We’ll be doing a lot of our work in the “Styles” pane which is found in the “Home” ribbon. Applying existing stylesīuilt-in styles can be applied by clicking on their icon in the Styles menu in the ribbon. It won’t make your images stay in one place (can anything? The search continues…) but your text will stay the way you put it, provided you use Styles as they are intended. Direct styling everything might feel simpler, but it’s slower, more complicated and causes an amazing percentage of “problems” that users have with Word. And yet, so many people are passionately dedicated to doing it incorrectly. Styling text in Microsoft Word is one of those things that it pays to do correctly. And if you get to use software the way it was designed to be used, instead of fighting the software to impose your own personal workflow, you’ll have an even easier time.
This goes double for work that you need to share with other people, or workflows that need to be compatible across a company. But for things you do frequently, finding the most efficient and effective method is worthwhile. Optimizing performance for a monthly task is generally a overall time loss. And for things that you only do once in a while, inefficiency is fine.
