The art of using software effectively is to know precisely how it works – and moving and clicking the mouse costs you valuable time when composing a document in Word. However, you can speed up your document processing and editing with keyboard shortcuts. With a little practice, you will become much more efficient and productive. Here is a short list of common tasks and their keyboard shortcut commands. A complete list is available on Microsoft’s website, but this is enough to shave hours off your day!
Editing: It is not uncommon to need to remove words while editing. Use Ctrl+Delete or Ctrl+Backspace to speed up this process. Ctrl+Delete will delete the word to the right of your cursor and Ctrl+Backspace will remove the words to the left of your cursor. If you need to delete three words to the right of your cursor, press Ctrl+Delete three times. The same can be applied to Ctrl+Backspace.
Moving Paragraphs: When you want to move a paragraph from its current position to below the following paragraph, insert your cursor into the paragraph that you want to move and, while pressing Alt+Shift, press Down Arrow. Use Alt+Shift and Up Arrow to move the paragraph up.
Repeating Your Most Recent Action: F4 will repeat nearly every action you’ve taken on a document. It will duplicate formatting, deleting and typing.
Find and Replace: Ctrl+H will open the Find and Replace dialog box. If you only need to locate something in the document, Ctrl+F opens the Find tab.
Toggling Between Two Documents: When working on two separate documents, you can to switch to the document not displayed by simply pressing Alt+Tab. This feature will also switch to any other program you have open. Hold the Alt key and press Tab until the program you want is selected.
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Quickoffice is an iPhone app that enables you to work effectively from your iPhone, allowing you to create and edit documents for the Microsoft Office programs Word and Excel. You can then view these documents and email them from your phone.
The program is extremely effective for viewing files while you are on the move. If you are on the subway or an airplane, the app allows you to read documents so you can stay current and get work done when that would normally be impossible. This lets you turn unproductive periods into productive working time. When you would normally just be sitting in a seat and trying to find something to do, you can now pull ahead with your workload.
The app is also useful for editing documents, particularly if you only need to make small changes to a document. If you need to check a document for errors on the way to work, this app is perfect. It lets you review Word documents in order to see if there are any grammatical errors, and lets you fix them. Similarly, it can be used to check a spreadsheet for problems, or make a few small changes to improve upon its appearance. The app is compatible with English, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
Overall, Quickoffice should be used as a way of viewing and editing documents, though generally not for creating them from scratch. Nevertheless, this is a very useful app to have that can help you get things done when you would normally have no way of doing anything productive. This frees up time for you to get other things done when you are at work or at home.
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Documents To Go is an iPhone application that allows users to edit documents right from their iPhone, while users can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint from the mail application.
This application will prove useful to business men and women if they are in a hurry to or from the office and don’t have time to sit in front of a computer and edit documents for a presentation or an assignment. It can also come in handy on the commute to or from work if they are taking public transportation. Rather than taking out a laptop, you can instead pull out your phone and quickly and easily edit a PowerPoint presentation, edit a document while the idea is still fresh in your mind, or fine tune a report on the go, rather than taking time away from relaxing at home. It will also prove useful if your computer becomes damaged or if you forget your laptop at the office.
The Documents To Go application has been proven to have a learning curve. Right above the keyboard, three pages of options can be found that you swipe to show options. There is also a highlighting feature. Double tapping highlights a word and triple tapping highlights an entire paragraph. Tapping and holding at any place on the screen will activate the magnifying glass which can be dragged to select the desired text. With the Documents To Go application users can also sync files with a desktop computer through Wi-Fi, allowing you to transfer documents and files right to the computer from your phone.
Documents To Go is a useful application that will undoubtedly make you more productive and make your workload easier, as it frees you from working only behind a desk or in front of a computer.
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A writer can’t always be at the keyboard, but a writer with an iPhone can turn idle moments away from the desk into productive writing time using Elements, an iPhone text editor that utilizes Dropbox for its storage. While there are several approaches to the problem of writing-on-the-go, Elements is a standout solution that provides seamless transitions from the desktop to mobile environment and back.
The editor itself is clean and simple, unbloated and providing exactly the features a writer will need, and it is clearly designed with the writer in mind. Word counts and automatic document saving are critical, the ability to email directly from the editor is a great convenience, and a scratchpad for notes and miscellaneous text, which doesn’t clutter the open document, is an excellent bonus.
The real beauty of Elements is the Dropbox backend for storage (a free Dropbox account is required to use Elements.) This means that your documents are where you need them, when you need them, without you having to do a thing. Just save your document at the office, hop on the train and open Elements, and there’s your file, completely up-to-date. You can spend the next ninety minutes editing in Elements, then when you turn on the computer at home, again, there’s your file with all the changes from the train ride, ready to import into Word for the final draft. The system really allows you to focus on your text rather than technical issues and file transfers.
Elements is a perfect blend of an elegant text editor with a system for universal file access, and any writer with an iPhone will find it to be a powerful productivity tool.
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For those who work in an office environment, there’s nothing more important than learning to manage your time in the most streamlined fashion possible. One of the best places to start is with your documents; with Documents Free for iPhone, you can edit and organize spreadsheet and text files on the fly without ever having to be near your computer.
Documents Free is perfect for anyone who finds themselves juggling a host of documents on a regular basis. The program can be used on or offline, can open multiple documents in a variety of different formats (Excel, Word, Notepad, Open Office and more), and allows you to edit them on the fly. Perhaps the best feature of Documents Free is that it allows you to sync your files with Google Documents, making them easy to open, edit and read on your computer.
Documents Free includes a spreadsheet app, a text editor, an iPhone file browser and Google Sync, making it extremely versatile for just about any text or spreadsheet task you might need to take on. The app is perfect for anyone who might need on-the-fly access to their spreadsheets or text documents, and is also useful in terms of its back-up abilities. As its name would imply, Documents Free is free software, without any restrictions on the user.
The ease-of-use and versatility of Documents Free make it the ultimate document reader and editor for the iPhone. Since users can edit their documents from wherever they are at a given time, it is no longer necessary to wait until you are near a computer to get your work done. This alone can save you countless valuable hours over a week.
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