Word for Microsoft 365 cheat sheet

Word has always been the workhorse app of the Microsoft Office suite. Nearly everyone who uses Office ends up using Word at some point, whether it be for writing memos, typing up agendas, creating reports, crafting business correspondence or any of a thousand other uses.

Microsoft sells Office under two models: Individuals and businesses can pay for the software license up front and own it forever (what the company calls the “perpetual” version of the suite), or they can purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription, which means they have access to the software for only as long as they keep paying the subscription fee.

When you purchase a perpetual version of the suite — say,  Office 2021 or Office 2024 — its applications will never get new features, whereas apps in the “365” subscriptions are continually updated with new features. For more details, see our in-depth comparison of the two Office models.

This cheat sheet gets you up to speed on the major business features that have been introduced or changed in Microsoft 365’s Word for Windows desktop client over the past few years. (If you’re using the perpetual-license Office suite, see our separate Office 2021 and 2024 cheat sheet, which includes Word tips.) We’ll periodically update this story as new features roll out to Word in Microsoft 365.

In this guide:

Use the Ribbon

Search to get tasks done quickly

Collaborate in real time

Use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word

Get instant translations

Add new types of charts

Use AutoSave as a safety net while you work

Review or restore earlier versions of a document

Other new features worth checking out

Use keyboard shortcuts

Use the Ribbon

The Ribbon interface, which puts commonly used commands in a tabbed toolbar running across the top of the application window, is alive and well in the current version of Word. As always, just click one of the Ribbon’s tabs to see related commands — for example, click Insert to find buttons for inserting tables, images, page breaks, and more.

Microsoft has tweaked the Ribbon’s looks numerous times over the years, but it still works the same way it always has, and you’ll find most of the commands in the same locations as in earlier versions. Also note that you can use the search box above the Ribbon to find commands.

Through the years, Word’s Ribbon has gotten a variety of cosmetic changes, but it still works largely the way it always has.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Just as in earlier versions of Word, to make the commands underneath the tabs on the Ribbon go away, press Ctrl-F1. (Note that the Ribbon tabs — File, Home, Insert, and so on — stay visible.) To make the commands appear again, press Ctrl-F1. You can also make the commands on the Ribbon go away by clicking the name of the tab you’re currently on. To make the commands reappear, click any tab.

You’ve got other options for displaying the Ribbon as well. To get to them, click the Ribbon display options icon (a down arrow) on the bottom of the Ribbon at the far right, just below the Share button. A drop-down menu appears with these four options:

Full-screen mode: This makes Word take up your entire screen and hides the Ribbon. To get out of full-screen mode, click the three-dot icon at the upper right of the screen.

Show tabs only: This shows the tabs but hides the commands underneath them. It’s the same as pressing Ctrl-F1. To display the commands underneath the tabs when they’re hidden, press Ctrl-F1, click a tab, or click the Ribbon display options down arrow and select Always show Ribbon.

Always show Ribbon: This displays the entire Ribbon, both the tabs and commands underneath them.

Show/Hide Quick Access toolbar: This displays or hides the Quick Access toolbar, which gives you fast access to Word features you want to have always available, such as New, Save, Print, and many others. When you enable the toolbar, it starts off empty. To populate it, click the small down arrow to the right of the toolbar and from the menu that appears, choose which features to put on it. If you don’t see a command you want, click More Commands. Find the command you want on the left and click Add.

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Preston Gralla / Foundry

You can have the toolbar appear either at the top of the screen, just to the right of the AutoSave button, or instead just underneath the Ribbon. To move it from one place to another, click the down arrow to the right of the toolbar and from the menu that appears, select either Show Below the Ribbon or Show Above the Ribbon.

Microsoft has for many years teased a simplified version of the Ribbon that hides most of the commands to reduce clutter. That simplified Ribbon is available in the Word web app, but there’s currently no sign that it will appear in the Word desktop app.

There’s a useful feature in what Microsoft calls the backstage area that appears when you click File on the Ribbon: If you click Open, Save a Copy, or Save As from the menu on the left, you can see the cloud-based services you’ve connected to your Microsoft account, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Each location now displays its associated email address underneath it.

Select Add a Place on the left to add a new cloud storage service for Word.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

This is quite helpful if you use a cloud service with more than one account, such as if you have one OneDrive account for personal use and another one for business. You’ll be able to see at a glance which is which.

Search to get tasks done quickly

It’s easy to overlook one of Word’s most useful features, Search, which is extremely helpful when you want to do a task that you haven’t done before or have forgotten how to do.

To use it, click in the Search box — it’s above the Ribbon in the blue title area. (Keyboard fans can instead press Alt-Q to go to the Search box.) Type in a word or phrase related to a task, and you’ll get a list of possible matches. Click the task you want to get instructions on how to do it.

For example, I typed  envelope and chose the Envelope result, and the screen you use for addressing envelopes appeared. When I typed in the query write an essay, it popped up a link to Word’s Researcher feature that lets you do research from within Word, add sources from the research you find, and then cite the sources in the document. (More on Researcher in a moment.) If you type in a query and hover your mouse over a result instead of clicking it, you’ll see a screen describing what you can do if you click the results.

The Search box gives advice on addressing an envelope (or any other task).
Preston Gralla / Foundry

It’s a big time-saver, because you don’t have to hunt through the Ribbon to find the command you want. And it remembers the features you’ve previously selected in the box, so when you click in it, you first see a list of previous tasks you’ve searched for. That way, tasks that you frequently perform are always within easy reach.

Users of enterprise and education editions of Microsoft 365 can also use the Search box to find people in their organization, SharePoint resources, and other personalized results from within Word. (See the Microsoft Search support page for more details about all it can do.)

Collaborate in real time

With Word for Microsoft 365, you can  collaborate in real time on documents from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Microsoft calls this “co-authoring.”

There are only three requirements for collaboration in Word for Microsoft 365: You must be logged into your Microsoft account or Microsoft 365 account; the document must be stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online; and AutoSave must be turned on.

To share a document so you can collaborate on it with others: first open it, then click the Share button in the upper-right part of the screen. If you haven’t yet saved your file in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online, you’ll be prompted to do so.

Clicking the Share button pops up the “Send link” window. Here you can send an email with a link where others can access the document.

Use the “Send link” pane to share a document and the “Link settings” pane to fine-tune its access permissions.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

First, decide whether anyone with a link can edit the document, or only those whose email addresses you enter. If you see the text “Anyone with the link can edit” near the top of the pane, you can change that by clicking it, then choosing Specific people on the screen that appears. Similarly, if “Specific people” appears above the email addresses, you can change that by clicking it, then choosing Anyone with the link can edit from the screen that appears. (If you use a business, enterprise, or education edition of Office, you may have somewhat different sharing permissions and options set up by your IT department, such as an option to allow anyone within your organization to edit the document.)

On this second screen you can also determine whether people can edit the document or can only view it without making changes. To do that, click Can edit and select Can view. You can also set an expiration date after which people won’t be able to access the file. And you can set a password so that only people who have the password can access it.

Back in the main “Send link” window, enter the recipients’ email addresses (as you type, Word will suggest people from your address book whom you can select), optionally type in a message, and click Send. An email is sent to all the recipients with a link they can click to open the document.

(If you’d rather send recipients a copy of the file as a Word document or PDF rather than a link, and thus not allow real-time collaboration, click Send a copy at the bottom of the “Send link” screen and choose either Word document or PDF.)

Your link will be sent via Outlook. If you don’t use Outlook, or simply prefer to send the link yourself rather than relying on Outlook to do it automatically, there’s another way to share a file stored in a personal OneDrive for collaboration: At the bottom of the “Send link” window, pane, click Copy link. When you do that, you can copy the link and send it to someone yourself via email. Note that you have the same options for allowing editing, not allowing editing, and so on as you do if you have Word send the link directly for you. Just click Anyone with the link can edit or Specific people below Copy link, and follow the instructions above.

(Note that if you want to copy a link, you don’t have to go to the Send link screen. Instead, when you click Share button on the upper right of a Word document, choose Copy Link rather than Share.)

To begin collaborating: When your recipients receive the email from you, they click a button or link to open the document, which opens in the Word web app  in a browser rather than in the Word desktop client. They can either edit or read it in the web app, depending on the permissions you granted, or open it in the Word desktop client by typing open in desktop in the search box at the top of the screen, and selecting the Open in Desktop option that appears.  The web version isn’t as fully featured as the client version — for instance, there aren’t as many formatting options and you can’t insert shapes, take screenshots, use mail merge, or use several other features. But for basic editing, it works fine.

When any collaborators open the document, you’ll see a colored cursor bar for each person that indicates their presence in the document. Each person gets their own unique color. Hover your cursor over anybody else’s cursor bar to see their name. Once they begin editing, you can see what each collaborator does as they do it, including deleting, editing, and adding text. They see what you do as well.

You can see other collaborators’ edits in real time, with a different colored cursor for each collaborator.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Collaboration includes the ability to make comments at specific places in a document without actually changing the document’s contents. To do it, place your cursor in the document where you want the comment to appear (or select a word or phrase), click the Comments button in the upper right of the screen and select New.A new comment box appears in the right margin; type in your comment there.

If you want to draw a colleague’s attention to a comment, @ mention them in the comment — type @ and the first few letters of the person’s name, then choose their name from the list that appears. They’ll receive an email notification with a link to the comment in the document.

Everyone collaborating can see all comments in the right margin. To reply to a comment, hover over it, click the Reply button, and type your response. There’s also a Resolve button that grays out the comment.

To reply to a comment, hover over it, click the Reply button, and type your reply.Preston Gralla / Foundry

Be aware that how well real-time collaboration works depends on the strength of your internet connection. On slow or flaky connections, you won’t immediately see edits that other people make and they won’t see yours immediately — there will be a lag. So it’s always best, when possible, to have the strongest connection possible when collaborating.

At any time, you can see who has access to the file by clicking the Share button. In the “Send link” screen that opens, click the three-dot icon in the upper right and select Manage access to see a list of people who can access the file. Here you can change edit/view permissions, revoke someone’s access, or remove the sharing link altogether.

Use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word

For an additional subscription fee, business users of Word can use Microsoft’s generative AI add-in, Microsoft 365 Copilot. You can have Copilot create new documents from a description you give it or from an existing document, summarize documents, and more. If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, many of those features are now bundled with your core subscription.

To get started using Copilot in Word, you can click the Copilot icon in the left margin of your document or press Alt + I to bring up the “Draft with Copilot” panel (this is the more powerful option for writing drafts), or you can click the Copilot button at the right end of the Ribbon’s home tab to open the Copilot sidebar on the right (better for getting summaries or asking questions about the document).

In Word, Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you summarize a document or generate a draft.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

For details about how to use Copilot in Word, see our guide to using Copilot for writing tasks in Word, Outlook, and OneNote.

If you’re wondering what happened to Word’s Smart Lookup and Researcher features, well, Copilot ate them. Until recently, these two useful features let you search the internet from inside Word, with Smart Lookup intended for quick web searches and Researcher for more in-depth searches across academic journals and other sources.

But at the beginning of 2025, Microsoft removed Smart Lookup and Researcher from Word and the other Microsoft 365 apps. Now the only way to search the web and do research from inside Word is via Copilot. Copilot lacks some features of Smart Lookup and Researcher, notably the ability to insert citations and footnotes in documents.

Also, keep in mind that Copilot at times suffers from “hallucinations” — that is, it makes things up that aren’t true. So you’ll have to double-check its results. For help in reducing the number of Copilot’s hallucinations, see “Microsoft Copilot tips: 9 ways to use Copilot right.”

Get instant translations

Another useful addition is the Translator pane, useful for those who need to work in multiple languages. To translate words or phrases, select them, right-click your selection, and choose Translate from the menu that appears.

The Translator pane appears. The top of the pane shows your selection, and the bottom shows the translation. The top pane attempts to identify the original language, which it does with uncanny accuracy. If it misidentifies the language, though, simply select the right one. After that, in the bottom of the pane select the language you want to translate to.

The translation appears. To insert it somewhere into the document, move your cursor to the spot where you want it to appear, then click the Insert button at the bottom of the pane. You can also copy and paste any part of the translation into the document or another document.

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Preston Gralla / Foundry

Translator can also translate an entire document. To do it, go to the Review tab on the Ribbon, and in the Language section, click Translate > Translate Document. The Translator pane appears. You can let it auto-detect the original language or click the From drop-down to set it. Then click the To drop-down to set the language you want to translate the document to and click the Translate button. Word opens the translated document in a new window.

Keep in mind that Translator is part of Microsoft’s Intelligent Services, the artificial intelligence behind other Office features including Search and Researcher. You’ll need to enable it before using any of these features.

Translator is also available in Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint; see our story on translation in Office for details.

Add new types of charts

Over the last decade, Microsoft has added several new types of charts you can add to documents, spreadsheets, and presentations: Treemap, Sunburst, Waterfall, Histogram, Pareto, Box & Whisker, Funnel, and Map charts. Each provides a unique way to display data visually. See our Excel for Microsoft 365 cheat sheet for details about the new chart types, including what each one looks like and what type of data it’s best suited for.

To insert any of the new chart types (or any other chart) in a document, select Insert > Chart and then choose the type of chart to insert. When you do that, the chart appears in your document with placeholder data, and a pop-up window appears that looks like a mini Excel spreadsheet. Enter or edit the data, or else click the Edit Data in Microsoft Excel button to open it up in Excel and edit it there.

When you insert a chart, a window where you can edit the data pops up.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Note that the Pareto chart does not show up when you select Insert > Chart. To insert one, select Insert > Chart, select Histogram, and at the top of the screen that appears, select the option to the right, Pareto.

Use AutoSave as a safety net while you work

If you’re worried that you’ll lose your work on a document if you don’t constantly save it, you’ll welcome the AutoSave feature. It automatically saves your files for you, so you won’t have to worry about system crashes, power outages, Word crashes, and similar problems. It only works only on.docx documents stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online. It won’t work with files saved in Word’s older.doc format or files saved to your hard drive.

AutoSave is a vast improvement over the previous AutoRecover feature built into Word. AutoRecover doesn’t save your files in real time; instead, every several minutes it saves an AutoRecover file that you can try to recover after a crash. It doesn’t always work, though — for example, if you don’t properly open Word after the crash, or if the crash doesn’t meet Microsoft’s definition of a crash. In addition, Microsoft notes, “AutoRecover is only effective for unplanned disruptions, such as a power outage or a crash. AutoRecover files are not designed to be saved when a logoff is scheduled or an orderly shutdown occurs.” And the files aren’t saved in real time, so you’ll likely lose several minutes of work even if all goes as planned.

AutoSave is turned on by default in Word for Microsoft 365.docx files stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online. To turn it off (or back on again) for a document, use the AutoSave button on the top left of the screen. If you want AutoSave to be off for all files by default, select File > Options > Save and uncheck the box marked AutoSave files stored in the Cloud by default on Word.

Using AutoSave may require some rethinking of your workflow. Many people are used to creating new documents based on existing ones by opening the existing file, making changes to it, and then using Save As to save the new version under a different name, leaving the original file intact. Be warned that doing this with AutoSave enabled will save your changes in the original file. Instead, Microsoft suggests opening the original file and immediately selecting File > Save a Copy (which replaces Save As when AutoSave is enabled) to create a new version.

If AutoSave does save unwanted changes to a file, you can always use the Version History feature described below to roll back to an earlier version.

Review or restore earlier versions of a document

There’s an extremely useful feature hiding in the title bar in Word for Microsoft 365: You can use Version History to go back to previous versions of a file, review them, compare them side-by-side with your existing version, and copy and paste from an older file to your existing one. You can also restore an entire old version.

To do it, click the file name at the top of the screen in an open file. A drop-down menu appears. Click Version History, and the Version History pane appears on the right side of the screen with a list of the previous versions of the file, including the time and date they were saved.

Use Version History to see all previous versions of a document, copy and paste from an older file to your existing one, or restore an entire old version.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

In the Version History pane, click Open version under any older version, and that version appears as a read-only version in a new window. Scroll through the version and copy any content you want, then paste it into the latest version of the file. To compare the two versions, click Compare on the old version, and you’ll see them side-by-side, and also see edits made to the older version. To restore the old version, overwriting the current one, click the Restore button at the top of the editing window.

Version History works best when used in conjunction with AutoSave. You can use it without AutoSave, but it’s not as useful because you don’t get as many saved versions to go back to.

Other features worth checking out

Several other features added over the past few years may prove useful for business users:

Work in a distraction-free environment

If you’re the kind of person who needs help focusing on the work at hand, you’ll be pleased with Word’s Focus mode. When you put Word into Focus mode, the Ribbon and all toolbars are hidden, and all parts of your screen that aren’t Word turn black. So you’ll find no distractions at all.

To put Word into Focus mode, choose View > Focus (the Focus button is in the Immersive group near the left end of the Ribbon) or press Alt-W, then O. To get out of Focus mode, press the Esc key. When you’re in Focus mode, if you want the Ribbon to appear (with white text and icons against a black background), move your cursor to the top of the screen. Press Esc or start typing in Word to make the Ribbon go away.

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Preston Gralla / Foundry

If you want more options for getting rid of distractions, you can use what Microsoft calls Immersive Reader. It gives you even more options for focusing on your text, including displaying only a few lines of text at a time, changing the page color, and more. You can also have it read the text to you, and have it display text in which words are broken down into individual syllables. To use it, choose View > Immersive Reader, then choose your options. Click Close Immersive Reader to return to your normal view.

Get to favorite folders quickly

You likely have a handful of folders where you frequently save and frequently open files. And you likely get annoyed every time you have to browse through your disk to get there. Pinned folders solve the problem.

When saving or opening a file, in the Save or Open dialog, hover your mouse over any folder that you want to pin, and then click the pin icon. From now on, that folder will stay at the top of the Save or Open dialogs, so you can get to them quickly.

Note that Save and Open don’t share pinned folders — you pin them separately.

Write better with the Editor

Those who want to make sure their writing is concise and grammatically correct should turn to the Editor, a beefed-up version of grammar- and spell-checking. Select Home > Editor, and the Editor pane appears with an easy-to-scan summary of a document’s readability, along with tools to improve it. At the top you’ll see your overall score, with 100% being the best.

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Preston Gralla / Foundry

It then shows you the number of sentence-by-sentence improvements you can make in various writing categories, including corrections in spelling in grammar and refinements for clarity, concision, and so on. Click any category, and Editor will bring you to each issue that can be improved and offer recommendations.

Paste in the format you want

Word also includes an improved way to handle content pasted from the web or other sources. You can now set your default paste options so whatever you paste matches the look and feel of the document into which you’re pasting it rather than the source material.

When you paste something, you get three options:

Keep source formatting. This keeps the original formatting and layout, such as font size, color, bold and underlining, list formatting, and so on, of the content you’re pasting.

Merge formatting. This uses some of the original formatting of what you’re pasting (such as bold, underline, lists, and table structure), but matches it to the style of the document into which it’s being pasted (such as font family, size, and color).

Keep text only. This keeps the text but strips out things such as bullets, table structure, and images. The text will match the formatting of the existing text just before your cursor.

To change your default paste option, select Select Default Paste and from the list that appears, select which you want it to be. To change it to another option, go to File > Options > Advanced, scroll down to “Cut, copy, and paste,” click the Pasting from other programs down arrow, and select what you want the new default to be.

Make documents more inclusive with the Accessibility Checker

Many people have problems accessing a document’s content, such as those who have issues with their vision. Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker in Microsoft 365 can check documents you create to make sure that they’re more accessible to people, such as by eliminating colors with poor contrast that can be hard to read.

Get to it from the Ribbon by selecting Review > Check Accessibility > Check Accessibility. A right-hand pane called the Accessibility Assistant appears. It flags and helps you fix accessibility issues.

The Accessibility Checker checks documents for accessibility issues.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Create a Sway web page from a document

If you’re one of the few people who use Microsoft’s Sway app, which lets you easily create simple, web-based presentations, you’ll want to try out a feature that lets you create a Sway page from a Word document.

To do it, select File > Transform. The Transform to Web Page pane appears. Select a style in the pane, then click the Transform button. A web page is created on the web and opened in the Sway app in your browser. To share it with others, select the Share button on the Sway page and follow the instructions.

Note that if you have problems with doing this, your administrator may not have given you the proper permissions, or you may need to update your copy of Microsoft 365. Check with your administrator for details.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts is one of the best ways to accomplish tasks quickly in Word. You can even use them to navigate the Ribbon. For instance, Alt-H takes you to the Home tab, and Alt-G takes you to the Design tab.

Press the Alt key to see tool tips calling out the Ribbon shortcuts.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

But there are many other keyboard shortcuts to help you accomplish a vast array of tasks in Word. See our story “Handy Word keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac” for the ones we find the most useful.

This article was originally published in October 2019 and most recently updated in March 2025.

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