09 Feb Getting the most from Microsoft Word for business productivity
Many businesses use Microsoft or MS Word as part of the Office suite of software. But are you and your staff getting the optimum use from this familiar mainstay of office IT? Word has features that can increase productivity and save time, so making sure that your team is familiar with the more advanced functions of this software can reap rewards.
Microsoft Word and Office
Microsoft Word has been the standard software choice for office word processing since its launch in 1983. It now forms part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, and is integrated with Office 365 and OneDrive to give a wide range of versatile tools for business.
We have taken a closer look at some of these tools, to give an idea of the benefits they can have for your team’s productivity
Co-authoring
Word’s reviewing and collaboration functionality means that multiple people can collaborate or co-author on a Word Document. Users can access the document online, in its latest version, read changes that are made to it by other collaborators, and add edits to the text or as comments that appear separately.
Word stores some change history, so you can revert to an earlier version, if required. You can also use the Track Changes feature to see all changes made.
Edit PDFs
With the PDF editing function in Word, you can make quick changes to PDF files without having to use a PDF editing app or software. All you have to do is convert
the PDF file into a format that Word can display. Then make the required changes, and choose the “save as PDF” option.
Online research
Smart Lookup in Word allows you to do online research without having to open a new tab to perform a search. Just right-click the word or phrase you want to look up, and then choose Smart Lookup from the menu, Word will use Microsoft’s Bing search engine to search for the selected text, and then displays results in the same tab, within the Word document you are working on.
Online workspaces
Word can be used through Word Online, which is the online version of the program. Just sign in with a Microsoft account. This means that Word does not have to be installed on your device, saving large amounts of storage space.
File formatting
By selecting the Styles option, you can access a range of formatting options for your documents. You can also add your own styles or frequently used ones.
The need for manually formatting documents is reduced by saving preferences to apply to future work.
Accessibility
Word’s Accessibility function will assess whether or not your document has any accessibility issues that might make it difficult for anyone with a disability to read or edit it,
To find out more about getting the optimum benefits and functionality from all your business software and applications, contact us.