What documents do you do?

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.

Four people use Word to write reports and planning documents, including status reports and specification documents for designing Web pages. One of those folks drafts the report in Word and then pastes it into Outlook. And one person drafts her newsletter in Word, and then makes the final version in Publisher.

One person pointed out that her kids also use Word for their school reports and essays.

Two people use Word to write scripts for their videos.

At work, I also use Word for compiling guidelines. Word works especially well for me when I need feedback from other people, because I can put my document on a server, turn on Track Changes, and get my colleagues' comments and suggestions.

Three people use Word at home to write letters. And one person uses Word for envelopes as well as for mail merge (with an Access data source--he writes Help for Access).

One person uses Word to make checklists when she's packing for vacations. She also likes to use tables in Word, especially because she can move a row up or down by pressing Alt + Shift + the arrow key.

And my favorite answer: "Anything I want to print, so I can format it and add page breaks."

At home, I use Word for poems (after I draft them in OneNote), manuscripts, and cover letters.

But enough about us.

How do you use Word? What kind of documents do you create? We'd love to hear from you.

-- Joannie Stangeland

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  • I use Word to produce equipment operator manuals and support level technical manuals.  I write chapters and then save them as individual files to keep the overall file size manageable however, they can become quite large very quickly and then the autosave becomes a hindrance.  In preparing these documents I use almost all of the tool set included in the Word programme.

  • I do agreements and work procedures. So I do multi-level numbered lists normally. I'd like to restart numbering after each heading, but I'm forced to use continuous numbering throughout. Because if I decide to change a style for all my numbered paragraphs under all my headings (for example, select all my numbered paragraphs with similar formatting, and decide to have them all bold, and want to save selection as a new style), all my Restarts at 1 get lost.

    Restart at 1 shouldn't be a property of a paragraph.

  • I'm a college student, so I use Word to take notes and write my papers. I know that the editon of Office that I have comes with OneNote, but I just feel more comfortable using Word. Sometimes I use Word to compose an email and then copy and paste the text into the body of an email. I've also used Word to do homework assignments for my online classes.

  • Knowledge Base systems using Share Point libraries and sitesCSoftware Development Life Cycle (SDLC) documents * Industry Standards specifications for hardware * IT process improvement * Training for process execution * Training for streamlined processes * Security process documentation * End-user manuals for software and hardware * Developer programming guides * Administrator manuals * Run Books for data centers * Engineering field manuals for hardware and software systems * White papers for sales and marketing * Checklists and process trackers for managers * Use cases and Q/A checklists * Inputs to PowerPoint presentations and training materials * Technical specifications sheets * Workflows and other Visio drawings as Inputs to Word * Network diagrams * Network configuration documentation * Data center operations documentation * Document sets for Oil and gas drilling instruments * Nuclear detection systems consisting of hardware, software and Q/A documents * Health and welfare issues, standards, and policy documents * SAP on line transactional help files * ITIL compliance templates and documents * ISO certification templates and documents for audits * Inputs in Word that are saved as web pages for Security portals and websites * SharePoint administration and information hierarchies * SDK, CLI, and API document sets  *  Moving information back and forth between Visio, Excel, Outlook or Web pages without having to resize, reformat or otherwise worry if it will look good.  It will. And the code will be clean too (despite the dire predictions of folks who have religious issues).

  • I use Word to develop Installation and Service Manuals; Document Plans; ISO Procedures, and Blog articles.  Sometimes I'll even use it to draw email responses.

  • use word to create reports and manuals. We are working on satellite imaging so we need to maintain reports. Microsoft word 2010is nice application having great features. Thanks for sharing.

  • use word to create reports and manuals. We are working on satellite imaging so we need to maintain reports. Microsoft word 2010is nice application having great features. Thanks for sharing.

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