Ah, Clippy. Remember Clippy? The happy, bouncing paperclip was once the icon of Microsoft Word, that ubiquitous program that transforms how the world works.
With over 1.2 billion users of Microsoft Office – that’s one in seven people worldwide – it pays to note changes to the popular and familiar program. The Journal of Accountancy recently reported many updates to Word, some of which are quite useful for accountants.
You won’t need Clippy to report on these features. We’ll look at them together with the top features presented here.
New Features in Microsoft Word 2016
The following features are available in Microsoft Word 2016 except for the “Draw” updates (the last item which is only available in Office 365). For those considering an upgrade to Word 2016, the new features may offer enough of an incentive for you to choose Word over any other product out there. Hey, with 1.2 billion users, you know it’s compatible with the software used by most of your clients, colleagues, members and donors!
- Tell Me: The Tell Me feature or Tell Me What You Want to Do enables you to locate commands or tools without having to hunt through the various ribbons and dropdowns. It eliminates the need to know or guess where tools are – you can access them immediately.
- Improved Version History: Microsoft seems to have taken a cue from Google Docs by saving a unique version of each document when you save it to your OneDrive. This enables you to access previous versions to pull into the current version.
- Real-time Co Authoring: You no longer must shuffle documents back and forth by email. Instead, collaborate in real time on a Word document. Do this through OneDrive or SharePoint. I It does take the best of Google Docs and brings it into the more robust Microsoft product. Thanks to the cloud, you and others on your team can avoid the nightmare of sending different versions by emailing files and instead, collaborate, review and edit together in real time.
- Simple Sharing: A new “Share” button enables you to quickly Share documents using OneDrive or SharePoint so you don’t have to save, export, open your email, upload the document and then save. Just add a colleague’s email and you can share it instantly.
- New Draw Tab: The new Draw tab offers more tools than ever before, a great addition to the Microsoft suite of features. The new drawing and inking tools allow you to customize your document markups. You can use your finger on a touchscreen or move inked items like shapes once they are in place. These new features are only available to Office 365 subscribers but are expected to be standard in the next iteration of Word.
If you create a lot of custom reports using Microsoft Word, you’ll like the new Shapes features too. For example, Shapes now comes with preset transparent boxes, so you can place them over background text or images. This makes it easier to use shapes like callouts.
What about Mac users? Microsoft Word may be used on Macs, and some prefer the features in Word to Mac Pages. If you create more detailed and customized reports or use your word processing software to build marketing documents like brochures, you may wish to test Mac Pages or a full-fledged graphic design program that works along with Word. Microsoft Publisher comes as part of some packages of Office; it’s fine for beginners but may not offer enough flexibility for advanced graphic design. It is, however, compatible with Word documents, so if you compose text in Word, it is easier to import it into Publisher than into some other graphic design package.
Upgrading to Word 2016 is easier than ever with cloud-based subscriptions that offer flexible packages for home, student, and office use. And although Clippy may be a thing of the past, the new functions are way more fun than an animated paperclip.
Welter Consulting
Welter Consulting bridges people and technology together for effective solutions for nonprofit organizations. We offer software and services that can help you with your accounting needs. Please contact Welter Consulting at 206-605-3113 for more information.
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