Had some interesting discussions this week on things lawyers often miss when using Microsoft Word. Here are some things I think are pretty important that most people don’t know about
This is probably teaching the legal tech community to suck eggs. But just want to make the point that the reaction I usually get when I tell people about these is, “oh wow that’s clever”. That’s where most are at
1️⃣ Split window view. You can have two windows open for the same doc and scroll them independently. Definitions (start of doc) on the left, clauses etc on the right (middle of doc). Means you don’t flick back and forth all the time
2️⃣ Editing restrictions (assuming O365). Avoid people putting in changes without you knowing by enforcing tracked changes in editing restrictions settings
3️⃣ Advanced find and replace. Restricting find results by formatting or using wildcards has saved me so many times. Sadly these options are really hidden away. And most don’t know what “wildcards” means
4️⃣ Update all cross references. CTRL+A ➡️ F9. Usually followed by CTRL+F ➡️ “Error! Reference Source not found” to capture deleted references. Quite why Error needs an exclamation mark I’m not sure
5️⃣ Moving table rows. ALT + SHIFT + DOWN. Not my favourite. Often don’t teach people this one, just to stop them making tables in Word. Some can squeeze it out of me.
Those are my top 5, simple things that can make a world of difference to people. I’m interested in hearing other quick tips that people can understand really quickly
Comment reply/resolve also deserves an honourable mention
