Mar

8

Workshop 1: Introduction to Microsoft Word Workshop

March 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment

When I signed up for this workshop, it was because I needed to fill part of my workshop requirement for class, not because I fancied myself an MS Word greenhorn.  After all, I’d been using the program as long as I’ve been using word processing software, which is the greater part of my life.  Despite my supposed expertise, I learned that I really was not beyond what was being taught in that introductory class.

This is not to say I have been using Word incorrectly for over 12 years.  I always manage to generate decently-formatted, basic papers without much struggle.  I even use some fancy shortcuts here and there.  Still, there is so much more to Word than just changing the font size and margins.

There are dozens of shortcuts the user can employ to save time that would otherwise be spent wandering through menus with the mouse.  In addition to keyboard shortcuts, the user can create visual shortcuts in the program’s interface to keep certain functions close at hand.  Occasionally, sending someone a document is not always as easy as saving it and emailing it as it is, and so the user can save it as a PDF or plain text file depending on the needs and capabilities of the receiver.

Another feature that was particularly interesting and useful was the review function, which allows a document to be created and sent to another user on another computer, who can then make notes and corrections on the document and send it back to the creator; no red pen or printer required.  However, this class was taught on PCs, so it may take some people time to translate this knowledge to the Mac version of Word.

While my skills in Word were not exponentially enhanced, I was given quite a bit of useful information that should help streamline my projects in Word.  Anybody that has my level of computing experience (which is probably the vast majority of computer users today) could probably learn a thing or two by taking this introduction to MS Word.



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