Let’s be honest: most of us have, at some point, wrestled with a misbehaving Word document. Maybe the headings wouldn’t line up properly, or you added one too many line breaks and your carefully crafted layout fell apart. Been there. Done that. Got the CTRL+Z (Undo) muscle memory.
But there’s a better way – and it’s been around for years.
Back in 1996, when I was first learning my way around Windows, I discovered styles in Lotus AmiPro – the first Windows word processor I used. And it was a revelation. I learned that by setting styles just once, I could easily control the look and feel of my entire document. This made creating consistently-styled staff newsletters a brieze when I worked in a homless hostel in London. And it made editing and managing large documents so much easier – a real game changer during my academic work at theological college and and when writing essays and a dissertation for my MTh at the University of Edinburgh
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and I still rely on styles daily. Whether you’re writing reports, essays, blog posts or policy documents, Microsoft Word styles are one of the most powerful – and, in my collaborative experience, underused – features that can save you hours of frustration.
Here’s why you should care, and how to get started.
Continue reading Working smarter in Microsoft Word: why styles are your secret weapon
