5 more (more!) Office features you need to know about

For Wednesday's post, I offered up five useful features that I feel you should know about and use. Today I want to continue that list, but I want to dig a little deeper into a few programs to uncover some features that, while useful and neat-o, may be underutilized (by you, by me, by the public at large). So let's get crackin' and expose some of these things so that we can start using them...pronto!

#6  Help your readers: Readability statistics

You already know you can check your spelling and grammar either while you type in Word  (and Outlook if Word is your editor) or afterward. But you can also check for the document's or email's "readability"—that is, its reading level. The readability feature in Office uses two tests—Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level—that were developed in the 1970s for the military. These tests basically give you two scores that tell you the difficulty of your document and to what grade level it corresponds. Most government agencies, insurance companies, schools, and legal and other industries require specific readability levels.

I found this to be quite fascinating and something I didn't know much about. I can totally see how this would be a useful feature in many different scenarios:

• Blog post: Can Word improve your writing?
• Read about how to understand your document's readability scores.
• Test your document's readability.

#7 Musical chairs: Working in the Navigation Pane

The drag-and-drop Navigation Pane is new for Word 2010. What used to be the static, you-can-only-look document map is now an interactive place to see and to move/rearrange headings, text, and images without having to crawl hither and yon all over your document. It's like getting a godly view of things and the godly ability to change them when you, as the creator, feel that whim.

• Joannie wrote a blog post about the Word 2010 Navigation Pane last summer.
• Search or move around in a document using the Navigation Pane (video).

#8 Preview before you commit: Paste preview

When you paste content into an Office 2010 spreadsheet, document, whatever, wouldn't it be nice if you could preview what it's going to look like when you plop it into your file? Why, yes it would be nice and why, now you can. Before you paste it in, you can do one of two things: 1) Move your pointer over the different Paste options on the shortcut menu; or 2) On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the arrow below the Paste button to review your choices.

• Video: Paste with live preview

#9 Save me from my download: Protected View

New for Office 2010, when you open a document, spreadsheet, or whatever from the Internet, from email, or even from your company's own share, you simply don't know what some files are bringing along with them (and I mean macro viruses, malware, and other nasty things). Luckily for you, these files are opened by default in Protected View. This means that nothing is downloaded to your computer without your permission because Protected View essentially isolates you from any malicious, nasty, hurtful, insulting code (I'm thinking about middle school, can you tell?) that may be contained in the file. So if you want to be able to edit and work in the file, YOU make the choice by clicking the Enable Editing button.

• Safety first: Office 2010 Protected View

#10 <your tip here> 

Okay, so, maybe you already know about all the above; they're not exactly hidden from view. But maybe YOU have discovered some features, some tricks, some tips that you'd like to divulge and show off. So...cough it up already (in comments below or to MSFTCrabby@live.com)! Best tip/trick/disclosure gets the author's tip and name up here with me as well as a special Crabby gift sent right to your door...

Crabby's Find of the Week: Sacrifice yourself for the good of others? Better get a robot.

— Crabby

Not finding the help you need from the various channels you've tried? Microsoft Answers probably has the solution to your nagging problem.