Microsoft Office Word 2010: What’s New?

Aun — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:06:15 +0000

Microsoft Office Word 2007 is perhaps the most used document software out there. Microsoft have once again done a great job with Office Word 2010. It now offers many new features which has made document editing more easier than before. Since getting our hands on Word 2010, we have been finding the exact new features and improvements Microsoft has made. Below are the key features and newly added options that you will find in Office Word 2010.

Update: We have written a summarized post on both Microsoft Excel 2010 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 as well.

Enhanced Themes

As you know that the theme effects the style of the whole document, Word 2010 now comes with various newly enhanced themes, you may apply any theme from the Page Layout menu. The live previews feature is also available, by clicking the theme buttons you will see a gallery which represents the available themes as thumbnail images.

Protected Mode

Protected Mode is one of the enhanced security features which protects the computer from viruses. By default it opens the documents which are downloaded from the internet in such a way that editing is disabled, you will need to manually enable editing. This allows users to see the preview of the document, if they find it legit and from trusted source then they can enable editing, otherwise delete it.

We have covered it in further details here.

Customizable Quick Access Tool Bar

Word 2010’s Quick Access Toolbar displays all the commonly used options. It is located in the top left side corner of the application window, near the office button. By default it displays the following three options, Save, Undo and Redo, but is customizable and you may easily add more options to it.

Paste Preview

It happens with most users that after copying and pasting something into their document, they need to undo the some changes. Word 2010 has made it easy for users, now you may eliminate this unnecessary step by using the paste preview option. It allows users to paste only the values or the formatting.

Navigation Pane

In the previous versions of Microsoft Office, one has to use the Ctrl+F hotkey to find any word or phrase from within a document. Word 2010 has added a new magic to this option, Ctrl+F now summons a Navigation Pane that appears on the left side of the document. You will see the three views available by clicking on their respective tabs, the Heading View, Thumbnail Page View, and the Search Result View.

Customizable Ribbon Button

Apparently the Ribbon button in Word 2010 looks like the one in Word 2007. But there is one big addition, you may customize the word 2010’s Ribbon button. In order to customize the Ribbon button navigate to the following option Office Button > Word Option > Customize Ribbon.

We have already covered the Word 2010 ribbon button, you may read further about it from here.

Improved Collaborations

Microsoft Word 2010 has a new feature called co-authoring. It allows more than one authors to edit a document at the same time. Word 2010 tells you how many authors are editing the document and their changes can be viewed too.

Screen Capture Tool

Word 2010 includes a feature called Screen Capturing, now there is no need to use a third party or additional tool to capture ascreenshot in order to use it in Word, just simply use Word 2010′s built in tool to capture any area of the screen. A Screenshot may be taken by navigating to the following option Insert > Screenshot. Need more information on this feature? Read the full guide here.

Artistic Effects

In Word 2010 users can now apply a number of snazzy artistic effects to the pictures. In order to add the artistic effects to your document, Navigate to the following option Insert > Illustrations > Picture. Then browse and select the picture you want, Once the picture is added to your document, then the Picture Tools contextual tab is displayed and you will be able to see the new Artistic Effects drop down button over here.

The Background Removal Option

Office 2010 has an awesome option by the name of Background Removal, which simply removes the background of any image. Yes, you don’t need Photoshop anymore to remove the background. First insert the picture in your Word document from the Insert > Picture option. Then locate the Background Removal tool and get rid of the background. You can read about this feature in more details here.

Office Backstage

The Office Backstage is a new concept, it is the enhanced form of the plain old office button and provides a much user-friendly menu. It helps users to manage documents, presentations, or spreadsheets at a greater level.

Interesting feature, right? Read more about it here.

New Art Effects in WordArt

Just like other features, WordArt has been updated with new colorful art effects. Select the text, then click Word Art and a list of all the available options will be displayed.

Ligatures

You might have heard about Ligatures. They make the fonts look fancy and they are also used to keep letters separate allowing you to search the text as if the font were regular. Its true that not all fonts support ligatures, but a large variety of the fonts supports them. You may enable them from Font Preferences > advanced, then select the standard only option in the ligatures drop down box.

Improved Spell Checks

Word 2010 has added some new features to its spell checker, now it will detect the mistake and suggest changing the sentence.

The above mentioned features and changes are only those that we could find. If you think we missed any, let us know in the comments. Enjoy!

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