Microsoft Office Tricks by Christine Harrell

No matter how long you've been using Microsoft Office, you probably don't know every trick and shortcut there is. Maybe you've stumbled upon a few shortcuts by accident after years of doing things the hard way. There are an incredible number of shortcuts hidden within each Microsoft Office application that can cut time and frustration out of your daily activities. Here are just a few of the techniques you can use to get even more out of Microsoft Office.

Special symbols
Special symbols can be inserted by using "Insert/Symbol" on the menu. However there are many shortcuts that make inserting symbols even easier. The Autocorrect function allows you to enter common symbols quickly.

If there are symbols you use a lot, such as foreign currency symbols, you can edit the autocorrect list to create your own combinations.

International characters are a snap. Simply type "CTRL+(symbol)" followed by a letter to add a diacritical mark to a letter.

Format Painter
An often-overlooked feature in Microsoft Office is the Format Painter. It appears as a little paintbrush on the toolbar. When this icon is selected, it makes a copy of the formatting of the text where the cursor is located. The cursor changes to a paintbrush, allowing you to "paint" that format into a new section of text. By double clicking on the icon, you can paint the format over and over until pressing ESC.

Shortcut keys
All Microsoft Office applications have huge collections of shortcut keys. While it might be overwhelming to memorize them all, skim the list of shortcuts in the help document to see if there is an easier way to do what you are doing.

Also remember that you can access menus by pressing ALT-letter where the letter is the underlined letter in the menu. For example, to insert a row in Excel you can press ALT-I (to select the Insert menu) then R (to select Row). Often it's easier to use keyboard commands rather than take your hand off they keyboard to use the mouse.

Many more Microsoft Office tips
These are just a few of the tips that users can pick up by enrolling in Microsoft Office training courses. Even if you use Office in your job every day, you might be surprised just how much you are missing. A day of class could save you hundreds of hours of lost productivity as you learn to do your work more efficiently.

Author Resource: Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on Microsoft Office, visit http://www.MicrosoftTraining.net/.

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