The uses of Microsoft Word. The power is under the hood.
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Recently I have had the opportunity to play around with Microsoft Word. We all use daily, but 99% of the users don’t take advantage of its incredible features. Even worse, if we think just a little bit, we actually sub-utilize it. How many hours we spend repeating over and over the same routine tasks? Formatting things manually? Performing lengthy repetitive tasks again and again? Personally, I deeply reflected about it and decided that it was not worth all the time was in such a miserably fashion, so I while ago I decided to explore a bit to see if something could be done. Let me tell you that there is a whole world down there, but the benefits you will get from taking the pain of exploring it are absolutely worth the effort. First, you need to learn about macros. A macro is a sequence of “commands” that you record. Then you can make Word to repeat those steps for you every time you want it, but just clicking a button, or pressing a keyboard shortcut. So, by recording the steps, you don’t have to perform the sequence over and over. The sequence is recorded and you can play it any time you need, almost effortlessly. But after a little while, you learn that macros are limited, and that they allow you to do only so much when your purpose is to make more automatic your experience with Word. Then you inevitably will end up working with VBA. VBA is “Visual Basic for Applications” and it is basically the language Word is built upon. To say it other words, using VBA you have COMPLETE control of what Word does. I work heavily at creating math documents, process that involves a lot of routine and repetitive task. Using VBA I have, seriously, cut my work time in half. It takes a little while to get the hang of it, but once you get it started with it, hey, you don’t want to stop. There is always a new thing you can do to make your life easier with Word, and then you will want to learn more VBA. Don’t stay behind, and seriously cut your time in front of the computer. Learn macros and VBA and you will know what I’m talking about.
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