By Jim Calloway

Barron Henley, of Affinity Consulting, spoke at ABA TECHSHOW on mastering Microsoft Word (my title, not his). Barron has done similar programs for the OBA before. His program is half great tips and improved efficiency and half voicing all the frustrations we have experienced with Word. You know these, e.g. “How can deleting one word change the font in an entire sentence?” Barron’s Answer: Fonts in Word can be tricky. When you think you have changed the font, you may have actually placed one font on top of another. So, when you delete you may delete the font insertion, revealing the original font that was hiding below. If you have a Word document form that has been used for years, there could be dozens of fonts piled on top of each other, especially if it was converted from WordPerfect years ago.

When you are spending more time fighting with formatting (and reformatting) a document than on writing the document, here is a pro tip to get you back on track. On the Home tab, in the Font Group, click the Clear All Formatting button. This leaves only the text. Then apply any needed formatting or Style. PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote also have this feature.