Monday, January 7, 2002		Article

MS-Word is one of the widely used word processor of Microsoft .It has various formatting and editing features that helps a user to design a document. We generally use the commands from the menu bar or from the tool bar. But very few of us know that MS Word is full of short cuts that help us to design and format our document within seconds. Major short cuts have been discussed below:

Suppose you want to add a table in your document, Simply use '+' and '-' symbols for example, +-------------+---------------+, when you press 'Enter' key, automatically a table will be inserted at that place. '+' indicates columns and '-' indicates rows. If you want to add more rows, use the tab keys inside the cell of the table, thus you get the desired table.

+--------+--------+-------+ will become

To create a bold text, place a '*' at the beginning and end of the text. As you press '*' at the end, the text will be bold. For example

*I Love India* will become I Love India

Similarly, to create an italic text, place '_'(Under score) just at the beginning and at the end - without any space.

_Ashoka the great_ will become Ashoka the Great as soon as you put '-' at the end of the text.

Another problem that usually bothers is when you type an e-mail address in your document, word generally creates a hyperlink for that e-mail id. For example, xyz@yahoo.com will become xyz@yahoo.com, thus creating a hyperlink that is irritating .To remove this link, use Ctrl+Z option immediately after you have typed the e-mail id.

Next useful tip is how to insert a bullet .To insert a bullet, simply put a '*' before the text and start typing the text .As soon as you press the Enter key, a bullet will be inserted. Don't forget to include a blank space between the text and '*'

For example: * abc will become · abc

As you press the Enter key, a second bullet will also be inserted at the next line, But if you don't need these bullets anymore, simply use enter key, the bullet will be removed, simple isn't it.

If you enable the option of view > as Web page in windows explorer, you can see the preview of your files. But, you might have noticed that this facility does not work for MS-Word documents. To see the preview of MS Word documents, simply go to File > Properties and enable the option, 'Save preview picture.' Now, you can easily see the preview in Windows Explorer.

If you are interested to draw different lines of different patterns, don't worry. Simply type --- , _ _ _ , = = = , # # # , * * * , | | | and use 'Enter' key. You will find different designs of lines.

These were major short cuts, which can be easily used in MS-Word. I hope that use of these short cuts in MS-Word will make your 'Word' experience more exciting and lively.