No matter how long you've been using Microsoft Office, you probably don't know every trick and shortcut there is. Maybe you've stumbled upon a few shortcuts by accident after years of doing things the hard way. There are an incredible number of shortcuts hidden within each Microsoft Office application that can cut time and frustration out of your daily activities. Here are just a few of the techniques you can use to get even more out of Microsoft Office.

Special symbols

Special symbols can be inserted by using "Insert/Symbol" on the menu. However there are many shortcuts that make inserting symbols even easier.

The Autocorrect function allows you to enter common symbols quickly. A few examples:

(c) will become the copywrite symbol

(r) will become the registered symbol

If there are symbols you use a lot, such as foreign currency symbols, you can edit the autocorrect list to create your own combinations.

International characters are a snap. Simply type "CTRL+(symbol)" followed by a letter to add a diacritical mark to a letter. Some valid symbols are:

apostrophe (') creates an acute accent

grave accent (`) creates a grave accent

carat (^) creates a circumflex

colon (:) creates a diaresis

tilde (~) creates a tilde

the at sign (@) creates a ring

comma (,) creates a cedilla

So to create the letter "A" with a tilde type CTRL+^ (which is CTRL+SHIFT+6) then type "a". This trick doesn't work in all Microsoft Office applications, but it does work in Word and Outlook which are where they are needed most often.

Format Painter

An often-overlooked feature in Microsoft Office is the Format Painter. It appears as a little paintbrush on the toolbar. When this icon is selected, it makes a copy of the formatting of the text where the cursor is located. The cursor changes to a paintbrush, allowing you to "paint" that format into a new section of text. By double clicking on the icon, you can paint the format over and over again. To cancel Format Painter simply press ESC.

Shortcut keys

All Microsoft Office applications have huge collections of shortcut keys. While it might be overwhelming to memorize them all, skim the list of shortcuts in the help document to see if there is an easier way to do your work.

Also remember that you can access menus by pressing ALT-letter where the letter is the underlined letter in the menu. For example, to insert a row in Excel you can press ALT-I (to select the Insert menu) then R (to select Row). Often it's easier to use keyboard commands rather than take your hand off they keyboard to use the mouse.

Many more Microsoft Office tips

These are just a few of the tips that users can pick up by enrolling in Microsoft Office training courses. Even if you use Office in your job every day, you might be surprised just how much you are missing. A day's course could save you hundreds of hours of lost productivity as you learn to do your work more efficiently.