she needs access to the document so i'm going to share the document with her next i could type in my comment i've typed in my comment now and now i can simply click away and adele will be notified that i have a question for her in this document tip number eight did you know that you can pin documents so you can very quickly get back to them in the future to pin a document let's go up to the file menu in the top left hand corner and this brings us to the word backstage within the home view i can see all of my recent documents down here now if i open other files my top 15 word tips and tricks will end up somewhere down the list and it'll be harder to get back to if i hover over the item i see a pin icon right here let's pin this document when i pin the document i can now click over onto this tab called pinned and i can see all of my pinned documents anytime i want to get back to this document in the future i simply need to click on pinned and i'll see my document right here tip number nine microsoft word will help you rewrite your sentences to improve the way you write something here i have a sentence down below that says i'm always working to continuously improve my videos now let's say i wanted to say it in a different way i can highlight always working right click on it and there's now a new option within this context menu called rewrite suggestions when i click on this i see different ways i could say this for instance instead of saying i'm always working too i could say i'm constantly working to or i'm working all the time to i'm going to click on constantly working too and then here it says continuously improve i'm going to select this right click and go to rewrite suggestions here it shows me two different options i could say to constantly improve or i could say to continually improved it's kind of like the thorus where you could choose a different word but instead of being for just one word you can apply rewrite to multiple words tip number 10 microsoft word includes a resume assistant if you're pulling together a resume sometimes the hardest thing is where to start especially when you're staring at a blank document sometimes it helps to look at other resumes to get some inspiration microsoft purchased linkedin a few years ago and they're starting to integrate linkedin into more of the office products let's click up on the top tab on review over on the right hand side of the review ribbon there's a new option called resume assistance let's click on this this opens up a pane for resume assistant and you can type in the role that you're looking for and you can also type in the industry that you're in i've entered product manager and the information technology and services industry i can look at all of the top skills for this role and then once i select the skill area i can see example bullet points for a resume now of course i wouldn't want to copy this bullet point but i could take a look at it to see how it's phrased and what type of points are called out so this way you can effectively pull together your resume tip number 11 microsoft word now comes with a built-in translator i wish i knew about this when i was in high school this would have helped me a lot in my french class to use the built-in translator once again we're going to go up to review on the top tabs and under language there's an option to translate let's click on this within the sub menu you can translate a selection or you could translate an entire document i'm going to translate a selection when i click on this this opens up the translator in the right hand pane now i could select some text and let's try translating this from english to german here i see my translation and that looks pretty decent if i'm satisfied with it i can click on insert and that'll convert my highlighted text into the language of my choosing tip number 12 microsoft word makes it extremely easy to insert a table of contents into your document gone are the days where you finish your document and then you have to go up manually create a table of contents and hope the page numbers don't change much to insert a table of contents let's go to the top tabs and click on references over on the left hand side there's an option for a table of contents let's click on this and i'm going to insert an automatic table of contents this now inserts a table of contents into my document it has all of my headings and it has the associated page number to use a table of contents as you're going through your document you have to make sure that you use styles and headings because a table of contents will use these as reference for the table of contents when you go through and you edit your document some of the heading names might change or maybe the page numbers might change don't worry microsoft word can automatically update that for you simply click into the table of contents and then there's an option to update the table when you click on that you can update page numbers only or you could update the entire table so it'll also capture any new heading names that you might have applied once you're done click on ok tip number 13 and another one i wish i knew about in high school and in college microsoft word makes it extremely easy to work with citations here i have two different quotes that i've inserted into my document from various sources i want to insert a citation here to insert a citation i'm going to go up to the top toolbar and click on references and then in the middle i'm going to insert a citation first off i need to add a new source let's click on that this opens up the create source dialog and i can now add information related to what the source is i could select whether it was a book an article or some other source next i'm going to fill in the bibliography fields once you've finished typing in all of the information let's click on ok i've now inserted a citation into my document and if i want to use this source again anywhere else it's very easy to insert i'll click at the end of this sentence and i'm going to go right back up to insert citation and i'm going to select this source again so it's very easy to insert sources for content that you pull into your document once i finish working on my document i want to insert a works cited section now this was always a pain in school where you had to go back through all of your citations and then manually build this out luckily word makes this really easy back up in the citations and bibliography section first off you need to select your style now you don't have to be well-versed in any of the details of these styles because word is going to do the heavy lifting for us i'm going to select the apa style next let's click on bibliography within here we can insert a few different built-in formats i'm going to go with works cited here now you see all of the works that i cited throughout my document and let's say i go through and maybe i cite another one just like with the table of contents we can click on this and then we can update the citations and bibliography we're getting close to the end tip number 14 is the navigation pane the navigation pane allows you to very quickly navigate throughout your document to use the navigation pane just like with the table of contents you have to make sure that you use headings throughout your document once again to apply a heading you simply go to the home ribbon and then you can choose the heading 1 style once you have styles throughout your document i've used headings throughout my document you can click on view open up the view ribbon and then within the middle under show there's an option to open the navigation pane let's click on this this opens up a pane on the left hand side and here i can see all of the headings throughout my document so i could very quickly navigate throughout let's say i want to go back to the sort section i could click on sort let's say i want to go back to access your clipboard i could click on that and i could very quickly jump throughout my entire document tip number 15 and the last tip for today is the format painter i have some text here that appears in the middle of my screen and i spent a bit of time formatting it i've bolded it i've italicized it i've underlined it and i chose a very specific color i'd like to take this exact same formatting and i want to apply it to these lines down below we can use the format painter to help with this to use it first off make sure your cursor is on the formatting that we want to copy then go up to the home ribbon and click on the format painter this now copies the formatting from this line of text and you'll see that there's a paint brush next to my cursor next let's highlight the line of text where we want to apply that same formatting here now i see that i applied the same formatting now let's say i want to apply it to multiple lines of text how can i do that well once again let's select the formatting and once again let's go up to the format painter instead of clicking on the format painter once let's click on it twice this now locks the formatting i can highlight this line of text and i can highlight this line of text and i've now applied the formatting twice once i'm all done i can click on the escape key alright well that wraps up the top 15 microsoft word tips and tricks let me know down in the comments if there are any other tips and tricks that you use and you especially love and also let me know if these are some tips and tricks that you're going to start using moving forward if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up if you want to see more videos like this in the future make sure to hit that subscribe button that way you'll get a notification anytime new content like this comes out if you want to see me cover any other topics in the future leave a note down below and i'll add it to my list of videos to create alright that's all i had for you today i hope you enjoyed and i hope to see you next time bye

Channel: Kevin Stratvert

Views: 638,268

Keywords: kevin stratvert, microsoft, microsoft word, tips and tricks, tips, tricks, microsoft 365, word, ms word, doc, docx, dark, dark theme, dark mode, web page, sway, pdf, clipboard, formula, formulas, calculate, sort, sort lists, collaborate, @ mention, ai, suggestion, suggestions, resume, resume assistant, translate, translator, table of contents, citate, citations, bibliography, tutorial, how to, help, support

Id: LxgheItBIzQ

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020