Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Word 2010 – Part 3

Here are another four tips and tricks for intermediate to advanced users to increase your working knowledge of Microsoft Word 2010.

Tip 1 – An easy change of case

We all remember how frustrating it was in previous versions of Word when we’d typed out a large chunk of text only to find that Caps Lock was on or that we needed it all in upper case. Word 2010 provides handy new functionality that eliminates the need for any re-typing.

Simply highlight the text that you want to change and press SHIFT + F3 until the text appears as you want it to. Alternatively you can highlight the text and click the Aa button on the Home menu bar then select the appropriate case from there.

Tip 2 – Keyboard shortcuts to change font size

This is a little time-saving trick you can use when you want to change the size of selected text. Instead of clicking on the size field in the Home menu bar, just press CTRL + SHIFT + > to increase the font size and CTRL + SHIFT + < to decrease the font size. This will increase/decrease font size according to the increments found in the drop down on the Home menu bar. If you want to increase/decrease the font size in individual increments then use CTRL + SHIFT + ] to increase and CTRL + SHIFT + [ to decrease size.

Tip 3 – Separating wrapped text without breaks

As a default setting, we usually want text to be wrapped so if it’s too long to fit on to one line it automatically extends into the next line down. However, sometimes we need something to remain whole instead of broken across two lines e.g. telephone numbers or long names. The usual workaround involves pressing Enter at the beginning of the text we want to keep together which is fine until it puts text breaks in the wrong place.

The best way of doing this is to enter what are called non-breaking spaces or hyphens into the text. Non-breaking spaces and non-breaking hyphens keep text together and will automatically move the whole text to a new line as required without causing any strange breaks.

For non-breaking spaces press CTRL + SHIFT + Spacebar and for non-breaking hyphens use CTRL + SHIFT + -.

Tip 4 – Change text wrapping for an inserted picture

This is a really nifty setting that eliminates all the annoyance we face when trying to get text to sit correctly when inserting a picture. The default setting is ‘In Line with Text’ which is not always suitable when we want more control over the positioning of the text.

Open the File menu and click on the Word Options in the bottom right-hand corner. Find the Advanced tab and scroll down until you see the Insert/paste pictures options. There will be a drop-down menu to the right of the option that shows all the different ways you may want to wrap text around the picture. Simply select the desired option and click OK to set your new default.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!