Are you being as efficient at using Microsoft Word as you can be? Do you know many of the keyboard shortcuts you can take advantage of so you don’t have to move your hands off the keyboard and onto the mouse? It surprises me how many times I work with individuals and when I do even the simplest keyboard shortcuts I hear "How’d you do that?!"

The Internet4Classrooms.com website has some common Microsoft Word shortcuts that are the standards for use that you’ll probably find yourself using at least once almost every document you create.

There are shortcuts for quickly formatting your text, moving around your document, editing text and finding areas of text to reuse in other sections of your Word document.

It’s not just about keyboard shortcuts either. Do you find yourself always changing the default spacing, font, margins or other settings in your document before you really get started? Do you always insert a header/footer design or perhaps a company logo?

All of these things can be saved as preferences or automated to some degree. What would you like to know how to do? Let me know in the comments and I can work on putting together some tutorial posts to help you and share with the rest of our readers.

Image: Custom graphic by Jason Bean

Post from: EveryJoe

How To Get Use Microsoft Word Faster and More Efficiently

[Image courtesy of Taco Widgets]

If you’re someone like me who’s memory isn’t all that great, you’d be pressed to remember all the keyboard shortcuts for the various menu items and keyboard symbols. If you wanted to insert an “•” in the document that you’re typing, how would you do it? The answer? Just press “Option – 8″. For the life of me I can’t remember all. I only remember the ones I use often. For the rest, forget it.

Thankfully there’s the CharacterPal widget from Taco Widgets. It’s a nifty add-on to the Dashboard that gives you the keyboard shortcuts for most of the symbols that you need. It also provides HTML and URL escape characters.

I found out about CharacterPal from this blog entry that’s a real help as well. Bookmark it too!

Try it out. CharacterPal is “Karmaware”. It’s available to download for free but highly recommended to donate a few bucks for good karma.

Post from: EveryJoe

CharacterPal: Your Symbol Cheat Widget