Get Things Done Faster with these Microsoft Word Tips

Here are 10 tips and tricks for Microsoft Word that will help you get things done faster and more efficiently than ever before. I have created the animated GIFs with Word 2013 but the tricks will work just fine with older versions of Microsoft Office as well. Let’s get started.

1. Select Text Quickly

You can triple-click anywhere within a paragraph to select the entire paragraph in Word. Or press the CTRL key and click anywhere within the sentence to select the entire sentence.
You can also select rectangular blocks of text in a Word document, similar to the marquee tool in Photoshop, and apply formatting to the selected area. Hold down the ALT key and drag your mouse to select any rectangular area.

2. The Extended Clipboard

Word has a useful “Spike” feature that you can use cut (move) text and images from multiple locations in a document and paste them all at once to a different location.
To use Spike, select some text, images or other objects in your document and press CTRL+F3 to move that selection to the Spike. You can highlight and append more entries to the same Spike using the CTRL+F3 shortcut. Now press Ctrl+Shift+F3 to paste the content of the Spike anywhere in the document.

3. Move Around Faster

If you are working on a lengthy Word document, you can press the Shift+F5 keyboard shortcut to cycle through the spots that you have edited most recently. Also, when you open an existing document inside Word, the same Shift+F5 shortcut will take you to the location that you were working on when the document was last closed.

4. Change the Sentence CASE

Select some text in Word and press Shift+F3 to quickly change the case of the selection. It toggles between UPPERCASE, lowercase and Camel Case (first letter in capital) and should come handy if you’ve accidentally left the CAPS LOCK key on while typing.

5. Write Anywhere on a Page

Did you know that you can use your Word document as a whiteboard and write your text anywhere on the page. Just double-click wherever you want to type your text and start writing.

6. Convert to Plain Text

When you copy snippet from a web page into Word, all the styles and formatting are retained. There’s however an easy way to remove the styling from any block of text in Word – just select the block and press Ctrl+Space Bar and the rich text will be transformed into plain text.

7. Move Text without Copy-Paste

Most people use the Cut-Paste (Ctrl-x Ctrl-v) route to move text from one location to another within a Word document but there’s an alternate way as well. Highlight any block of text, press F2 and then place the cursor at the spot where you wish to move that text. Press Enter and the selection will be moved.

8. Insert Unicode Characters

If you know the Unicode code of a character, you can quickly add it to your document by typing the code followed by Alt+x. For instance, the code for Indian Rupee symbol is 20B9 – type 20B9, press Alt+x and the code will be replaced by the actual Rupee symbol.

9. Add Placeholder Text

There’s a Lorem Ipsum generator built inside Word to help you insert filler text anywhere inside the document. Type =rand(p,l) and press Enter to insert ‘p’ number of paragraphs each having ‘l’ lines. For instance, =rand(3,6) will generate 3 dummy paragraphs  with 6 lines each.

The other option is =lorem(p,l) that fills your Word document with pseudo-Latin text commonly used in web design projects.

10. Word’s Hidden Calculator

Your copy of Microsoft Word has a hidden calculator that can handle all the common arithmetic operations. You can write the Maths expression in your document, highlight it and press the Calculator button – the results of the calculation will be displayed in the status bar.
Go to Word Options -> Quick Access Toolbar, switch to All Commands and add the Calculate Command to your Quick Access Toolbar.

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Posted at 09:10 |  by Unknown

Microsoft Takes Wraps Off Windows Phone 7 Games

If Apple's always taken an "if you must" stance toward gaming on the iPhone, Microsoft's attacking from the opposite angle, making gaming front and center on its Windows Phone 7.

At the GDC Europe 2010 games conference in Cologne, Germany today, Microsoft took the tarp off a who's-who of game studios, all on track to release games for its upcoming powerhouse handheld. Studios like Gameloft (Hero of Sparta), Konami (Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania), Namco Bandai (Tekken, Soul Calibur), PopCap (Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies), and THQ (Company of Heroes, Dawn of War II).

Those five and others will reportedly contribute some 60 games to Windows Phone 7, including Assassin's Creed, Bejeweled LIVE, Castlevania, Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst, Frogger, Guitar Hero 5, Halo Waypoint, a cutesy slice of new IP weirdly titled ilomilo, Max and the Magic Marker, Rocket Riot, Splinter Cell Conviction, Star Wars: Conviction (and another Star Wars--Battle for Hoth), The Harvest, Tower Bloxx NY, Uno, and Zombie Attack!.

The games will be available through the company's Xbox LIVE Marketplace, which Microsoft revealed back in February would be part of its Windows Phone 7 series. At that time, Microsoft claimed the Windows Phone 7 Series would deliver "the first and only official Xbox LIVE experience on a phone, including Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer's avatar, Achievements and gamer profile."

Demonstrations of the service seem to jibe with those earlier claims. The phone does indeed offer fully realized avatars (they look essentially identical to their Xbox LIVE counterparts) and these can be fully reclothed or accessorized. Achievements, profiles, friend lists (with status), and scoreboards, i.e. leaderboards are all present and accounted for, rendering said information in realtime.

"We believe that no matter where life takes you, the best in gaming and entertainment should follow," said Microsoft Xbox LIVE VP Marc Whitten in a press release. "Windows Phone 7 takes a different approach to handheld gaming, utilizing Xbox LIVE, Microsoft Game Studios, leading game publishers, and innovative indie developers, to create powerful, shared experiences for everyone."

New games for the Windows Phone 7 will reportedly appear every week via Xbox LIVE Marketplace, mirroring the way the service already works for Xbox 360 owners. "Try before you buy" demos will be available to let you sample before spending. And while realtime multiplayer isn't (yet) in the offing, turn-based multiplayer should be available at at launch.

The differences between Microsoft and Apple here are striking. Where Apple opens the door on its products, then passively observes as game studios and/or independent designers flock to the trough, Microsoft's bringing its own thunder and proactively courting major studios to design to the Windows Phone 7 platform, much as it would its Xbox--or Sony and Nintendo would their respective consoles.

It's tough to say how well the Windows Phone 7 will work as just a phone or personal information management tool when it ships in October, but when it comes to gaming, Microsoft's already well ahead of Apple in terms of focusing, laser-like, on the platform's gaming possibilities. With Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst and Halo: Waypoint in the mix, it's clear Microsoft's (wisely) planning to leverage its existing console IPs to at the very least make the phone immediately appealing to anyone with an Xbox 360.

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Posted at 08:05 |  by Unknown

CloudOn 4.0 brings virtual Microsoft Office to Android smartphones

CloudOn does the seemingly impossible. It hosts Microsoft Office in the cloud, then makes it available on your iPhone, iPad, or Android tablet. PC World's Yardena Arar called it her "favorite cloud-hosted virtual Office service."

With version 4.0, CloudOn is now available for Android smartphones as well. And it brings some much-needed new features to the table, while retaining (for the moment, anyway) the best possible price: It's free.

If you've used the app in the past (on another device), you'll be glad to know that version 4.0 supports both portrait and landscape views, the latter a very welcome (and overdue) addition.

Also new: CloudOn FileSpace, a place to add notes and view all activity on a single file, including edits, for real-time updates on documents. As always, you can share and view Office documents directly from email, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive.

CloudOn 4.0 can run on Android phones including the Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4G, Galaxy Note and Note II, and Galaxy S II Skyrocket. According to a CloudOn rep, these are among the devices the company has "spent the most time on developing and testing." Other phones may work as well (check the Google Play Store), but "it shouldn't be too long before most Android phones are perfectly CloudOn compatible."

I tested the app and service on a Galaxy S3 and found that it worked as advertised. With just a few taps I was able to access my Dropbox account, open an Excel spreadsheet, and edit it.

That said, let's not fool ourselves into thinking Microsoft Office works well within the tiny confines of a smartphone—even one as large as, say, the Galaxy Note II. Although you can create documents via CloudOn, it's just not practical to do so on a phone.

Instead, keep this on hand for those times when you need to review or make a few small changes to a document. For instances like those, CloudOn is hard to beat—especially given that it lets you work within such a familiar interface.

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Posted at 07:50 |  by Unknown

Microsoft confirms patch for Flash in IE10 coming soon

Adobe recently issued an update for the popular Flash Player utility to patch critical flaws that could allow an attacker to run malicious code on the target system. But, if you’re using Windows 8, the version of Flash that Microsoft has embedded in Internet Explorer 10 is still vulnerable. Good news, though—an update is forthcoming to address that problem.

Adobe responds quickly to patch identified vulnerabilities, and most Windows users are conditioned to apply security updates as they’re released, but Microsoft is responsible for updating Flash in its Web browser. Windows 8 hasn’t yet officially launched, though, and Microsoft’s initial response was that Flash would not be updated until after October 26 when Windows 8 becomes available to the general public.

  

Microsoft baked Flash into IE10, so it's responsible for patching it.

A couple of the flaws addressed by Adobe were given its highest threat warning level, and are associated with attacks that are already circulating in the wild. Last week, Adobe confirmed that Windows 8 users are still vulnerable to these threats.

I asked Microsoft about speculation that a patch is imminent. Yunsun Wee, Director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, replied with this statement: “In light of Adobe’s recently released security updates for its Flash Player, Microsoft is working closely with Adobe to release an update for Adobe Flash in IE10 to protect our mutual customers.”

Wee added, “This update will be available shortly. Ultimately, our goal is to make sure the Flash Player in Windows 8 is always secure and up-to-date, and to align our release schedule as closely to Adobe’s as possible.”

Microsoft isn’t the first to embed its own version of Flash. Google’s Chrome browser has had Flash baked in for a couple years now. However, Google has a solid track record of speeding patches to users as fast as—or sometimes faster than—Adobe.

With Flash in Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft has to accept responsibility for addressing issues in a timely manner. Leaving these Flash vulnerabilities open is similar to the situation Apple put Mac OS X users in earlier this year when it was so slow to deploy an update for its proprietary Java implementation.

There is no confirmed timeline for an update from Microsoft, but it’s welcome news that Microsoft realizes the urgency of the situation, and is diligently working on a patch rather than leaving customers vulnerable until the end of October.

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Posted at 07:37 |  by Unknown

Put Office on the iPad for tablet success, analyst advises

Armed with a $900 million argument, an analyst has raised the Office-on-iPad banner, saying that the flop of the Surface RT gives Microsoft a chance to make billions in lemonade from its lemon.

" 'Protecting' Windows RT by keeping Office off of Apple's iPad and Android tablets isn't working," said J.P. Gownder, a principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in a recent blog. "It's instead creating risk for Office as users find other ways of getting things done."

Gownder tied Microsoft's recent $900 million write-down of the Surface RT by Microsoft to a renewed call for the company to sell its ubiquitous productivity suite on rivals' tablets.

"The biggest asset Windows RT has is actually based on an app that Microsoft hasn't released—Office for Apple's iPad," Gownder wrote, referring to the operating system that powers the Surface RT. Windows RT bundles Office Home & Student 2013 RT, which includes touch-based versions of Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word that run in a special "desktop" mode.

Outlook will join that roster this fall when Microsoft ships Windows 8.1 for RT.

Clamor for Office on tablets

Gownder's unsolicited advice to Microsoft wasn't out of the blue; a horde of analysts and pundits have called on the Redmond, Washington, software company to pull the trigger on Office for tablets powered by Apple's iOS or Google's Android.

But last week's $900 million write-down, which Microsoft said was to cover steep discounts and excess inventory, was the proof that the software giant's Windows RT/Surface RT pitch had fallen on deaf ears.

In turn, that made Microsoft's presumed strategy of withholding Office from other tablet platforms indefensible.

But Gownder, like other analysts before him, also pointed out that Microsoft may have already missed an opportunity. "Microsoft's problem [is that] workers and consumers are already exceptionally productive with their tablets. [And] there's a hidden danger of holding out on Office for iPad and Android tablets—competitors tend to fill the gap and users establish different habits," Gownder said.

He cited examples, including Apple's iWork—which Apple will take to the Web later this year—Google's Quickoffice, Evernote and other mobile apps that users have taken up in the absence of Office.

Gownder contended that Microsoft could recoup its Surface RT losses, and make more besides, if it offered Office on iPad. "If 10 percent of the 140 million iPad owners bought Office for $99.99, Microsoft would earn $1.4 billion in top line revenue, or $500 million more than the Windows RT write-down last quarter," he said.

Gownder may have based his math on the $100 annual subscription price for Office 365 Home Premium, the consumer-grade Office rent-not-buy plan. Assuming Microsoft does deliver Office for the iPad and Android tablets, it will most likely follow the same strategy it used last month for Office Mobile on the iPhone, requiring a valid Office 365 account to run the app.

What else have you got?

Others have recently called on Microsoft to focus less on Windows and more on other parts of its portfolio, including Office, in light of last week's 6 percent decline in Windows Division revenue, the $900 million Surface RT charge and the continued slide in PC shipments.

"Documents remain essential and ubiquitous to all of the world outside of Silicon Valley," noted Ben Thompson, until earlier this month a partner marketing manager in Microsoft's Windows app team. Thompson now writes on his Stratechery website. "An independent Office division should be delivering experiences on every meaningful platform. Office 365 is a great start that would be even better with a version for iPad."

In Microsoft's recent corporate reorganization, however, Office will not be an independent division—it is, more or less, in the current structure—but will instead be within the new Applications and Services Engineering Group, which will include Office, Microsoft's Bing search engine and Skype.

The company may well decide to continue resisting the potential of new Office revenue to keep Windows afloat. In the quarter that ended June 30, the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), whose biggest money maker is Office, recorded revenue of $6.43 billion, 1.7% more than the same period the year before, largely on sales to enterprises and in the face of a dismal quarter in PC shipments.

Microsoft may think the at-hand revenue is the smarter choice than more money accompanied by the risk of damaging Windows 8's tablet chances. But that would be a mistake.

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Posted at 04:41 |  by Unknown

Surface RT price still misses the sweet spot for business

Microsoft has slashed the price of the Surface RT to $350 in an effort to spark demand for the tablet. While it’s a move in the right direction, it’s a little late, and it still doesn’t go far enough to make the Surface RT attractive for business use in a market dominated by Apple’s iPad

                                         The Touch or Type cover should be included with the Surface RT.

Before the Surface RT launched there was speculation that Microsoft might undercut the competition by offering the device for under $200. Had it done so, the tablet almost certainly would have sold much better, but with long-term repercussions for Microsoft and the tablet market in general. That price is too low to generate profit or be sustainable in any way, and raising the price after the fact is a hard sell for customers.

When Microsoft revealed that the Surface RT would actually be $499, there was a collective groan of disappointment, and much of the tech media started writing the epitaph for the device before it was even on the shelf. Although the $499 Surface RT has double the storage capacity of the equally-priced entry-level iPad—32GB compared to 16GB—I argued at the time that the price was simply too much for an “untested” tablet.

For starters, it’s not enough to just match the iPad in pricing—even with double the storage. The iPad is established as the leader among tablets, so a business or consumer looking to buy a tablet is much more likely to spend the $500 on an iPad than on a Surface RT. Then, there’s also the fact that the Surface RT essentially requires the Touch or Type keyboard cover, which must be purchased separately and adds another $100 to $130 to the cost.

Microsoft needs to drop the price even further if it wants to spark demand for the Surface RT.

Windows RT can’t run traditional Windows software, so the Surface RT is at a disadvantage compared to the Surface Pro, which at least is an actual Windows PC that doubles as a tablet. The Surface RT has more limited application, and is more likely to be used to augment a PC rather than replace it.

Still, the Surface RT is a solid device. It was good with Windows 8, and it will be even better with Windows 8.1. It comes with Office, and soon it will include Outlook as well. But now that Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for iPhone, and improved the capabilities of the Office Web apps for the iPad, Microsoft Office is much less of a factor in defining tablet choice.

So, what’s the sweet spot? $300—with the Touch keyboard cover included. With the reduced price of the Surface RT, that setup will still cost $470 right now, which is unlikely to sway the purchasing decision of an IT admin. If Microsoft throws in the Touch keyboard cover, though, that $350 starts to look much better as a mobile business tool, and if Microsoft adds in the cover and drops the price to $300, it would have a hard time keeping up with demand.

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Posted at 04:31 |  by Unknown