Tech and life

If you spend a lot of time in Word like I do then quick access to commands is important. You can waste a lot of time moving around the ribbon. If you want to speed things up, rather than going through the ribbon to access commands which usually requires at least two clicks to get to your destination, you should look closely at the Quick Access Toolbar usually positioned at the top left of the screen next to the Office button. You can customise this toolbar and add all your frequently used commands. Using the drop-down bar at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar, navigate to More Commands. In the top drop-down box there you’ll probably see Popular Commands by default, but don’t be fooled here. You can change this to show All Commands and pick the ones you find most useful. Then click Add in the centre and they will be added to your customised bar layout on the right. You can rearrange them there using the arrows on the right.

Another tip is to use separators if you find the buttons on the final bar are too closely spaced. You’ll find Separators at the top of the menu of commands. You can also move the final toolbar above or below the ribbon again using the drop-down menu at the end of the toolbar.

Finally you can get quick keyboard access to this toolbar using the key combinations Alt-1, Alt-2, etc. for items from left to right on the toolbar.

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