Mail merge is one of those things you expect a word processor to do. Word takes the concept a step further, letting you create mail merge letters, email, and mailing labels, among others. Of the lot, merging labels seems to work the weirdest.
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I write a lot of stuff, so Word is the first program I have open. Getting things looking just right in the Word window has become an obsession, but I think I found my nirvana.
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Word 2013 unceremoniously dispensed with the traditional Open dialog box. It was replaced with something called Back Stage. You can get the Open dialog box back, but only when you know the secret.
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It’s easy to screw up, especially with a computer. Imagine your frustration at accidentally typing Ctrl+W — the DocClose, or close window, command — and not looking at the screen to see the Yes/No prompt. You could lose a document that way.
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Word’s table commands are impressive, but for serious table work you need to use Excel. And when you can’t make up your mind, you just shove an Excel worksheet into Word. Believe it or not, but this procedure is legal everywhere but North Korea.
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As long as I’m on a table binge with my Wamblog Word posts, here’s another trick you can pull inside a table: Math.

Yeah, it sounds scary, but keep in mind that it’s the computer that does the math. You just need to know how to set up a formula inside a table.
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The icon looks innocent enough. It’s featured prominently in the Table Tools/Layout tab. But it also has a tiny twin in the Home tab’s Paragraph group. It’s the Sort icon.
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A table is really an Excel-thing. Word does tables, of course, but Excel does them better. Still, it’s easier to whip out a table in Word than it is to do the convoluted exercise of inserting an Excel “object” into a Word document.
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