By Guest Blogger, Thomas G. Stephens Jr., CPA, CITP, CGMA - K2 Enterprises

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Nearly every business professional uses Microsoft Office Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint to varying degrees. Yet, most of us are self-taught users; therefore, we likely remain unaware of key productivity-enhancing tools. Here are seven features found in Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint that deliver better results in less time.


Universal Drag-and-Drop in Outlook
Outlook universally supports drag-and-drop. Thus, if you receive an e-mail message and need to create an appointment on your calendar containing the message details, simply drag the message from the message list, and drop it onto your calendar in Outlook. Similarly, if you need to add an attachment to a message, you can drag it from your desktop into the message. And, conversely you can drag attachments from a message to your desktop. Universal drag-and-drop eliminates unnecessary typing.

Assign Outlook Tasks to Others
If you are managing multiple tasks that involve other team members, try assigning these tasks in Outlook:

• Add a task to Outlook.
• Right-click on the task and choose “Assign Task” from the pop-up menu.
• Enter any desired details.
• Click “Send” to assign the task to another team member.

Once accepted, the assigned team member is able to send updates and notes, helping you minimize the amount of time you spend managing tasks.

Save Time with Outlook’s Quick Steps Feature
Do you often perform multiple actions – such as adding a category to a message and moving that message to another folder – on items in Outlook? If so, create a “Quick Step” to automate these tasks for you. From the “Home” tab of the ribbon in Outlook, customize the canned Quick Steps provided and create new ones to meet your needs. Once you do so, select an item and then click the Quick Step you wish to apply and Outlook will perform all of the actions designated in the Quick Step on the selected item.

Use Styles to Format Word Documents
Word’s Styles feature is perhaps the application’s most powerful tool. Styles are predefined formats that you can apply to your documents, reducing the amount of time you spend formatting a document and ensuring consistency in formatting. When you use Styles, you receive the added benefits of creating automatic tables of contents, generating document maps, and, as explained below, creating PowerPoint presentations from your Word document.

To apply a Style to text, select the text and then choose the Style you want to apply to the selected text from the “Home” tab of the ribbon. You can also choose to build your document based on Styles by using Word’s “Outline View” to create an outline of the document using Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc. Once you create the outline, return to the traditional Print Layout View to complete the document.

Edit a PDF in Word 2013
If you need to edit a PDF document, Word 2013 offers a great new feature to assist you in this endeavor. You can choose to open and edit the PDF in Word, eliminating the need to perform this action in another application. In Word, simply open the PDF and make your edits. You can choose to save the document back to a PDF or save it in Word.

Create a PowerPoint Presentation from a Word Document
If you create a Word document using Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc. Styles to apply formats to your major section headings and subheadings as detailed above, you can create a PowerPoint presentation quickly that mirrors the structure of the Word document.

1. From the “Home” tab of the ribbon in PowerPoint, choose “New Slide” followed by “Slides from Outline.”
2. Select the Word document you want to use as the basis for your PowerPoint presentation and PowerPoint builds the presentation for you automatically.
3. Finalize the presentation by adding and editing text, selecting a different theme, and applying animations and transitions.

Create Multiple Presentations from a Single PowerPoint Presentation
You may find it necessary to have multiple versions of the same PowerPoint presentation. If that is so, instead of using multiple data files, consider using PowerPoint’s “Custom Shows” feature. With this feature, you can create multiple versions of the same presentation, all contained within a singular data file.

1. Click “Custom Slide Show” from the “Slide Show” tab of the ribbon and then “New” in the Custom Shows dialog box.
2. Choose the slides you want to include in the newly created Custom Show.
3. To present the Custom Show, select the Custom Show in the Custom Shows dialog box and choose “Show.”

Summary
The Microsoft Office suite– including Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint – offer a seemingly endless array of features to assist busy professionals with their daily responsibilities. Far from an exhaustive list of these tools, the seven features outlined here represent some of the easiest and most powerful options available to improve productivity.