Writing a Word document, but unhappy because you can't think of exactly the right word to use?
Good news — in Microsoft Office you always have Word's Thesaurus tool to find exactly the right / correct / accurate / exact / precise synonym to make your writing sparkle.
Watch this one-minute video to see how easy it is to do in Word 2007 and Word 2010:
Positioning text in Word using spaces or tabs can be tricky to get words and figures to line up the way you want, and presenting data in paragraphs can make it hard to read.
Good news: it's easy to convert your text into a table to make it more readable, and arrange it in rows & columns instead of paragraphs.
Computer crash? Power went out during a storm? And you were in the middle of editing a budget spreadsheet and didn't get a chance to save your work? Ugh.
Microsoft Office programs (which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are by default set to automatically save an open file every 10 minutes. So when you re-open the program, your file should still have all the changes you have made — except for the last 10 minutes of work. (Your file may retain more recent changes if you manually saved it yourself by pressing Control+S on the keyboard.)
10 minutes between autosaves not good enough for you? Me neither. Here's how to better protect your hard work:
If you've ever struggled to get Microsoft Word to position important text exactly where you want it, try creating a Text Box.
A text box is a special type of shape designed to place text in your Word 2007 document without regard to the normal page margins. A text box gives you the flexibility to add text wherever you want it.
Add a text box...
To position and align text exactly where you want it to be
In margins to highlight key points
Above or below images to create a caption
To create a "pull quote" (a floating text box that highlights a quote from the document) or a sidebar (a block of supplementary material)
A text box is easy to insert, and with Microsoft Word's built-in text box styles and templates they're a breeze to create & customize. Or if you want more control, you can creating your own text box from scratch.
To learn how to insert a text box and how to format it in various ways — including resizing & moving it, and changing the text box shape, color, and outline — use these instructions:
Any time you add an image — a photo, clip art, diagram, or chart — to a Word document, it can be a hassle getting it to stay where you want it, align correctly, or flow around the text.
When you're preparing a document to be printed but find that just a few lines spill over onto the last page, you can save paper by optimizing your document to fit on the fewest pages possible.
One way to do this is to reduce the font size of the text, but print that's too small can be too hard to read.
Instead, try adjusting the margins (either left & right or top & bottom) to reduce the white space surrounding the text.
Watch one of these short demos to see how easy it is to be thrifty:
When someone shares a document with you that's in PDF format but you need to edit it, try the free online PDFConverter. It'll convert a PDF to PowerPoint (PPT), Word (DOC) or Excel (XLS), and you don't need to download any software to use it.
If you're writing a document you want to fit on a single page, but changing the text size would make it too hard to read, try adjusting the margins to see if that will do the trick. (The margin are the blank space around the edges of the text and images on a page.)
Watch these helpful video tutorials to learn how to adjust margins, depending on the version of Microsoft Word that you use:
The quick access toolbar in Word contains the commands you're likely to use often. But what if the ones you use most often aren't there? Watch this short video below to see how easy it is to customize Word's quick access toolbar so it works best for you:
In Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 when you copy & paste text from another document or website, you might not want all the colors, fonts, bullets, and other formatting from the original source.
So instead of using the regular Paste command (or keyboard shortcut Ctrl + V), follow these steps instead:
Computer crash? Power went out during a storm? And you were in the middle of editing a budget spreadsheet and didn't get a chance to save your work? Ugh.
If you've ever struggled to get Microsoft Word to position important text exactly where you want it, try creating a Text Box.
Any time you add an image — a photo, clip art, diagram, or chart — to a Word document, it can be a hassle getting it to stay where you want it, align correctly, or flow around the text.
When you're preparing a document to be printed but find that just a few lines spill over onto the last page, you can save paper by optimizing your document to fit on the fewest pages possible. 
If you're writing a document you want to fit on a single page, but changing the text size would make it too hard to read, try adjusting the margins to see if that will do the trick. (The margin are the blank space around the edges of the text and images on a page.)
In Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 when you copy & paste text from another document or website, you might not want all the colors, fonts, bullets, and other formatting from the original source.