Saturday, April 7, 2012

Microsoft Word Training - Get More Productive at Work

If you are looking for solid Microsoft Word training, then this article will help you find the course that is right for you. This article covers some of the basic functionality of Word, as well as more advanced functions that will save you huge amounts of time and make you more productive at work or school. When you have finished reading this article you will be better prepared to choose the Microsoft Word training method that suits your particular need.

Basic Microsoft Word Concepts

A good training course will start out with the basics of the Word interface and cover some of the most important features. You will first learn how to create a new document, either using a blank page, or selecting a common template. Templates are included in Word to help you with a variety of commonly used documents, such as fax cover sheets, internal business memos, sales and thank you letters, and resumes. Other basic skills that should be covered would include changing font sizes, assigning styles to your documents, and working with formatting options such as the page margins.

Intermediate and Advanced Microsoft Word Features

As your Microsoft Word training course progresses, you will be taught more advanced features and functions, such as using creating custom headers, footers, and citations for your document. One really cool feature included in Microsoft Word is the ability to instantly generate a bibliography for your document using one of several standard citation styles. You put in the basic information for your sources, and Word automatically puts your citations in the correct format.

Some other advanced topics that should be covered are the mail merge function, and the ability to integrate Excel and Powerpoint documents into your Word file. Mail merge is very handy when you manage communications with a large list of customers or other important contacts. It allows you to create a single letter, and then merge that letter with a database to create hundreds or even thousands of individual copies of that letter, each tailored for the an individual on your mailing list. Sending out mass mailings like this used to take countless hours of labor in typing each letter individually.

Available Types of Microsoft Word Training

Training for Word can be as simple as picking up a book from Amazon or Borders, which many people do very well with by teaching themselves. However, if you are more of a hands-on learner, and need a more visual learning format, you should consider either a classroom based training course or a course on CD. These two options will cost a bit more than a book, but the quality of the education will be better and will likely stick in your brain more easily.

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