Microsoft Word application contains various word processing, design, page layout, mailings, views, and text/image formatting tools and functions.
The knowledge of these functions helps to create professional-looking documents for the web, print media and officials.
But to use these functions and to create professional-looking official documents you need to have basic and advanced word skills.
The use of basic or advanced word skills depends on the output that you want or it depends on what you want to create.
For example, through basic word skills, you can create a resume. For this, you have to use fonts, size, table, bold, bullets & numbers, etc. But to create a business card or brochure in Microsoft Word you need to have advanced word skills.
So, in this article, I am sharing with you the word skills that you need to learn so that you can do any kind of writing/editing, word processing, and document work in a Word application. I hope it will be helpful.
Let’s start:
Top 10 Basic and Advanced Microsoft Word Skills
1. Home Menu: In Microsoft Word, the home menu contains various basic document writing and editing tools. Such as font, paragraph, styles, editing and clipboard. These are essential to know for every word user. It’s because you can’t do anything advanced or you can’t create professional-looking documents if you don’t have knowledge of the home menu’s sub-menu functions. The home menu or home screen is the starting point to learn Microsoft Word.
So, having the skills to use bold, fonts, subscript, superscript, bullets, headings, find and replace, copy/paste, line spacing, and paragraphs will help to create basic text documents.
2. File Menu: In the latest version of Microsoft Word, the file menu is updated or totally changed as you saw in Word 2003 or in the oldest version. Other than learning about saving, opening, print, now you have to learn about sharing and exporting documents. And if you have purchased the Word application then you can also explore the account option as well. And if you want to customize the menus and functions in Microsoft Word then you can use the options function in the File menu.
Now other than sharing, printing, saving, and new and open functions all the others are advanced functions. And when you learn these and use them you will get advanced word skills.
3. Insert Menu: Insert menus are used to insert something pre-designed, pre-created layout, functions, features, and objects in the document. For example, you can insert the image from a computer or cloud storage or directly from the web on your document.
If you’re creating a project report or 5 to 10 pages assignment or document then you can use a header and footer for page numbers, titles, dates, author info etc. You can use smart art to explain your story or points through diagrams.
And if you have figures, or if you want to align or separate the document points such as comparison then you can use the table function as well. Learn more: How to Insert Table in Microsoft Word Document- Word Tutorial
These are very basic word skills. But there are also some other functions such as cover pages, comments, signature lines, equations, symbols, add-ins, bookmarks, and media functions that if you learn to use you will be able to use advanced functionality and features in your word file. Not only that through advanced word skills, you will be able to create professional-looking documents with high speed and accuracy. And you will be able to explore your creativity and talent. That will be helpful in your career and profession.
4. Design Menu: The design menu and function are used for document formatting. The formatting is pre-defined through themes, colours, fonts and paragraph spacing. The only thing you have to do is to just hover the mouse over the style and then select the best and click. Now it will automatically be applied to your documents, headings, title and colours, and fonts.
Some of the other features such as watermarks, page colours, and page borders are also important to learn. So that whenever you need to use the border, colour, and watermark on a particular page then you can use that.
5. Layout Menu: The layout menu is very important to use. And it needs some advanced and basic skills. For example, to print the double side bolded brochure you need a different page size and margin than the margin you have set for the newsletter documents.
Similarly, the use of page setup, orientation, columns, breaks, arrange, and indents are very important in eBooks writing, book writing, software documentation, and newsletter. At least the knowledge of page setup is really important.
6. Reference Menu: The reference menu contains advanced functionality that not all users use. Other than a footnote, and table of contents in the reference menu there is some very effective functionality such as smart lookup, bibliography, index and mark citation is advanced functionality that needs to be used in high authority documents and official files.
7. Mail Merge: The most important and advanced function in the Word application is mail merge. If you want to have advanced word skills then it’s very important that you learn the uses of mail merge. The process is simple you create a document and then send it to multiple people with that you have created a database. Now in advanced functionality or as an exercise, you can send a marketing message to 10000+ people.
8. Review: The review menu and its sub-menu Such as proofing, language, commenting and accessibility contain basic features so that you control the spellings, words, translations, languages, and comments.
Through this menu, you can block the users and you can also restrict the users to edit the document.
9. The view: The view is another menu that you can use to control and manage the layout when viewing the files. Such as you can see the documents in web layout, print layout and booklet format. You can zoom and split windows. But there is an advanced function called macro. You can record the macro so that you can perform a particular task automatically.
10. Help: The help menu is the most powerful and feature-rich menu in the latest version of the Word application. That you can use it to learn Microsoft Word’s basic and advanced functionality and features instantly on the same screen on the right side. Whatever you want to learn or want to use Microsoft Word, you just have to search there and you will get text documentation as well as short videos.
Not only that you can use contact support.
So, to learn basic and advanced word skills it’s important to learn the above-mentioned menus, functions, and features. But it’s not enough. You also have to do various exercises in Microsoft Word, so that you not only learn but also use it.
I have written/shared a few basic and advanced word exercises here, please check the: List of Microsoft Word Exercises for Students
If you want to explore Microsoft Word or its uses then the following is the post that I recommend you to read: Top 10 uses of MS Word in Daily Life and Business
And if you want to learn Word a little fast and want to learn all the latest and basic word skills through online courses then you can also check the following post: Microsoft Word Online Course & Learn Basics and Advanced Word Skills Online
good learning