Four steps to eternal happiness in MS Word

Shortcuts in Word

Just the other day I had a training for Microsoft and they wanted me to show how well the new Windows and Office behaved on a touch device, which by the way is great, but it was only then that I realized that using keyboard shortcuts was impossible and only then did I realize that using keyboard shortcuts has become sort of a second nature to me and using them did save me a lot of time.
But I'm writing this for those who maybe know Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+H… but still wonder what else is out there. Who best to answer that then Word Itself? You can ask Word for a list of all shortcuts you can use and he will even give you an option to go with only those that are supported by your current keyboard settings. This is how…
No matter what document is opened, the command will create a list of commands in a new document so you go to View and choose Macros or View Macros from the drop-down. You get
  Under Macros In: you choose Word Commands and you get a full list of commands in the above box. There you Search for the List Commands »macro«. And you choose Run.
  Word only asks you one more thing. Do you want the commands that go with the current keyboard settings (which is default and is what you want since those are the commands you can use) or do you want All Word commands (not all will work). You click OK and voila, you get a new document listing the shortcuts you can use. Great bedtime reading material :)
 

Random text in MS Word

If you are creating a new layout, a new template or just need some text in a hurry, this is for you. We will list three commands you can use. All three are used the same way. You write the equal sign, then the command followed by the (n,m) two numbers. There are no spaces anywhere and when you get to the end you just press Enter. n tells word how many paragraphs you need and m how man sentences you need within each of those paragraphs.
1.      =rand(10,20)
a.      Rand is a command that will give you a not so random text since it's quoting the help file. You would see the exact same text if you went to the help file. This is what you get
Video provides a powerful way to help you prove your point. When you click Online Video, you can paste in the embed code for the video you want to add. You can also type a keyword to search online for the video that best fits your document. To make your document look professionally produced, Word provides header, footer, cover page, and text box designs that complement each other. For example, you can add a matching cover page, header, and sidebar…
2.      =rand.old(10,20)
a.      Rand.old is a command that gives you old random text. It's more fairytale like text, but a big downside is that it uses one and the same sentence over and over… You get
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog…
3.      =lorem(10,20)
a.      Lorem Ipsum is a synonym for random text or for designers who just wish fill there layout with some meaningless text. It looks like Latin but it's not. Here's what you get.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Aenean nec lorem. In porttitor. Donec laoreet nonummy augue…

Insert pictures from the web

Both of the following are actually a great representation of us not looking in our own backyard but still heading for the market every day. To put this differently. If we were in need of a picture of a doctor, but did not have one on our computer, but the document we are working on in Word calls for just such a picture. What would we do. 99% of people would start their browser (Internet Explorer of course) and go to a search providers site (Bing of course) and look for pictures there. Now the problem with that is that for 99,9% of the pictures we found, the Rights of Use for that picture are not present. Not that anyone is looking very hard, but it’s next to impossible to find out if the picture we like can be used in our document.
But since we are already writing in Word, why don’t we ask Word to look for pictures on the internet. It’s also worth mentioning that both commands are available in all Office applications. Yes, you can do that :). Here’s how. You go to Insert and choose Clip Art (in Word 2013 the command has changed slightly and is called Online Pictures).
In previous versions of Word you get the following sidebar.
  In the Search for: box you put the keywords that you are looking for. The keywords must be in the language which matches the Office display language or the language in which the ribbons are showing. Be careful to click the Include Office.com content checkbox. They have the best stuff :). Under Select media file types, you can select Pictures, Photographs, Videos and Sound. Yes even Video or Sound.
Now in Office 2013 or updated Office 365, you go to Online Pictures under Insert and you get
 
So you can now do even more. You can search Office.com (same as Clip art before), but now you even get the Bing Image Search (same as searching thru a browser but from Word) and get this, even Facebook, SkyDrive and Flickr.
Same search as above…
 

Translate Text in Word

Just as in the previous case. One of those things where a great majority of people go to the browser to get the job done when Word itself usually does a much better job. So imagine that you have a paragraph of text but it’s in English. Now you need the same paragraph in Italian and French…
All you have to do is to select the paragraph you wish to translate and go to Review/Translate
  And choose Translate Selected Text. You get a sidebar that looks like this…

It’s pretty much self-explanatory but still you chose From which language and to which you wish to translate the text. You can also choose to translate the whole document. Once you get the translation, you can just click Insert and you get the translated paragraph wherever you were in your document.
Also it has to be said. Like all machine translators it isn’t perfect but compared to Google Translate :) it’s in a different class and it’s not “written” by ordinary people…