Never Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.
11 Office 2013 Shortcuts That Will Change Your Life
Think you know everything there is to know about Microsoft Office? Take a look at 11 hidden features that will make you the envy of your co-workers.
13 Slides
.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
(Image: Created in a lab environment, logo credits throughout, Microsoft)
Microsoft Office 2013 users know the suite is bundled with a wide range of productivity features that help them perform day-to-day activities efficiently. Yet, as often as we use Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other applications in our day-to-day lives, there are a large number of hidden or lesser-known features in Office 2013 that are extremely useful, but that many people aren't taking advantage of.
Many of us are even using third-party applications to do functions that we could more quickly and efficiently do right within the Office suite. For example, did you know that you could instantly add screenshots, YouTube videos, or Facebook images to your documents, right from within Office?
Were you aware Word serves as a calculator, allowing you to do arithmetic without switching to a calculator app or Excel? Do you know how to instantly and automatically compare different versions of the same document to see what changes your bosses, co-workers, or clients want you to make, without switching between tabs or reading each version line-by-line?
On the following pages, we give you information and directions on 11 lesser-known Office 2013 features that will increase productivity, add value to your work, and make you more efficient, not to mention give you the title of resident Office 2013 expert in your own office.
Compatibility: Available in Word and PowerPoint 2013. (Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft PowerPoint 2013)
Have you ever wanted to add a visual from your screen to a document in order to explain or clarify a concept? Screenshots and screen clippings enable you to create an image of all, or a specific area, of your screen and insert it into your document.
Benefits: This feature makes it easy to add pictures to Word or PowerPoint documents without having to switch to a third-party application.
How To: Go to the Insert tab and click on the Screenshots icon. This opens a popup window which enables you to select the area of your screen that you want in your picture. Then the software automatically adds the screenshot or clipping to the document you're working on.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
If you're tired of typing the same things over and over again in your Word documents, Quick Parts may be for you. It enables users to set up standard elements, such as addresses, for letters and other official documents.
Benefits: Helps users save time by cross-referencing different documents for standard elements. This feature is available from the AutoText Gallery.
How To: Go to the Insert tab and select Quick Parts > Document Property. There you'll find a list of options where you can specify standard elements to be used across all organizational documents. It also features a Building Blocks Organizer where you can set up quick-access templates and objects.
Compatibility: Available in Word 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
Improve readability and maximize the space on a Word document page (not to mention make your high school English teacher happy) by letting Word properly hyphenate multisyllabic words.
Benefits: Helps you create better-looking, more readable, and more efficient documents. It also results in neater word spacing, whether you're using unjustified right margins or fully justified text.
How To: Go to the Page Layout tab and click on the Hyphenation icon. From there, choose to make hyphenation either manual or automatic.
Compatibility: Available in Word 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
Say you have a document that you and your co-workers are reviewing and commenting on, and now you have to combine all of the feedback into a new version. Sound like a nightmare? Not with Word's Compare and Combine feature.
This feature, located in the Review tab, allows you to automatically see differences between two Word 2013 documents. This opens a new document with all the changes marked up, and gives you a new, combined document, if you want.
Benefits: Enables users to reconcile many similar documents with minor changes. This can be particularly helpful when multiple users are working on the same document simultaneously.
How To: Go to the Review tab and click on the Compare icon. Tell the feature which two documents you want to compare, and Word returns a comparison document with all the changes recorded in the left pane of the document.
Compatibility: Available in Word 2013
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
Microsoft is making it simple to use all the products in the Office 2013 suite on touchscreen devices, or with the old-school mouse. Users can switch between touch and mouse mode, making it easier to use Office 2013 across all devices.
Benefits: Icons on touchscreen devices are larger and easier to click, enabling users to more easily work on tablets and other touchscreen devices without mistakes like side-clicking on the wrong thing.
How To: Go to any Office 2013 application and click on the Customize Quick Access Toolbar arrow just above the Insert tab. Choose Touch/Mouse Mode. This will add a new icon next to the Undo button. When users click the icon, the mouse and touch options appear.
Compatibility: Available across Office 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
You can easily import video and pictures from linked social media or cloud accounts, such as One Drive, Facebook, or Flickr, directly into your Word and PowerPoint documents and presentations.
Benefits: Add video and pictures to documents directly from social networks.
How To: Go to the Insert tab and click on the Online Pictures icon. This will give you a link to sign in to certain social media or other accounts. For security, Office will send a verification code to the relevant account before it is connected. Then the linked accounts appear on the screen so you can import pictures and videos from them into your documents.
Compatibility: Available in Word and PowerPoint 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Outlook 2013)
Are you looking for a better way to keep track of your emails and related details? You can send important Outlook emails to OneNote, then add your own notes about those emails for future reference. You can select any number of emails from Outlook, and OneNote will create a corresponding new page for each one.
Benefits: Helps users keep an offline copy of email messages, as well as take notes on all the important details related to the email communication. Users can select from the available OneNote notebooks and keep all email sorted as they wish.
How To: Open Outlook, go to the Move tab, and click on the OneNote icon. This will open a popup window where you can tell the system which notebook you want the email message(s) moved to or saved. By selecting a notebook, OneNote will open the emails in different pages under one tab.
Compatibility: Available in Outlook 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Outlook 2013)
You can connect Outlook to third-party online services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others, then manage files and photos from within Outlook.
Benefits: Keep all your contact information together, complete, and easily accessible in Outlook. Integration enables adding pictures and videos from social sources.
How To: Select the File tab in Outlook, then go to the Account Information page. Once there, click on the Account Setting icon to see all the available options that can integrate with Outlook. You must enter your user ID and password to access each service's data.
Compatibility: Available in Outlook 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
This may sound silly. But when you're designing templates for reports, newsletters, presentations, and other documents, you often need to plug in fake text to see how the design will look. Instead of creating new (or reusing old) text, many people like to use "greeked" or nonsense text, so that reviewers aren't distracted from the design by real words. This practice also eliminates the risk that you'll accidentally leave in false text when producing a real document from the template).
Office 2013 users can easily auto-generate nonsense text to show what goes where in a template, including pictures, graphics, and paragraph orientation. Equations "=LOREM(P,L)" and "=RAND(P,L)" generate random data to show how the formatted document will look and feel.
Benefits: Helps users experiment with data layout faster and with fewer risks. Saves time and creates a sample, copy, or template to work on later.
How To: Place your cursor where you want the nonsense text to appear, then simply type "=LOREM(P,L)" or "=RAND(P,L)" in the document, replacing P with the number of paragraphs required and L with the lines required in each paragraph. Random text will fill the space.
Compatibility: Available in Word and PowerPoint 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Word 2013)
Need to count? Don't bother opening your calculator app. Word 2013 gives users the option to perform calculations from within the Word document itself, without having to switch to an external application.
Benefits: You can simply type arithmetic into a Word document and get a solution, rather than using a calculator app.
How To: In Word, go to File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar > Choose All Commands, then select Calculator from the list. Add Calculator to the Customized Access Toolbar.
Compatibility: Available in Word 2013.
(Image: Created in a lab environment using Microsoft Office 2013)
These lesser-known Office features allow you to reduce time and effort when working, and enjoy a better, more productive experience. Utilizing these built-in features will launch you from novice to expert status in Office 2013 and allow you to fully maximize all it has to offer.
-
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like
More Insights
Webinars
