Last week we suggested some ways you could use Excel Mobile on your Nokia Lumia to stay more organized. Today, we’re looking at how you can use Word Mobile.

As the name suggests, Word is where we all write down whatever it is we need to write down. It’s mostly used in formal situations, such as at work or at school, colleges or universities. For personal note-taking however, OneNote should be your go-to program of choice – we’ll talk more about that in a future post.

We use Word here at Conversations for writing our articles. And in fact, I’ve written this entire article using Word Mobile on my Nokia Lumia 620.

Word Mobile is useful when away from the your desk and you need to write a document in a standard format that’s used and recognized around the world.

 

To create a new Word document, head to Office on your Nokia Lumia smartphone – it’s available as standard on all of them. Press the plus (+) symbol.

Then, you’ve got the option of creating a new document from scratch, which I did to write this very article, or use one of the templates provided.

The templates are a great place to start if you’re creating an agenda, an outline or a report for the first time using Word Mobile.

These templates also include a fair amount of formatting that’s already been added that you may find useful. But in the interest of testing all the functions, try creating a new blank document.

Creating a title

Firstly, write a title and then tap one of the words within that title. Either side of the word you’ll see two little circles that when pulled in either direction, expand the highlighted box.

Once the entire title is within the highlighted box, pressing on the format (paintbrush) icon will bring up the formatting options, such as; bold, italic, underline, strike through, font size up and down as well as font color options.

When it comes to writing the rest of your story, thesis, report, etc. just use the on-screen keyboard to write as you normally would when writing a text or email, for example.

One advantage over using Word Mobile rather then Word on your PC is the auto-correct function on your Lumia smartphone.

Needless to say, we all make mistakes, and I certainly made a few when typing this article just as I do when typing a text. However, no matter the typo, I just continued and let the phone auto-correct for me as I went along.

For the most part, the phone got it right. A few tweaks were needed here and there, though, when I truly missed the correct keys.

One thing missing from Word Mobile, though, is the ability to add indents or list formatting. For the time being, this can only be added using a desktop document editor.

Having said that, the templates available within Word Mobile offer these features – they were obviously made on a computer, but still editable on mobile device.

As with all Office documents, you can choose to save them locally on your Lumia, or on your SkyDrive account.

The latter is always the best option as that way you can access the document when you get back to your desk.

Collaborating tools

If you ever need to send a Word document to other people for collaboration, you can also do this from Word Mobile.

For instance, I may want to leave a note for a colleague of mine within the document, without adding to the text itself.

By highlighting a word or a piece of text and pressing the comment (speech bubble) icon, I can add a separate comment.

Once the document is on your SkyDrive account, it can then be shared directly with other people who can freely edit it – should you permit, of course.

Sharing

As with most tools on your smartphone, the ability to share is vital.

When you’ve completed the document, save the file to SkyDrive for later viewing and sharing, or share it via your email accounts or Tap&Send.

Have you used Word Mobile on your Nokia Lumia smartphone? Share your experience with us, below.