If there are things that you find yourself typing regularly, there is a way of increasing your productivity. By using Word’s AutoText feature you only have to start typing a few letters of your name or postal address before it offers an option to fill the rest of the text for you. Word comes with a number of entries already set up. If you start to type the word ‘Cordially’, you should notice a little box appear like the one pictured below. As it says, just press Enter and Word will insert the rest of the text.

If this does not appear, you probably have AutoComplete switched off. To switch this on, and to see a list of all the existing AutoText entries, pull down the ‘Insert’ menu and from the ‘AutoText’ sub-menu click on ‘AutoText…’, which will open the following dialog box.

Make sure that ‘Show AutoComplete selections’ is ticked. You can also create a new AutoText entry with this dialog by typing the text where indicated and clicking the ‘Add’ button; however, there is an…

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

When using a word processor it is quite common to forget that that the CapsLock key has been left on, or you might decide that a piece of text looks better in capital letters (also known as upper case: small letters are known as lower case).

Thankfully MS Word has a keyboard shortcut that lets you cycle between different cases and formats. All you need to do is highlight a piece of text, hold down the Shift key and press F3.

Each time you press F3 the case of the letters will change (don’t release the Shift key!). So, ‘testing’ will be replaced with ‘Testing’ on the first press, and ‘TESTING’ if you press it a second time. Press F3 again and the text will return to ‘testing’.

If you type ‘tESTING’ by mistake, you can change it to ‘testing’, then ‘Testing’, and ‘TESTING’; however, it will not return to ‘tESTING’, probably because it is highly unlikely you’d ever want text to be in that format.

[Addendum]

As one commentator has pointed out, a particular word does not need to be highlighted to have its case changed by this method, all you need to do…