Speed up Microsoft Office

If you’re an Office user, you’ll find lots of timesaving shortcuts are waiting to be discovered. Start by saving yourself a trip around the ribbon hunting down frequently used commands; instead, locate a popular command, right-click its button and choose ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’. This pins it to the top of the ribbon for easy access. There’s space for a finite number of commands, so click the ‘More’ button to the right of the Quick Access toolbar and choose ‘Show below the ribbon’ to move it to a more accommodating area.

You can customise the ribbon with your favourite commands, too, placing them under a tab, or you can assign custom keyboard shortcuts to any frequently used tools. Choose Options from the File tab and select ‘Customize ribbon’ to set up the ribbon as you want it. While you’re here, click Customize next to ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ to assign shortcuts.

If you frequently waste time styling up individual passages of text, use Word’s Styles instead. This makes it easier to make wholesale — and consistent — changes across your document. You can apply keyboard shortcuts to styles, plus quickly update styles using the currently selected text (simply right-click the target style and choose ‘Update... to match selection’).

Finally, save time performing repetitive tasks by recording them as macros. The simplest way is to use the ‘Record Macro’ button on the Developer tab of the ribbon to record your command clicks or keystrokes — note it only works with items selected using the keyboard, which can restrict its usefulness somewhat. Go to support.office.com and search for ‘macros’ to find out more — be aware that macros can harbour malicious code, so only allow macros that are digitally signed, by clicking ‘Macro Security’.