Do you get the most from Microsoft Word?
Originally published in GP magazine .
Written for GP magazine around 2011. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.
Do you get the most from Microsoft Word? Here is a brief list of some of the features of Word you may not be familiar with that might make your life a little easier.
Styles
If you are producing a report you may need to use more than the simple bolding and underline you might in a short letter. It can be very laborious to change all the bolds in your headings to underline and back again. If, however, you set all your headings to be the same style, then all you need do to change them all is tell it to change the heading style. It’s surprisingly easy to do, but I’m always amazed by how many people don’t use style sheets in Word.
Forms
I’m sure you are filling in forms, often by hand. Did you know that if you can get hold of the form in Word format you can use Word to help you fill it out? Word has the ability to know that some bits of the document are not for editing and some bits are for filling in. It only allows you to type in the bits that need filling in, making it quicker.
Custom dictionaries
Does one of your typists lack a medical background and constantly spell things wrong? Did you know that you can buy medical dictionary packs to add to Word that include things like drug names, diseases, operations, etc.?
AutoCorrect and AutoText
Have you noticed that some words you spell wrong Word corrects automatically, but some it doesn’t? That’s because there are a core set of words that we all make the same mistakes with, either in getting the spelling wrong or in typing them wrong. An example is teh, which autocorrects to the.
Now if you are odd and there are certain words you always type wrong or get the spelling wrong, you can teach Word your idiosyncrasies.
AutoText is the big brother - if you find yourself typing the same thing over and over in different documents, for example a brief bio about yourself, Word can store this on a menu. Selecting it will bring up the whole piece of text, saving you loads of time. You could use this for things like addresses, emails, etc.
Mail merge
Mail merging, in case you don’t know, is the ability to have a master document that is automatically personalised, for example with name and address details. You may have used your clinical system to do this, but Word can produce such lovely-looking documents it can be worth using it. It can take details from a spreadsheet in Excel - possibly extracted from a search in your clinical system - and its wizard will lead you through creating a document to merge those details into.