At the precise moment you finish typing a word – by pressing the spacebar, typing a period, or using some other punctuation – Word searches the list of typos and misspellings it knows about. If it thinks you’ve made a typo, it will correct it automatically for you. AutoCorrect is set up by default with a list of typical misspellings and symbols that uses commonly make, but you can modify the list that AutoCorrect uses.

Using Word’s AutoCorrect is also a great way to save time typing out long pieces of text, too. For example, you could set up the abbreviation cdc in the AutoCorrect list to be substituted by the phrase Centers for Disease Control. Once set up, each time you type “cdc” and press the spacebar, those letters will be replaced by “Centers for Disease Control”.

The AutoCorrect list is global across all the Microsoft Office 2010 programs that support this feature, which means that when you add or delete a word from the list in one Microsoft Office program, the other Office programs are also updated.

Word AutoCorrect Options

You can customize the way that Word AutoCorrect works: click the File tab > Options > Proofing, and then click the AutoCorrect Options button near the top of the window.

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The AutoCorrect window has many tabs, but when it opens, it will display the AutoCorrect tab. The options at the top are basically a list of yes/no questions in the form of checkboxes, described as follows:

• Show AutoCorrect Options buttons – after an autocorrection has been applied, if you hover over the corrected word you’ll see the AutoCorrect Options button appear (see below). This checkbox turns it off.
• Correct TWo INitial CApitals – with this option checked, this sentence would become “Two Initial Capitals”
• Capitalize first letter of sentences – fairly self explanatory.
• Capitalize first letter of table cells – similar to the above option, except that table cell contents are treated in isolation. When you tab to the next cell, or press the spacebar, for example, the capital letter is applied to the first letter of the first word in the cell.
• Capitalize names of days – Word recognises the names of the days (there are only seven, after all) and when this option is checked, day names with lowercase initial letters are corrected.
• Correct accidental usage of cAPS LOCK key – Word can detect when you’ve accidentally left the Caps Lock button on and corrects the text you type.
• Replace text as you type – this section is geared towards setting up “shortcuts” for long pieces of text that would be tedious to type in. To set up “cdc” to be converted to “Centers for Disease Control”, see the image below.

Once you’ve made changes on the AutoCorrect window, click OK to save them. The changes you make take immediate effect.

AutoCorrect Options Buttons

Replace text as you type

It is recommended that you spend a little time getting used to the ribbon and becoming familiar with the new interface. However, for all those menu and toolbar diehards, there is an alternative.

The Classic Menu for Office Professional Plus 2010 brings back the classic menus and toolbars to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, and also holds all new features of Office 2010. The software helps you work with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit) as if it were Microsoft Office 2003 (or XP, 2000).

You can download a free trial here, to see whether it works for you.

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The image above illustrates the new (old) look and feel of the toolbar that the software replaces the ribbon with. And the changes re not just restricted to Microsoft Word: all programs in the Office 2010 suite get the classic toolbar.

Even though the old, classic toolbar gets installed, all the new functions and commands that were present on the ribbon are still in place. All new features and commands of Microsoft Office 2010 are added to the classic style interface. The Office 2010 ribbon tabs are kept fully intact, so you can truly get the best of both worlds.

The Classic Menu for Office 2010 not only supports 32-bit, but also supports 64-bit Microsoft Office 2010.

So, a soft return can refer to the natural wrapping of text onto a new line.

A soft return can also be “forced” by the typist when they are not yet at the end of the current line.

Usually, you will press enter to mark the end of the current paragraph and to start a new one. Marking paragraphs out like this allows Word to apply paragraph attributes like spacing between paragraphs or first-line indentation. However, you can insert a non-paragraph line break, also known as a soft return, by pressing shift-enter, for cases where the text should start on a new line but none of the other side effects of starting a new paragraph are required.

When Would You Use A Soft Return In Word?

Check out this address typed using Enter key presses at the end of each line, combined with the default settings that Word applies to paragraphs (remember, when you press Enter, you are starting a new paragraph):

It looks OK, but the spacing is too much. We need to get rid of that spacing so that between each line. To do that, we use soft returns by pressing shift-enter at the end of each line. Then we get the following address:

Much better!

Vertical Text In A Text Box

First of all, you’ll need your text in a text box. To insert a text box in your document, go to the Insert tab and click Text Box (in the Text group). When the Text Box gallery opens, choose the text box style you want. Most people will find that the Simple Text Box (the first option) suffices but go ahead and knock yourself out.

When the text box has been inserted in the document, you can start typing in it.

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As the image above shows, when the text box is selected, the Drawing Tools tab is displayed in the ribbon. This is just what we need: go to the Format tab and click Text Direction (in the Text group). Choose the direction that suits you.

For vertical text you will need either the Rotate all text 90 degrees or the Rotate all text 270 degrees option. One has the text direction facing downwards and the other upwards.

Now this is really weird: when you place the cursor in your vertical text, it changes to a horizontal cursor. And when you type, the text continues in your new chosen direction. How strange.

Vertical Text In A Table Cell

Another way to get vertical text is to type it into a table cell. While the table is selected (simply having the cursor in a table cell selects the table), you’ll see the Table Tools tab displayed in the ribbon. Go to the Layout tab within. In the Alignment group, you should see the Text Direction command. If you click repeatedly on that button, the orientation of the text in the selected cell will cycle through horizontal – 90 degrees – 270 degrees.

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This word count is the total number of words in the entire document.

But you can get a word count for just a particular section of text, too. Simply select your text and the word count number will update to give you the total number of words in the selection. The format is like this:


number of words in the selection / number of words in the document


You can also make multiple selections by holding down the ctrl key when making further selections. Again, the word count will update to display the total number of words in the selections.

Count Of A Specific Word

To count the number of occurrences of a specific word in your document, you have to get sneaky. Press ctrl-F to open up the navigation pane and then type the word or phrase you want to count. Not only will Word find all occurrences of the word or phrase, it will diaply the count, too.

That’s changing case while you are typing.

But you can also change the case of text that has already been typed in your Word document. All you have to do is select the text first, and then go to the Home tab and click the Change Case button in the Font group. The Change Case button looks like this:

When you click the button, you get the following options to choose from:

• Sentence case – in sentence case, the first word of each sentence has a capital letter and all other words are lowercase. For example, the man went home. the house was empty. empty becomes The man went home. The house was empty. Empty
• Lowercase – if you choose this option, all letters become lowercase.
• UPPERCASE – if you choose this option, all letters become uppercase.
• Capitalise Each Word – this option Capitalises Each Word In The Selected Text. As Demonstrated Here.
• Toggle Case – choosing this option reverses the case of each letter so that i loVe TO dANcE ThE sLOW foXTroT becomes I LOvE to DanCe tHe Slow FOxtROt.

Let’s get straight to it and add one now. On the Insert tab, click Shapes (in the Illustrations group) > Oval Callout. The shapes are not visibly named, but the Oval Callout shape is in the Callouts section near the bottom.

Clicking the shape doesn’t insert it; it simply activates the tool. You still need to draw the shape on the page by clicking and dragging in your document. Once you’ve clicked and dragged, you should get something like this:

This is all well and good if you want something quick. We, on the other hand, are genteel and sophisticated. We desire a speech bubble that has a curved bit like this:

We can make that curve by manipulating the points on the shape. If you’ve used image editors like Adobe Illustrator or Fireworks, this should be a doddle. If you haven’t, don’t worry because it’s quite easy anyway.

With the speech bubble still selected, make sure you’re working on the Format tab of the Drawing Tools contextual tab (it pops up whenever a shape is selected).

Click Edit Shape (in the Insert Shapes group) > Edit Points. You’ll notice that the bounding box for the shape has gone. Each point that defines the shape is also now selectable and able to be manipulated.

Click on the point right at the bottom and drag it further down. Because this point is now selected, you should see some yellow handles that you can drag around to alter the curve of the lines coming out of that point.

Try it. Drag those handles around to get a feel for how they affect the curvature. Those handles affect the curve of the lines near the selected point. To change the curvature of a line near the point at the other end, select that point and repeat the process. This is often necessary to achieve a nice smoothe curve.

To get the following speech bubble, drag the yellow handle on the right upwards and to the right. Do the same with the yellow handle on the left.

The curve looks fine as it leaves the bottom point, but it soon goes awry further up. We can fix that by selecting the point (click on it) and then by dragging the leftmost yellow handle to the right. You can even drag the point itself over to the right to get something like this:

Fortunately for us, Word saves your work behind the scenes via its AutoSave facility. AutoSave works together with AutoRecover to help you get back documents that otherwise might be lost.

Changing AutoSave and AutoRecover Options

To change the AutoSave and AutoRecover options, click the File tab > Options, and click Save on the left. This section allows you to change many AutoSave details, the main ones being covered below.

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• Ensure that the checkbox next to Save AutoRecover information every x minutes is checked, and change the number of minutes to reflect how regularly you want Word to save your documents.
• Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving does just that. Sometimes in the heat of the moment we acidentally click “No” when we close Word and it asks whether we want to save our changes. This option allows us to recover our “unsaved” document.
• AutoRecover file location specifies where our AutoSaved versions go. You can actually see the AutoSaved documents using Windows Explorer.
• Default file location specifies where documents get saved by default.

Change Word’s Default Save Location

To change the default save location in Word, click the File tab > Options.

Word Options allow you to customise the behaviour of Word to your own way of working. Click on Advanced and scroll down to the General section. Click on the File Locations button.

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The File Locations window lets you specify the default location that certain types of file get saved to.

Make sure that documents is selected (click on it in the list) and then click Modify. When the Modify Location window opens, it looks very much like the Save As window and various other windows that you’ve probably seen before. Navigate to the location you’d like to use and then click OK.

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Click OK in the File Locations window and then again in the Word Options window. The default save location will then be updated and any new documents you create will be saved in this new location by default. Of course you can change this location on the fly for each document you save.

It’s an easy job to remove table borders in your Word document.

First of all select your table: place the cursor in a table cell and then click the Layout tab (in the Table Tools contextual tab)> Next, click Select > Select Table.

Now that the entire table is selected, we can remove its boders. Click to the Design tab and click the down arrow to the right of the Borders button, in the Table Styles group. Make sure you click the down arrow and not the body of the button: clicking the main button area simply removes or adds the last border element used by this button. Word displays the last border element used on the button itself, so that’s helpful.

When you click the Borders down arrow, select the No Border option.

Voila – no borders. Don’t forget to select the table befor removing its borders. If you only put the cursor into a table cell and then remove borders, they are removed from that cell only. The rest of the table will keep its borders.