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Larilyn's Tip of the Week:   Microsoft Word - Search for Features

One thing I love about Microsoft Word is all of the tools that are available in the tool bar.

tool bar

One thing I that I DON'T love about Microsoft Word is that I feel like any time they have a major update, the tool bar can change.  One day, I know exactly where to find the tool I want to use, and the next day - no idea where it went.

It's even worse if I don't remember quite what the tool is named, because then I have to search through the different tabs of the tool bar a little blindly.

Closeup portrait of young man, closing, covering blind eyes with hands cant see, hiding, avoiding situation, isolated on white background. See no evil concept. Human emotions, facial expressions

And I don't know how.....but I was today years old when I learned about the fact that the little search bar at the top of the application.....well, it's not just for looks my friends.  You can actually search for the features/tools in Word there!

So instead of clicking through the tabs and getting frustrated that I can't find where to add footnotes, I can type "footnote" in the search box -

footnote

It pulls up options, like the Best Action, or searching for the word in the document.  And since I'm wanting the action of Footnotes, I click on it under the Best Action section, and it automatically adds the footnote without me having to continue clicking through the different toolbar tabs!

And if I was looking for the Footnotes and Endnotes box, you can see that even if I could just remember that it had something to do with Footnotes, it also comes up in the search even though I couldn't remember the exact name.  So you don't have to have the exact name to be able to find it through the search function!

This will work for any action or tool that you need, and it makes it so easy to find those that you might not utilize a lot and aren't sure which menu it's nested under.

So happy searching!