Level up in Word

Are you a Word n00b or a Word wizard?

Are you sure?

Many Microsoft Word users barely (if at all) get past the first level, “typewriter replacement.” You know, the level where you’re aligning your text on the page using the space bar. Applying bold and italics seems like far enough on the adventure for most people. Adding fonts and maybe even special characters is totally next level.

Well, yes, it is. But there are several levels beyond that. Word doesn’t take up all that space on your hard drive just to be an expensive alternative to Notepad. If you really want to be a master of MS Word, you need to level up. And then level up again. Keep playing through… until you meet the final boss.

1. Upgrade your weapons and spells

The first thing you need to do is start using all the tools available. Gather new ones. Build up your armory. Stop fighting dragons with a little penknife. Stop using Microsoft Word like it’s made by Smith-Corona. Here are nine weapons and spells you’ll be glad to have with you, and they’re available to you right now:

Show hidden characters. This is like having x-ray glasses. You get amazing extra control over formatting just from seeing the spaces and double spaces (including non-breaking spaces) as well as the locations of page breaks, paragraph breaks, and line breaks (including those lurking at the ends of lines, silently splitting a paragraph into two). It can also reveal some other surprises, which we’ll tell you about further down. Just hit Ctrl-Shift-8 (or, on a Mac, Command-8) – or simply click on the ¶ symbol in your Home tab, near the paragraph formatting stuff. And you can hide them again as soon as you want to see how the writing will look to normal eyes.

Find and replace special characters. Speaking of hidden characters, do you know how to find and replace them? And not just hidden ones, but things like automatic footnote symbols too, and fancy characters such as dashes (em — and en –), and wild ones like “Any Digit” (if you’re trying to find a year followed by a colon, for instance, you use four of those and a colon). In the Find and Replace box, just click on the little arrow to the right of where you type in your search term. It gives you a drop-down list of the characters. When you click on one, it puts Word’s special code for that in the box (e.g., ^s for non-breaking space, ^m for manual page break) – which, if you want, you can remember and type in next time rather than using the menu.

Change capitalization. Have you noticed this one? It’s right next to the font drop-down. It just looks like Aa, so it’s understandable if you thought it was a little scream of horror. Click on it and you will see the choices: Sentence case., lowercase, UPPERCASE, Capitalize Each Word, and tOGGLE cASE (which means change each letter from whichever case it’s in to the other). Select text and it will apply that change to it; otherwise, it will apply it to whatever word the cursor is in. A warning, though: Track Changes does not track these modifications! This is always a silent change.

Change your automatic formatting settings. Tired of Word thinking it’s smarter than you, creating lists, changing your capitalization, and so on, without asking? Go to File > Options > Proofing (on a Mac, Word > Preferences > AutoCorrect) or just click Ctrl-, (i.e., Ctrl-comma; on a Mac, Command-,) and click the AutoFormat As You Type tab. You’ll see a whole bunch of options there. You can be as control-freakish as you want – or, on the other hand, let Word be your formatting butler!

Use command keys to save time selecting and deleting. Different combinations of the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys with the arrow keys, with the delete key, and with your cursor will let you select or delete chunks quickly. For example, Ctrl-Shift (Mac: Option-Shift) plus the arrow key will let you select the next whole word; Ctrl-Del (Mac: Option-Delete) will let you delete a whole word; and Ctrl (Mac: Command) while you click anywhere in a sentence will select the whole sentence.

Select rectangles of text. Hold down the Alt (Mac: Option) key while you drag your cursor and it will select a rectangle of text, which you can then copy, cut, or apply formatting to. You may not see an immediate use for this, but the next time someone still at the “typewriter” level has set up a “table” using tabs or (heaven help us) spaces to align the columns, and you need to deal with it, this can save you a lot of time, plus several dollars into the swear jar.

Double-click anywhere on the page to start the text there. You may even have discovered this one by accident. You don’t often need fancy positioning like this (unless concrete poetry is your vibe), but sometimes you just want that precision alignment.

Check your text’s accessibility. You know about the spelling checker, of course, and the grammar checker too (since by default it’s turned on, and it will sometimes underline perfectly decent text and suggest weird and wrong corrections). But do you know the accessibility checker? In the Review tab, it’s between Read Aloud and Translate (two more tools you may find useful!). The Check Accessibility function helps you to make sure that there’s nothing in your document that would make it hard to use for people with accessibility issues such as visual impairment.

Customize your Quick Action Toolbar. This is like having a quick-draw holster. Across the very top left of your screen, you’ll see symbols you can click to do things like save, print, undo changes to a certain point (you can click to get a full history drop-down!), and redo typing. Well, are there other things you do all the time and are tired of having to navigate to? Go to File > Options > Quick Action Toolbar (Mac: Word > Preferences > Ribbon & Toolbar and click the Quick Access Toolbar tab) and you can add them to that toolbar, so you save precious seconds… again and again and again.

There are many more tools that you may find useful in certain lines of work – such as inserting an Equation (on the Insert tab), a wide variety of page layout details on the Layout tab, and options on the View tab to optimize your particular workflow. We can’t possibly go rummaging through the whole trunk here and now, but you should apply your curiosity and start poking around. Now, though, with these tools in hand, let’s start moving to the next levels.

2. Change the past

When you make a change to your document, it’s permanent unless you undo it. If you want to undo a change you made a while ago, you have to go back and undo everything you did after it, and then redo those changes. And if someone else made a change, then that’s that: the past is past.

No it’s not. Not when you use Track Changes (in the Review tab). Then you can see past and present together and choose which parts of the past to change. You can even control how you see the past: displayed as deletions and additions right in the text or shown in balloons off to the side. And you see who made each change. And you can also choose whether to see the changes or to keep them hidden but still tracked, ready to be revealed on request.

Since you’re here reading this, the chances are not bad that you already know about Track Changes. But if you do, you’re a level above most Word users. Appreciate that.

3. Use the advanced search spells

We’ve already told you about searching for special characters. An enhancement to that is Advanced Find and Replace, which lets you find formatting – not just as applied to specific text, but any and all instances of the formatting if you leave the text part of the Find box empty. You can change one formatting to another throughout the document by specifying the existing formatting in Find and the new formatting in Replace and leave both text fields empty. But that’s still just an enhancement to the basic level. If you want to reach a whole new level, it’s time to learn how to use wildcards.

Wildcards are true deep magic for searching and replacing. Once you have learned the spells, you can enact incredible complex transformations at a swish of a wand – or, rather, a click of a button. We have a whole article and even a video on how to do it. Go ye there and learn therefrom. But note well that it can produce unexpected results when used with Track Changes!

4. Command legions

When you’re starting to progress beyond the “typewriter replacement” level, you’ll learn how to format text, apply fonts, and format paragraphs. But at that point, you're applying these things one by one—for instance, changing the indent on each paragraph manually or selecting each piece of text one at a time to set the text color and font. And if you want to change the formatting for that type of text, you have to go back through and do it one by one again. In a document where you have many instances of the same formatting, it’s like giving the same orders individually to dozens or even hundreds of soldiers. It sure would be easier if you could make one change and all the soldiers of that squad, company, or battalion would follow it instantly and identically!

This is exactly what the Styles do. If you have a certain kind of text that appears repeatedly throughout your document (such as poems, addresses, or text in a different language), you can create a character or paragraph style for it. Then, select each instance (or, if it's a whole paragraph, simply click anywhere in it) and, with one click, apply the style. And if you decide you want them to look different – for instance, change the indent or the font – you can just edit the style and every instance of it will change automatically.

You may already know about Word’s heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.), especially since they are located in a small window in your Home tab just above your text. But those are only the beginning of a world of wonders. Not only can you edit all of their font and paragraph settings (just right-click on the style in the window and click Modify…), but you can also create new styles, either based on existing ones or entirely from scratch.

5. Break into the castle and change the commands

We’ve told you about the Quick Action Toolbar. That’s nice, but that’s still playing by the basic rules. If you want to be a true master, you can start changing the rules. Instead of reducing the time to click, you can eliminate the click altogether and make the command happen with a keystroke, as quickly as you can hit Ctrl-S to save or Ctrl-P to print. You can even change what existing keystrokes do.

To do this, go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon and click the Customize… button next to Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac: Tools > Customize Keyboard). Choose from its menu (structured like Word’s menu tabs), and it will tell you which keyboard shortcut, if any, that command currently has. Type in a suggested shortcut, and it will inform you if it is already being used for something else. If it is, you can override it, but the system will want you to be aware.

Don’t let your imagination be limited by the things you usually think of as simple commands, either. If you're constantly applying a bit of formatting, you can create a style for that formatting and assign a single keystroke to it.

6. Use the invisibility cloak

We’ve talked about hidden characters, but this is different: it’s hidden text. Which is any text that you mark as hidden. Technically, Hidden is just a kind of formatting; it’s right there in the Font dialog (Format > Font, or Ctrl-D/Command-D) at the end of the checkboxes, after Small Caps and All Caps. But whereas those two pretend that lowercase text is capitalized (which is itself a bit of a trick you should watch out for, since if you lose the formatting, you lose the capitals), this makes the text act as if it’s not there at all.

Well, it prevents printing, copying (even if you paste without formatting), and makes it invisible unless you’re showing hidden characters. The same Ctrl-Shift-8/Command-8 command that lets you see spaces, line breaks, and so on also reveals the hidden text.

What’s the value of hidden text? Versioning. You can use it for quiz answers, for instance – distribute a version of the quiz that shows just the questions, and then unhide the text for the answer key. Be careful, though: If you give someone your Word document with the hidden text, all they need to do is view hidden characters and the secrets are revealed.

7. Become the Commander-in-Chief

Commanding legions is one thing. Being the commander-in-chief is something else again! You know in war movies, when there’s a map and the commanders are moving symbols for armies around on it? Imagine doing that with your document. Instead of having to select and cut and paste paragraphs or whole sections, you can go into Outline view and move chunks around – and even expand and collapse them (by double-clicking on the + next to a heading) so you see just the outline level you want. The Outline view is accessible through the View menu or – for quick access – in the bottom right of your window; it looks like a bullet list, and if you hover over it the word “Outline” will appear. And now you are the commander-in-chief of the structural edit of this document.

Take note, though: This relies on your having applied Word’s heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) – and having applied them consistently. You need to have mastered that before you get to this level. But the great news is that you can also set outline levels in new styles you create, so that you can, for instance, have three different kinds of special heading (e.g., sidebar, callout, quiz) all at the same level.

8. Win Battles with One Command

You’ve learned how to command entire squads, companies, or legions with a single command. You’ve learned how to move armies as a commander-in-chief. But there’s one more level, a level so advanced it’s almost frightening: the level where you can execute entire battle plans with a single command.

Think about it. Let’s say that every time you reach a dungeon, you have to run up to the gate, attach a limpet mine, light it, run away, and then – after it blows the door – run in with your sword drawn to smite the dragon. What if you could simply hit a single keystroke and have it all happen instantly? And, more to the point, let’s say that every time you receive a document from a certain person, you need to remove all double spaces and apply a specific style to every paragraph containing the text “Note:”. What if you could make that task—which could otherwise take several minutes—happen in a split second?

Welcome to macros. You can record a sequence of actions, save it as a macro, and then even assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Or, if you are a truly powerful wizard, you can program the macro by hand. Here’s a free book that can get you using macros.

9. Bring In Other Armies

You’ve mastered all the tools that Word offers at every level it allows you to explore. What could be more advanced?

Using things that Word doesn’t come with, that’s what. This is like joining forces with others on your adventure – like when the eagles came to help Frodo and his companions in The Lord of the Rings. What Word doesn’t offer, you might still be able to use. These are called Add-ins.

One of the most popular add-ins for Word is Intelligent Editing’s PerfectIt, an automated consistency checker that will help you make sure your document is tidy, consistent, and adherent to your chosen style. It goes far beyond what Word’s own Editor tools will do, and it works with your own judgment and expertise rather than trying to replace or override them. You are the master, after all! If you haven’t used it yet, there’s a free trial.

And another add-in from Intelligent Editing is Draftsmith, an AI-based style assistant. It can give you useful suggestions for redrafting your text in a different style or more concisely or clearly. Like PerfectIt, it sits right in Word and works with you at your command and discretion. It, too, has a free trial.

Now, once you’ve put those additional forces to use, you’ve mastered all the levels, and you’re ready to meet the final boss.

10. The final boss

At last! You’ve reached the final boss! What—who—will you be facing?

It’s your boss. Who’s saying, “Is this final?”

Yes, that’s right. Remember: If you fail in Word, you fail in real life. This ain’t no game. But the bright side is that if you’ve successfully navigated all your challenges and used all your weapons and bonuses, you’re done.

Unless, of course, your boss wants revisions. In which case, well, get those tools ready again.