Entering a short story contest? Submitting a collection of poems to a potential publisher? Or compiling that rush report for the boss? Inevitably you need to switch things around just before the deadline. 

The Navigation pane in Word 2010 lets you change the order of your document as quickly as you browse from site to site on the Web.

See it in action...

All those ideas that are storming around in your brain can vanish when you try to write them down. You find that nothing's harder than facing a blank page.

When you start with a Word template, you already have something on that page, and it can help you capture or even create your ideas.

You've dotted every i and crossed every t. Wait, does anyone do that anymore?

You get the idea. It's down to the wire, and you've added one last illuminating chart, a chilling conclusion, and a stunning cover page to the research paper that cost you more in caffeine bills to date than any other. What is your next click?

As I’ve said in previous posts, styles can make your document look better and they save you time. For example, to apply the Heading 1 style you just click in the heading (anywhere in the heading, you don't even need to select the text), and then click Heading 1 in the gallery of styles.

That’s pretty quick, and very helpful when crafting that school report or important document, but I find that it’s even more efficient and less of a distraction from my writing to apply styles using keyboard shortcuts.

Every Word 2010 document has a Theme. If you haven’t actually chosen a Theme, then you’re probably using the default – Office. To see the Theme applied to your document, click on the Page Layout tab, and then click the Themes button.

Themes provide a coordinated set of formatting choices so your documents look great.

But wait. Isn’t that what Style Sets do?

Yes, at first glance it may seem that Themes and Style Sets are doing the same thing, but there are differences. Knowing how they relate to one another can help you feel more in control of the design of your document.

Text effects can be a lot of fun--and Word has many options for making your words stand out.

But how much is too much? How can you make sure a text effect will enhance your message, not detract from it?

Here are five tips to think about when you want to make your message pop with just the right amount of text effect pizazz.

Back to school means back to writing papers and reports. But how do you make your research and your ideas stand out?

SmartArt graphics give you a more visual way to present your information. You can even add pictures to SmartArt graphics. But which SmartArt graphic will fit your information and make your report look its smartest?

Tables are designed to present easily scan able raw data, according to Word writer Ron Owens in a Word blog post about table styles. Charts also provide a visual picture of a large quantity of data, but they have the added benefit of illustrating relationships between pieces of data.

If you have presented data in a table but you find you want to illustrate a conclusion about the data, or if a conclusion about the data is buried in wordy paragraphs in your research paper, you might consider using a chart to illustrate trends. With so many chart options, which chart type do you choose?

Tables are often seen in school reports and business papers. They benefit readers by making it easy to look up information. At their best, tables present data in a concise and orderly way. Of course, concise and orderly doesn't have to mean boring. You can use Word's Table Styles to quickly jazz things up. But which table style to use? There are so many to choose from.

Whether you're working on a school report or a product plan, your document needs to stand out and your research needs to stick in people's minds, consider using visual elements--tables, charts, or SmartArt graphics.

Visual elements can communicate information quickly, and readers are more likely to remember a visual image than a block of text.

But which one do you use? Will a table, a chart, or a SmartArt graphic best present your key points?