10 Hidden Features in Microsoft Word (You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner)

[@ThioJoe]

In addition to suggestions for Excel, Powerpoint, and Google Docs, is there anything else you'd want to see a video about?

[@addy7445]

It'd be beneficial to see some Computer VM and OS emulation content

[@_SJ]

Anything related to gaming performance of Windows 11 (similar to your October 8, 2021 video) Btw, your red and white robot sitting on throne image prompt is so funny 😅

[@ArmedBread]

This isn't related to excel, PowerPoint or google docs, but can you do more videos in vms like deleting files to see what happens

[@NazeehYauqoob]

Please please please do the rest of office suites.

[@hopcfizl3671]

Now make a video on how LaTeX is better 😅

[@natalieeuley1734]

I'm SO glad for the Quick Parts feature you showed. As a teacher I am constantly making the same kinds of diagrams, but there is no such thing as a default text box that is just the font with no border or background, so I have to recreate it every single time. This will be wonderful for reducing that repetition.

[@ados8064]

One thing he didn't show is that you can also insert a Quick Parts by just typing part of its name. So when creating them it's a good idea to have a short memorable name. And once you type a minimum of three matching characters, a little prompt box will come up; similar to automatic date fill and selecting enter will insert your data.

[@noxious8]

I would just copy it from the last document - but Quick Parts is even easier.

[@markbrad123]

I use autocorrect using abbreviations to replace for canned reponses. You can autoreplace with whole paragraphs if you want. I am going to check out quick parts though for building block and try as it says in the comment thread using quick parts instead of autocorrect using abreviations also. They have removed it from the new outlook so you will just have to use Word instead.

[@jessjulliah]

The hidden text is really useful; if you create a "character style", you can easily apply it to answers, and print the document without (student version) or with (teacher key) version. However, note that end-of-paragraph marks should NOT be formatted this way, or the whole paragraph may disappear; put a few spaces at the end, deselect those, and select the desired answer, and press shortcut Ctrl-Shift-S to pull up the style menu, and type the beginning of the "answer-text" character style. Boom - there you go! All the other tips are really good, but hidden text is my favorite.

[@NormAtWork]

I'm an administrative assistant and I use Word extensively every day. I would say that along with Acrobat Reader Pro, it's the software I use the most. I knew about most of the features, but I did learn a few things: the lorem ipsum trick, shrink one page and screenshots were new to me (though I have gotten so used to print screen and crop that I may continue to do so). Will re-watch to make sure I caught everything. Keep up the good work! BTW, Lorem ipsum is typically a corrupted version of De finibus bonorum et malorum, a 1st-century BC text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical and improper Latin.

[@nosuchthing8]

I have noticed some animated movies that show a newspaper populated with that gibberish.

[@choralimpact]

Actually the loral ipsum is a set of nonsense words used to showcase all the words in the alphabet. This helps to assess whether the chosen text type is good for you.

[@Carhill]

8:05 - You can also quickly change case with Shift + F3. Toggles between upper, lower, and title case. Found this one out eons ago and it has served me well.

[@jorgesoto2020]

Same here. I was going to add to the comments, then found your mentioning such. I use now and then but IT IS powerful! Cheers!

[@kdgs2]

It's so useful. I have found one small drawback - it doesn't get tracked as a change unfortunately.

[@sarahowland2896]

@@kdgs2 That’s one of the things I like about it! Track changes can get pretty busy, even when you’re not viewing.

[@Lofote]

Selecting multiple (seperated) parts is also a great feature. Just hold the CTRL key while you select some thing with the mouse and then another thing with the mouse.

[@ThioJoe]

Yea that's a good one

[@anon_y_mousse]

You can also do that in explorer when selecting files.

[@Lofote]

@@anon_y_mousse Yes, there it is well known. That you can also do it the same in Word is a little known fact :)...

[@user-hw8oj8fd3b]

When you click the pilcrow symbol in the paragraph tools (what you refer to as show/hide formatting marks) you commented that the symbol appearing in the document indicates a new line. Strictly speaking, you get a new line by holding down the shift key while pressing Enter, simply pressing the enter key creates a new paragraph and that new paragraph adopts all the fonts, spacing and other paragraph formatting of the paragraph you were just in. While the pilcrow symbol shows up on the screen as a single character, when you copy and paste it makes a big difference whether or not that character is part of the copied text since it holds all the formatting instructions. As an experiment, toggle the formatting marks to 'on', triple click inside a paragraph to select the entire paragraph and then copy and paste the block somewhere else in Word. Repeat on the same paragraph but before the copy, hold down shift and press the left arrow to de-select the pilcrow mark. Now if you copy and paste you will not be dragging the formatting along. Recent versions of Word have made it easier to opt how you paste so it isn't as critical that you see the formatting marks all the time but I still find it helpful to see what is going on when Word seems to be stubborn about formatting issues, particularly when the paragraph includes numbering.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that myself and LibreOffice does similar annoying things.

[@jukpaa]

Good stuff, few items I learned and I've considered myself a Word Pro since 1990s. One thing I've found extremely useful is Reveal Formatting - Shift-F1 and its counterparts ctrl-space to clear character formatting and ctrl-q to clear paragraph formatting.

[@Hodenkat]

I'm not in a position where I'm creating documents all-day every-day, but there were a few examples here I thought were useful in my day-to-day use of Word. The alt+select is great, and the "fit to page" also could be useful to me. Thanks for the great tips!

[@andrewlockwood6102]

One of the useful tools when applying formatting is to use the copy format button. Little known is that you can double-click the copy format button and then it remains sticky and you can apply the copied format to multiple successive selections. Hit escape to un-stick it. Saves a LOT of time when you have lots of finicky formatting to apply. Enjoy! 😊

[@GanciEnglishIdioms]

Yes, I have loved this feature for a long time!

[@thebluehonu]

@@GanciEnglishIdioms same

[@Tyranitar66501]

yes i would like a video on excel! Would help for all my math/science assignments!

[@ThioJoe]

Yep I'm planning on it. I probably use Excel more than word tbh

[@Tyranitar66501]

@@ThioJoe me too tbh (i use google docs most of the time for school)

A really cool feature many people are not aware off is that the narration / read aloud feature can actually talk with an accent despite the text not containing one. I am Swiss and I my native language is Swiss German. It is a very strong dialect of German, to the point that Germans actually do not understand us in most cases. Despite that, we write our texts in normal German, because Swiss German doesen't have an official written language. But if your language settings are right, it reads aloud the german text in almost perfect swiss german. I discovered it by accident and was blown away that Microsoft actually included such a heavy dialect of german, that barely anyone speaks.

[@LootFragg]

Merely one (1) European country of 8.5 million people speaks that. That's almost nothing!

@@LootFragg I am not sure if you are sarcastic or not but yes, it actually is basically nothing. On a global scale for business, doing anything related to switzerland specifically is almost always absolutely not worth it. 8.5 million people which of about 2/3 are german, which of about 3/4 have some kind of german as a native language from which about 1/10 spoeak that specific dialect.

[@cuteswan]

*Always* great to see these hints & tricks videos. I always end up using some of them all the time or installing recommended tools. This channel is where I heard about Notepad++ and it's awesome, and Ctrl-F3/Ctrl-Shift-F3 will make my life a heck of a lot easier. (Apparently it's called "Spike" / "Insert Spike" in Office 2000.) In Office 2000 I once fat-fingered the keyboard and Word said, "Okay, I'll disable Autosave for the rest of this session" and I've never found it again since. Back in the late '90s there was a menu item in Microsoft Word make a list of _all_ available functions in a new document, but I can't find a version of that to look up the first hotkey.

[@bassanup]

I had some idea of how powerful MS Word is, but this is just next level

[@jayczzzya]

8:46 Show/Hide is good for adding landscape pages in the middle of a portrait oriented document using page break and section breaks. Hard to explain how to do it by typing. You should do a video to show this trick. I use this when adding large tables to a document. BTW, Great video. I learned some new stuff as well as reminded of features i forgot about.

[@ThioJoe]

Hm interesting sounding technique

[@jayczzzya]

@@ThioJoe yeh. You basically separate the document into two sections using section/page break feature and you can have various different page orientations in one document. The show/hide feature helps you spot where to insert the breaks and where a new section starts and ends.

[@mmazvis]

I love the quick access feature, especially since all quick access icons up top has shortcuts to them. For example, at 4:17, Autosave toggle would be Alt->1, Save Alt->2 and Shrink to fit that was inserted Alt->3 And you can customize their order, to make it as you want it.

[@cryptowms5760]

In the settings, go to Advanced in the left menu. You can set default settings for copying and pasting text to the document there. I copy and paste a lot of text from the web and set it up so that every time I paste something from the other applications, it doesn't bring the formatting with the paste. Basically, paste text only on default.

[@wot_hog]

Two useful customizations I created are: in a ribbon tab I created called "My Buttons" I added a Sort button to sort data by various criteria (Just like in Excel-huge time saver), a Page Break Before button, and the Convert Table to Text and Convert Text to Table buttons, which save a lot of time hunting and pecking around. You can also create Symbol shortcuts for symbols you use often (like the Euro symbol or British Pound, or other special characters) that will appear automatically when I type CTRL + ####, where the # are whatever numbers you designated. Alternatively, you can memorize the ALT codes for them, like ALT + 0215 for the times symbol (×), a pet peeve for me when lazy people use the ordinary "x" instead, or ALT + 0176 for the degrees symbol (°).

[@nordbymikael]

Wow, I will definitely use the screenshot function and the custom formatting function! This will become a huge timesaver for me, because I study IT and I do often need a specific document formatting or to insert screenshots from virtual machines. Thank you!

[@stonebubbleprivat]

Studying IT and using word instead of latex sounds contradictory 🧐

[@nordbymikael]

@@stonebubbleprivat yes, I know. I just like Microsoft Word a bit more.

[@andy.puempel]

One of the best collection of tips that I have ever seen for MS Word. Great pace too. Nicely done and thanks for sharing, Joe.

[@lpconserv6074]

Very much appreciated content!!! I suffer from lack of knowledge on this very topic. Saved this link, and will keep it on my desktop until I start to have it soak in and use more of these helpful tips...👍

[@learnitinstructor5792]

As an instructor for 34 years, you did an awesome job presenting these techniques.

[@xperryment]

Wow a very informative channel that is all about "Tech Tips" unlike the other popular one that is more on hardware consumerism.

[@pendoring282]

Some very useful featuers here! Thanks.

[@CodeProfessor]

Nice job Thio! May I suggest you dive into Excel next?

[@spocksvulcanbrain]

I'm pretty familiar with all the MS Office programs and features. I have to say that I did not know about 70% of these. Thanks. Some of them will be highly useful.

[@Adi-lc6vw]

Saw this vid in my recommended just when I wanted this. Thanks dude

[@jeskoog]

Ex-microsoft manager for over a decade & this was great! I'd send a flame mail (nicely worded) with the flame part in white font:). It made my day brighter rather than be irritated:)

[@IceColdProfessional]

All these tips & tricks. What a time to be alive!!!!

[@electroprosknowhowto]

5th Pls do excel, and PowerPoint (Create better presentation)

[@endless_puns]

Lots of great features in there! Word is a fantastic program but the fact you have to dig so deep to get access to all of its features just shows how bloated it is with stuff that 90% of people would never use (but then again, if more of these more "niche" features were easier to access, perhaps more people would use them). Thanks for sharing!

[@fizixx]

These are my favorite type videos you do, so thanks. I only knew about the 'rand()', but forgot about it until now.

[@crocodiledondii]

How do you know about all these things?? Fascinating and addictive! Thank you.

[@TheOnlyName]

Super helpful, thank you!! So much to play with packed into one video. These are definitely my favorite videos of yours.

[@dianegrant3215]

Great content! Thank you! I learned a lot today and I thought I knew Word!

[@hugelevin]

Great video! Do one for Excel next!!

[@lyfandeth]

Thank you, Joe. YES spelunking tours of the browsers and more will be appreciated!

[@vahneb7260]

Shrink one page was originally part of the preview before printing. Good info, thanks

[@Techkomsan]

Microsoft Word has always been my best friend with my job every day.

[@pookeehelms5721]

Wow! These are so helpful. I made the switch from Word Perfect to Word in the late 90s and I guess I didn't keep up with all the features they added. Another excellent video (as usual) 😎

[@hegedusuk]

I did know a small number of these - most illuminating!

[@JonnyLuscious]

I don't think I've had to use Word in like 20 years so it was cool to see all these features I would have likely used. Now days Excel is where the majority of my Office time is spent, so definitely would love a video covering that. There are times when I just write a script in python to avoid having to research how to solve my problems in Excel 😅

[@marcusnichols5595]

You can cycle through change case, or capitalization by highlighting text and using SHIFT+F3

[@Titanskull]

Honestly I would love to see a video on the macros tab on any Microsoft product. It seems that everybody knows it is there but don’t care to open it or use it.

[@faenethlorhalien]

Excellent tips, ThioJoe. Thanl you. I'll deffinitely put them to good use.

[@saltyroe3179]

Since I have been using MS Word before Windows, I remember some of the keyboard shortcuts. My favorite in Word is Shift+F3 which will rotate the selected text amongst all upper case, all lower case, leading Word character uppercase .

[@paulzulu2017]

I few the hidden text feature will actually do very well for me ❤❤❤ quite lovely video

[@Spamkromite]

I knew a couple of them 😅Thanks for sharing these tricks!

[@whatisthishelpplz]

yo its spamton

[@OddGentleman]

Lorem ipsum is typically a corrupted version of De finibus bonorum et malorum, a 1st-century BC text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical and improper Latin. The first two words themselves are a truncation of 'dolorem ipsum' ('pain itself').

[@CXensation]

Great content TJ ! And now please show how these functions works in LO and OO 😉

[@fram1111]

I knew about most of them, but grateful you went through them. Security in everything and ways to give more security to all things. You have been doing well. How about router settings most secure router and Bois terms. Lastly firewall and intrusion detection.

[@starlight27277]

Thanks ThioJoe, there were some helpful features I did not know about.

[@skkrawczyk]

I am amazed :) I have been using MS Word for 23 years but I still learn new features xD

[@erickgabrielalfaroroldan5333]

Just a few days before the national Word competition in Guatemala, I am from Guatemala. Some of them i already know, but others, i didn't, so this will be useful

[@bardophilia]

Very cool. I knew about half of these, but am thrilled to realize I can turn a signature image into a quick part.

[@_tr11]

Really interesting! Just out of curiosity, what video editor/video recording software did you use?

[@yy928]

👍👍👍always learning some new tricks from your video. 10q. I usually export my customized ribbon / quick access toolbar to my other computers so that I don't have to redo the customization once switching to other machines.

[@DragoniteSpam]

Alt+select also works in most modern code editors/IDEs. It's a godsend, especially what it comes to things like refactoring.

[@bikeny]

I know of Lorem, doc inspector, and show/hide button. The others are completely new to me. But I am not creating new docs every day. Nevertheless, I can see myself using the spike function, as I have had that problem and would do it one row at a time. Thank you.

[@thatsagoodbingo]

Thank you for creating this! There are several things I used to do manually that now I know there's a better way.

[@Breeze926]

It's always impressive just how many features these programs have. I consider myself to tinker with these programs and know more than the base level yet there is still so much hidden in them.

[@ThePowerRanger]

Wow, these tools are really powerful.

[@cadsticcadsticc1322]

Well have been learning this stuff pretty much on my own and this was an eyeopener. Thank you for teaching this old dog new tricks.

[@avvn9331]

Nice tricks and tips, some I didn't know, nice and informative

[@menturinai1387]

I was really hoping for some info on how fields work in Word. It seems like a very powerful tool that nobody knows about. Either way, great video!

[@lgvdbroek]

Free Hints: Changing cases (08:08) is faster with Shift F3. Create building block: Alt+F3 Call up building block: just F3 (no mouse clicks required, so faster) Q: What is the added value of making texts hidden? (01:38) You said you would come back to it later, but there is no point in making texts hidden at the moment.

[@sjn7220]

Styles and caption/cross reference are two often overlooked features of Word.

[@alanjrobertson]

Nice video, recognised most features although haven't played about with building blocks that much. I always have paragraph marks on, I'm too obsessed about layout to not have it on 😂

[@totem168]

Thank you, Joe. These tips help me a lot

[@petergedney1031]

The name of the symbol on the "Show/Hide" button is called a PILCROW (in case you ever go on Jeopardy!) and denotes a new paragraph. But, if you hold down the SHIFT key and press ENTER, you'll get a manual line break. This great for adding additional information to a bulleted point without adding an additional bullet symbol.

[@FedericoZenteno]

Thank you, for all the tips you just gave, I think i Knew just one, and partially.

[@humilulo]

i didn't know about any of these. but i might still be 'super smart'. 😅 Thanks, ThioJoe!

[@skemsen]

Oh wow so many great tips. Thank you!

[@jacquelinewolf-xw8cs]

Great job. Thank you so much. You did in 12 minutes what other sites do in an hour or more.

[@acreguy3156]

Excellent as usual, ThioJoe!! I watch all you videos. You could point out that the shortcut key for the Find and Replace (Advanced Find) dialog box is Ctrl+H.

[@TheGlitchyMario]

These would’ve been great to know when I was writing my final last week lol

[@High-Tech-Geek]

Good info. I know about a lot of these and use some of them often. Some were new. Some I'll never use. But it's a great refresher. Thanks!

[@LamonWillis]

Good job, learned a few good things to remember.

[@geniustic1541]

Knew about alot of them, however also gained knowledge from this video

[@Digital-Dan]

Spent the afternoon demonstrating and showcasing the grandfather of at least the first version of Microsoft Word, and designed/implemented by the same creator. Circa 1977. Great fun. But the current version has features in places where it shouldn't even have places.

[@jamesmacrae5469]

All this was new to me. Thanks!

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

I learned about =lorem() recently and I use it constantly now. I didn't know about the parameters or =rand() though, that's awesome.

[@thahrimdon]

Please never change Thio. In a crazy world your videos make me feel sane

[@nacklesk]

Hidden Text huh ?! Now that's a perfect way to hide my "homework".

[@ssjcrafter8842]

could you send me your "homework"? I need it for "reference", and to, uh, make sure I answered correctly

[@anthonyrude]

The dog "hid it"

[@Buzzygirl63]

Quick Parts is the single most time-saving thing I've discovered in Word. Also works great in Outlook.

[@stevemccrea2688]

I love the one that allows me to change the background colour based on numerical value. I used to do this manually but this feature will save me at least several seconds a day!

[@VSP4591]

Excelent video. Thank you.

[@markusTegelane]

already knew about lorem ipsum trick, but definitely didn't know about rand function

[@sanjaygandhi5494]

Hi, brilliant one. May be next time you could add Shift+Alt+↑ and Shift+Alt+↓ to move bullets up and down. This works in PPT and Outlook as well. Just write some bullets, then place your cursor at beginning of the bullet, just after the bullet and try the combo above - moves bullets up and down so easily...cheers.😊

[@ClaudioRCFaria]

Actually this moves whole paragraphs, whether they have bullets or not. And you don't have to worry about where exactly the cursor is, because Word will extend the selection back to the beginning of the paragraph, and forward to its end, then move it up or down. Moves multiple paragraphs too, if you selection encompasses more than one. I believe it also moves rows in tables, but that I do not use.

[@marionandresky4502]

@@ClaudioRCFaria Yes, it does move rows in Word tables.

[@TsiriniainaRakotonirina]

And I brag myself as Advanced Word user, yet I was blown away with all those amazing goodies 😨🤩😅

[@GrenPara]

Great cideo thanks for sharing.

[@mytciopinfo]

Love the vertical selection tool!

[@ClaudioRCFaria]

Its keyboard shortcut is ctrl+shift+F8.

[@neilw2O]

Customized is great, as long you can put the customisation on a memory stick or similar. Customized, all these things work great, but go to another computer, and you almost can't use it as all the favorite macros, etc are missing. What is a nice way to export the settings? This applies to many other utilities/programs, too.

[@mrandisg]

For any of the MS Office programs, if you sign into your Microsoft account (there's an option to do so if you click the File tab on the ribbon), your customizations should sync to the computer you're using. I don't know if it will bring macros over, but I do know it brings your preferences like the font and size you've set as default, dark mode, and settings like automatic spelling and grammar checking. (I chose to turn that off on my account since I write fiction and the "errors" got very annoying when it came to dialogue and character names!) Hope this helps.

[@bluetheta]

Update: Read Aloud will bring up a "player" controls that you can pause, go back or advance forward; you can also change the voice/speed. I use this feature a lot.

[@aahnacer1897]

Helpful. Thanks 👍

[@ulrichtobben2003]

Nice video, like to see the nice work! I would personally love to see a video about cool/hidden features in LibreOffice Writer, Impress, and Calc, as well as OnlyOffice Document, Spreadsheet, and Presentation.

[@techlitindia]

The advanced find feature has never been a hidden feature. It has been available for approximately 15 years, although it may have been overlooked by some users, it remains an exceedingly powerful tool. 👀💻 I recall your content from a decade ago when you created misleading content for the purpose of gaining views 😜. This caused me to lose faith in you, and I have not watched any of your videos for approximately nine years 🤐. However, it appears that you have learned from your past mistakes and have progressed significantly 🫡. Your current content is incredibly valuable to the community. 👍🎉 Continue to produce exceptional work, Joe. I extend my best wishes for a bright future. 🤗✨

[@sean.grogan]

Honestly, "Advanced Find" was the only thing from Part I. Thanks!

[@paulfw1961]

Great information, thank you

[@sennasennina4891]

Amazing! I did not know 95% of these.