I had a good time putting together “10 obscure Word

tricks that can expedite common chores” (and its PDF


cousin), mostly because I was anticipating some ego-boosting feedback. (Yeah,

I’m all about the external validation. It’s pretty sad, really.)

There’s nothing exotic or wildly innovative about the

tricks–just plain old underused or poorly documented features. But it’s the

kind of thing that gets people to say, “I’ve been using Word for 79 years

and thought I knew it inside and out… but I never realized you could make a

vertical text selection!”

It’s also the kind of thing where you get people to say,

“Good tips, but you went overboard with that last one. Just create a

desktop shortcut for the template.” As member Antonio Rodulfo pointed out:

Trick #10 is a little trickier than needed. For Word to

create a new document based on a template already existing either in your

system or on a local area network server repository, you only need Windows

Explorer to navigate to that template folder, wherever it may be, press [Alt] and

click-and-drag the template file to your desktop. Windows will show the little

arrow marking a direct access icon both along the process and upon leaving the

file icon in your desktop… and you’re there!

It’s an old story: I couldn’t see the shortcut for the startup
switches.

Thanks, Antonio. I’ve been using Word for 79 years, but I
forgot about that straightforward and highly practical solution.

If you have a favorite Word trick of your own, please share

it in the


discussion thread.