Heather Ackmann - Microsoft 365 Word Tips and Tricks: Discover top features and expert techniques for creating, editing, customizing, and troubleshooting documents

Discover top features and expert techniques for creating, editing, customizing, and troubleshooting documents

Heather Ackmann

Bill Kulterman

BIRMINGHAMMUMBAI

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To my husband, Alan Ackmann, for your never-ending love and support. And to my mother, who will buy this book and never read it, thank you.

Heather Ackmann

To my wife, Marilee Kulterman, thanks you for all your love and support, and putting up with me for all these years. I could never have done it without you.

Bill Kulterman

The only thing that's constant when it comes to technology is that people's expectations of technology keep rising with time and as advancements happen. Numerous entertainment surveys have concluded that an average viewer today expects no less than full-color HD content on streaming platforms such as Netflix. As we all know, there's an emerging trend to colorize classic black and white movies and make more and more corrections during post-production. When it comes to new shows and movies, the likes of "Emily in Paris" are shot in 4K UHD from the get-go. If we take a parallel in the context of documents, the world today is similar. People have come to expect documents that are appropriately formatted, collaboration-ready, accessible in various ways, free of spelling and grammatical errors, and that maintain high fidelity across platforms and devices. Be it a resume, an assignment, a technical draft, an e-book, a script, or any kind of professional document, the skilled versus unskilled use of Microsoft Word could have a huge impact on how the content and the author are perceived. Back as an undergraduate student, I once handed a copy of my resume to a recent-grad investment banker friend for proofreading. Within a second, he commented, "you will be rejected." I said, "at least read a few lines before you conclude that." He noted, "I don't need to, all the bullets here are misaligned." Then, he went on to explain how my resume reflected that I don't have an eye for detail, and how it was visible that the points in the resume have no structure or formatting. It was eye-opening for me how the entire conversation revolved around the formatting of the resume and the actual content, that is, my accomplishments, got completely sidelined. This may have been a one-off judgment and there is also no denying that certain industries and sets of people are more serious about this stuff than others, but I got the basic principle there is no getting around Microsoft Word skills. This was true then, and is truer now, with a massive increase in online collaboration over the last few years. The comforting thing though is that Word itself has become much more powerful with time and tons of good news keeps emerging from Microsoft, especially around the Microsoft 365 version of Word. Unlike the perpetual versions, with Microsoft 365 Word, updates are available every month. More important to note is the nature of advancements within these updates. Microsoft is increasingly harnessing advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning to build complex scenarios and help authors in ways never possible before. The innovation shows conspicuously in features such as Editor and Accessibility Checker, where Word doesn't just act as an authoring tool but assumes the role of an assistant figuring out problems with document content and providing meaningful suggestions to improve it. There are also major advancements to note in collaboration and coauthoring, cloud storage, online templates, and numerous other areas that allow for much faster and richer formatting and exponentially better collaboration than was possible in the past.

In this book, Heather and William have done an incredible job of covering the basic tips and tricks of Word that are relevant for any Word version and have also gone into the relevant details of the latest features and scenarios that Microsoft 365 Word enables. There is a lot going on with Word and it's hard to decide where to start and where to finish when talking about it. In that regard, it's great to see that instead of just creating a feature guide, Heather and William have focused sharply on the must-know things and attacked some very real-life problems that authors face with Word. I really hope that you all will find the content of this book extremely useful in your day-to-day use of Word. For me, as I reviewed chapters of this book, I just wished I had access to it earlier. Maybe I would have made a better first impression on my friend and had an alternate life on Wall Street. Just kidding!

Ramit Arora

Senior PM

Office Experience Organization

Microsoft Corp

Heather Ackmann is an author, Microsoft Certified Trainer Alumnus, and Microsoft MVP. Since 2006, she has designed, authored, and narrated over 300 hours of video-based training for a variety of public and private entities. In 2016, she cofounded AHA Learning Solutions to provide high-quality custom learning materials to educational institutions and businesses nationally. She is an active member of the presentation community and a proud member of the Presentation Guild. You may find her sharing advice and Microsoft Office news on Twitter (@heatherackmann). When she is not teaching, she is herself a student and is currently finishing an MS degree in human computer interaction at DePaul University.

I want to thank my friends at the Presentation Guild (Echo Swinford, Stephy Hogan, Nolan Haims, Chantal Boss, Sheila Robinson, Julie Terberg, Glenna Shaw, Sandy Johnson, Rick Altman, and so many others), and my fellow Microsoft MVPs for their help and guidance over the years, especially Ed Liberman, Dan Rey, Doug Spindler, and Beth Melton. I especially want to thank Bill Kulterman for saying yes and for being so easy to work with, and to thank the greatest CEO I've ever had the privilege to work with: Scott Skinger. My career would not be what it is today without your support, encouragement, and constant never-ending improvement.