Office For Mac

When you think of research papers, quarterly reports, or even Word documents, you don’t exactly think of beauty, right?  With Word for Mac 2011, we wanted to give you something more – the tools to create beautiful, polished documents that may not keep you on the cutting edge of fashion, but will certainly turn heads in the workplace or classroom.  To get you started, we’ve pulled together our favorite tips on how to transform your Word doc into a work of art.

Tip #1: Getting Familiar with Templates

A great way to kick start the creation process for your Word doc is by using a pre-made template. Word for Mac allows you to use Online Templates to create great looking documents, files that help you design interesting, compelling, and professional-looking documents. (Click here for step by step on finding the right template for your doc).

Tip #2: Dressing Up Your Doc

Now that you have the base for your document, it’s time to start dressing it up. You can insert WordArt, or bend text in interesting ways to make your content speak for itself.

How-To do this:

1. Select the text you want to modify, as we did in the document shown below. Then, on the Document Elements tab, under Text Elements, click WordArt, and then click the WordArt that you want.

2. Move the text around to position where you want it in your document.

Image: Add visual depth to your text with WordArt.

Add flourish to your text with typographical features (Default fonts including Calibri, Gabriola, and Constantia support many of these beautiful typography features). Word for Mac provides formatting options for text including ligatures and stylistic sets that work with many OpenType fonts. Ligatures combine some characters in a word which can improve readability or provide an alternate look (see image below).

How-To do this:

1. In your document, click where you will type new text, or select text you want to format.

2. On the Format menu, click Font.

3. Select the Advanced tab.

4. Under Advanced Typography, click on the Ligatures menu and choose “All.”

5. Click OK to show ligatures in your text, where supported by the font.

*Bonus Tip: To add more typographical effect to your text, increase the stylistic sets in the Font window.

Image: Add flare to your text using the advanced typography feature found in Word 2011.

Tip #3: Finding the Right Layout

With Word for Mac you can also change sections of a document to use landscape orientation. Use the wider page format for wide graphics or tables, and then continue the rest of the document in the portrait orientation – it’s up to you!

How-To do this:

1. Click on a graphic or table in the document.

2. On the Layout tab, under Page Layout, click Break.

3. Click Next Page under Section Breaks to start the illustration on a new page.

4. On the Layout tab, under Orientation, click Landscape.

5. In your document, click after on a graphic or table.

6. Select Next Page under Section Breaks to continue the document on a new page after the illustration.

7. On the Layout tab, under Orientation, choose Portrait.

Now you can also insert pictures and edit them from within Word and PowerPoint. Refer to our last post on getting the most out of your pictures for helpful tips on this.

Image: Easily edit your photos from within your Word document.

So, next time you’re creating the usual report or paper keep these tips in mind to make your document stand out from the crowd. And let us know how it turns out!

Also, now that you have a great-looking doc to build on, stay tuned for more tips on how to work smarter with Word for Mac 2011.