Office Primer: Five tips to use Word like a pro on Lumia

Use these handy tips to create and edit a Word document on your Lumia or other Windows Phone—no laptop or PC necessary.

I was at lunch when an email from a colleague popped up on my Lumia with an important Word document. I wanted to review it immediately instead of waiting until I was back at the office.

So I tapped the “Download” link in the email and the document opened via the pre-installed Office app. From there, I made minor edits, added comments, saved the new version to OneDrive, and sent it back to the original sender.

My colleague received feedback quickly and since I no longer had to worry about that document, I was able to enjoy my lunch.

If you haven’t used Word Mobile in awhile—or need a quick primer–here are five tips to use Word like a pro on your Lumia or other Windows Phone.

Create a new document/open an existing document: To create a new Word file, go to the pre-installed Office app on your Lumia and press the plus (+) button. You can then choose “blank document” or one of three Word templates: Agenda, Outline, and Report.

Remember that the Word Flow feature on your Lumia or other Windows Phone means it’s easy and fairly fast to create a Word document.

How you open an existing document depends on its location. If you were emailed a Word attachment, just tap the “Download” link in the email message. If the document is in OneDrive or Office 365, go to the “Places” section in the Office app and choose the requisite place. Tap the document to open it.

Format text: Highlight the text you want to format by tapping a word and dragging the arrows at each end to include all the text you want to format. Next, tap the paintbrush icon (Format).

Word will then show you a plethora of options: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, increase and decrease font, highlight (yellow, green, red) and font color (orange, green, red). Tap the option you want and press the clipboard icon (Copy) to apply.

If you want to apply two or more formatting options (such as bold and highlight), just highlight the text again and choose another option. Easy!

Find a specific word or phrase: Press the magnifier icon (Find), type the word or phrase you’re searching for and type Enter. Tap the Next arrow button to find more occurrences of that word or phrase (if applicable).

Add comments: Tap the pencil icon (Edit), and enter a word or phrase you want to comment on. Then press the speech bubble icon (Comment) and type your comment. Tap outside the comment box to stop commenting. If you want to review your comment, just type the highlighted text.

Note that if this is the first time you’ve added comments to a Word document, you may be asked to enter your user name so other people know who made the comments.

Save a Word document: After you’ve created or edited a Word document, tap the ellipsis button (…) and choose “Save” if you want to save the document under its current name, or “Save As” if you want to change the document’s name.

You also need to choose where to save the document—to your phone, SD card, or OneDrive. If you save it to OneDrive, you can then make more substantive changes to the document on your computer.

For more information on creating a Word document from scratch and how to share and save it, check out this story–written entirely on a Lumia.

How have you used Word on your Lumia?