Five Professional Uses for Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is the flagship word processor contained in Microsoft Office, and it is one of the programs with the most professional applications along with Excel and Powerpoint. The uses of Microsoft Word range from the personal – a place to make a simple flyer for a bake sale, for example – to the professional, such as somewhere to compose a resume or write internal memos. Learning about five uses of Microsoft Word in a professional setting can be illuminating and help you realize the massive variety of things you can do it.

MS Word is immensely helpful when you write and edit resumes. The program offers a wide range of formatting and presentation options and includes resume templates that reduce the workload of putting one together. The basic word processing functions such as the automatic spell-checking and grammar-checking are invaluable for presenting yourself in a positive light to potential employers.

Microsoft Word can be used to produce pretty much any document, but it has several advantages for professional reports. The array of formatting options, specialized equation functions, and the useful feature for automatically adding references and bibliographies help with both presentation and establishing credibility. The reason this is one of the key uses of Microsoft Word in a professional setting, though, is the ability to publish your document as a PDF. A PDF document maintains formatting, is viewable by people without MS Word, and adds a professional air to your document.

Microsoft Word has massive potential for internal company memos and forms. In addition to using the built-in templates, you can create your own forms that feature your company logo and other key information and tailor it to the needs of your business. Choose "Word Template" from the "Save As" menu to bring up the same basic format for any future communications.

In many business settings, collaboration is a key part of getting from an initial idea to the end product, and Microsoft Word makes collaboration easy. When you email somebody a Word document, the "Edit in Browser" option allows you to make changes online. For versions of Word after 2016, you can choose "Edit in Word" and still receive real-time information about who else is editing the document and what changes they're making. For older versions, you save the document to share your changes and see the ones made by others. The collaboration feature in Microsoft Word offers a huge advantage for teams working in a professional setting.

One of the biggest advantages of Word for professional projects is that it integrates seamlessly with other Office programs. For example, if you're producing an invoice with information that you already recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, you can copy the spreadsheet over directly and maintain all the original formatting and content. This integration can benefit you on a day-to-day basis in tons of ways.