Ever looked at a document and thought, that’s kind of boring? Or struggled to make your documents stand out? We have too.

But Microsoft Word 2010 includes a bunch of new features that make that pain go away. In fact, it made us think--what if Word had been around as a tool for some of the world’s most significant documents, say the Declaration of Independence?

Well, in this video you can find out exactly how our founding fathers might have easily collaborated using Word 2010. Have a look at this video, and enter a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to see the historic sights in Philadelphia (or one of many weekly drawings for an Xbox 360 with Kinect). It’s just that simple--watch & get a chance to win.*

If you've pulled out your resume recently, you know that formatting a resume in Word can be, well, tricky. Manual formatting problems could be a signal that it's time to give your resume a rehaul; I recommend starting fresh with a free Word resume template.

Find out how ...

We all know that Word is for writing documents. But what kind of documents?

Here at Microsoft, we use Word to write the Help articles on Office.com, but I wondered what other documents my colleagues create with Word, so I walked through the halls and asked five people.

Here's what they said, but we also want to hear from you...

What can you do with an image in Word?

Plenty!

Office Casual video guy Doug Thomas shows you how you can make your pictures pop when you use the editing tools in Microsoft Word 2010 (and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010). Plus, Doug provides a list of more resources, so you can take all your document's photographs to that next dazzling level.

-- Joannie Stangeland

Theresa Estrada, a program manager on the Word team, writes today about how to get images to stay in position on the page. This is the fourth in a series of posts about graphic objects.

Sometimes, especially when you are trying to create a one-page flyer, you want to position a figure in a certain spot on the page and make sure it stays put. One way to do this is to use the Position menu on the Format ribbon to align your figure with one of nine common locations on the page.

Styles may be the most important feature in Word. Learn to use Styles and not only will you save yourself a lot of time from having to click bold buttons, italicize, change the font, change it back again, adjust the paragraph spacing, and ... well, you get the idea. But it also allows you to access other features in Word that will make your work so much easier.

If you're not using Styles in Word, I hope to win you over in this video by demonstrating the advantage of the feature versus manually formatting text (aka "directly formatting text").

You can customize the Word 2010 ribbon by adding the Word commands you use most often to a custom tab. Or you can get a head start by downloading the new Favorites tab.

How do we know your favorites? We don't, but we used customer data (from Word 2007 Service Pack 2) to identify which command buttons are clicked the most.

The idea is to save you time. (And then you'll have more time to write!)

-- Joannie Stangeland

Why do figures, or images, sometimes jump to a different page in your Word document? This is one of the great mysteries of Word and today, I’ll reveal the answer.

To get to the bottom of this question, it’s important to understand the concept of anchoring. Every floating figure in a Word document is actually attached to the page. This point of attachment is called the “anchor” and is indicated by a small anchor icon. To see this, you’ll need to enable the display of the icon by clicking the File tab and then clicking Options. In the Display section, select the check box next to Object Anchors. Now, when you select a floating figure, you’ll see the anchor icon appear on the page.

You have questions. Many of you have questions. I have questions--and we're all looking for answers. Answers.microsoft.com is exactly that--answers to your questions.

What kind of Word questions have people been asking and answering? Here are a few...

Line spacing is different in Word now. It's looser. Paragraph spacing is different, too--again, it's looser, more open, designed for easier reading. And in Word 2010 you can choose the look that you want with new paragraph spacing options.

You can find out more about line spacing and paragraph spacing in Adjust the line spacing between text or paragraphs, or you can peruse a compendium of resources.

And you can see the new paragraph spacing options in action in this video:

But if you want to give your document the all-single-spacing look, you can do that, too: Make my document look like a Word 2003 document.

Because it's also about time--yours.

-- Joannie Stangeland