Microsoft Word Tips and Tricks

  View as a PDF

• Key shortcuts can help make editing easier and quicker. Ctrl+C will copy your text selection and Ctrl+V will paste it. Ctrl+X will copy the selection and cut it out of the document as well. Ctrl+Z will undo your last edit, but be careful—Ctrl+Z will sometimes undo edits in chunks! Ctrl+Y will redo whatever was just undone.
• Double click on a word to select it. Triple clicking will select a whole paragraph. Use the key combo Ctrl+A to select the entire document.
• The most recent edition of Microsoft Word (Word 365, available on all Writing Center computers) has an Acrobat tab that will let you save your document as a PDF.
• Use the References tab to organize your sources. This tab will allow you to choose your citation style, will help you format your works cited entries, and can even insert in-text citations and footnotes.
• Use the Insert tab to create headers and footers or add page numbers. You can also insert blank pages, special symbols not on the keyboard, and tables.
• To use two different kinds of page numbers in the same document (such as Roman numerals and Arabic numbers), go to the Page Layout tab and select the Breaks drop-down menu. Then select “Next Page.” All of the pages after the break can now have page numbers formatted separately from those above the break.
• F5 or Ctrl+F will let you search for a word in the document. This also works on web pages and in Google Docs. In your own documents you can replace the found word with something else by using the Find and Replace tool.
• To remove the page number on your title page, double click the header, and then in the green Header and Footer Tools tab click the box marked “Different First Page.” Then go to the Page Number drop down menu and select “Format Page Numbers.” In the window that pops up, select the option that says “Start at” and set it to 0. The first page after your title page should now be 1.
• The arrow in the corner of the Paragraph section of the Home tab will open up a window with formatting options. The drop-down menu labeled “Special” will let you create a hanging indent for your works cited entries.
• In the View tab, you can choose what your window looks like. You can open different parts of the document in different windows or view multiple pages in one window. You can adjust the level to which you are zoomed in on the document, which can also be done in the bottom right corner of the window.