Using Settings and Preferences in Microsoft Word 2013

After reading this article, you’ll know how to work with Settings and Preferences in Microsoft Word 2013. Usually, before working with documents, you need to do some customizing. Depending on what you need to do in MS Word 2013, this can be very useful. For example, you may need to check spelling after typing in a foreign language, or get more screen tips for learning the software.

How to use Settings and Preferences in Microsoft Word 2013

Settings and Preferences are in the Option menu of the Backstage view. To access that, click File, and then Options in the drop-down. A pop-up window named Word Options will come up.

This contains many different options, such as General, Display, Proofing, Save, Language, and Advanced in the left part of the dialog window. Let’s talk about them.

The first option is named General. The main feature of this is the possibility to personalize your document by creating a User Name and Initials. By doing this, everyone will see the author of the document. That can be helpful when you need to be contacted, or if you need to identify the person who last made changes to the document when working on an item collectively.

Another useful possibility is to adopt Office components such as PowerPoint or Excel by using the Office Background button.

If you need more tips displayed on the screen to know how to use buttons or options, use the Screen Tip Style. After dropping that down, you’ll see three options, each of which makes changes in Screen Tips after selecting and pressing OK:

• Show feature description in Screen Tips. Hit this if you need to get the description of every feature. The name of the button and short description will come up after moving the mouse’s cursor over it.
• Don’t show feature description in Screen Tips. If you don’t need a description anymore, you can switch it off through this button.
• Don’t show Screen Tips. Neither Screen Tips nor descriptions will be shown.

Now, tap the Save button on the right to discover another main option. Here you can change the Default local file location where Word documents will be saved on your computer. Click on Browse, and select the Desktop or any folder on the hard drive, depending on where you need to store files.

Now, let’s move to the Language option. You can choose an editing language here. This language will be used for checking spelling after you’re done typing. You need to have a keyboard with that language to type.

Click it, and you’ll see another window.

To select the language, click the Add additional editing languages drop-down, and you’ll get a long list of options.

Now, let’s look at the option named Advanced. Using the scroll down, find the Display section which contains the long list of options. At the top, you’ll see Show this number of recent documents and a corresponding number. To control Screen Tips, you can also use Show shortcut keys in Screen Tips.

Finally, you’ll see the list so you can select any of the Advanced Options you need.

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!