Thinkabara

📝 Microsoft Word for Beginners · Lesson 9 of 9

Time-saving tricks

Google Classroom

Find and replace, paste without formatting, templates and sharing.

Find and replace

Ctrl+F finds a word in the document. Ctrl+H opens “Replace”: wrote “Jon” forty times and the name is really “John”? Type Jon in the first box, John in the second, and click “Replace All”.

Copy, cut and paste

Ctrl+CCopy
Ctrl+XCut (move)
Ctrl+VPaste
Ctrl+ASelect all

Paste without the website’s formatting

When you copy from a website, the text arrives with its fonts, colors and links. After pasting, a small “Paste Options” button appears. Choose “Keep Text Only” (the icon with an A), and the text takes on your document’s look. And remember: copy from a website only with the source, and better yet, write it in your own words.

Templates and sharing

File > New shows ready templates: resumes, letters, calendars and certificates. In Microsoft 365, the “Share” button at the top sends a link to the document, and several people can edit it together, each one’s cursor in a different color.

Tip

💡 Ctrl+Backspace deletes a whole word at once, and Ctrl+Arrow jumps a word at a time. Small shortcuts, big savings.

✏️ Practice: your turn

  1. Write a paragraph in which one name appears three times, and change it everywhere with Ctrl+H
  2. Copy a paragraph from a website and paste it as text only
  3. Open a ready template from File > New and change it to fit you
  4. If you have Microsoft 365, share the document with a family member and edit it together

✏️ No Word on this computer? Practice in our free online document editor

🧠 Quick quiz

Answer all 4 questions correctly to mark this lesson as done.

1. Which shortcut opens Replace?
2. What does Ctrl+X do?
3. How do you paste from a website without its formatting?
4. Where are the ready-made templates?

0 of 4 correct

All lessons in Microsoft Word for Beginners

  1. ✍️ 1. Your first documentOpen a document, type, save and undo a mistake
  2. 🎨 2. Formatting textFont, size, bold, color and the Format Painter
  3. 📐 3. Paragraphs, alignment and listsAlignment, bullets, numbering, indents and line spacing
  4. 🏷️ 4. Headings and stylesHeading 1 and Heading 2, the Navigation Pane and updating a style
  5. ▦ 5. TablesInsert a table, add rows and columns, design and merge cells
  6. 🖼️ 6. Pictures and shapesInsert a picture, resize it, wrap text and add alt text
  7. 📄 7. A neat pageMargins, orientation, page breaks, headers and page numbers
  8. 🎓 8. A paper ready to hand inTitle page, table of contents, footnotes, spell check and PDF
  9. ⚡ 9. Time-saving tricksFind and replace, paste without formatting, templates and sharing