Here are ten tips to help you to achieve a professional look without wasting too much effort. Several use shortcut keys to save you hunting for the right menu option, and all work well in Microsoft Office Word 2003.

To open the Paragraph dialogue box, double-click on an indent/tab marker on the horizontal ruler.

To change the format of either a bullet-pointed or numbered list, double-click on a number/bullet point to open the Format Bullets and Numbers dialogue box.

To open the Page Setup dialogue box from Print Preview mode, double-click on grey area of the horizontal ruler.

To highlight a whole sentence, hold down the Ctrl key and click the left mouse button anywhere in the sentence.

WordArt is great for making a heading or a specific word stand out. Place the cursor where you want to insert the words and click on the WordArt icon (usually on the bottom toolbar). Select the style you want by clicking on the appropriate box. Click OK, and type the words in the WordArt box. Click OK again.

When you have closed a document and want to go straight back to the last place you were editing, open the document and press Shift+F5.

To clear all the formatting in a document and be left with just the words, highlight all the text (either Select All from the Edit menu or Ctrl+A), then use the key combination of Shift+Ctrl+N.

To increase or decrease the font size, highlight the section: to increase by one point use Ctrl+] and to decrease by one point, Ctrl+[

To change the line spacing, highlight the section and use Ctrl+1 for single spacing; Ctrl+2 for double spacing; Ctrl+5 for one-and-a-half spacing.

Use Columns to convert a single column of text to multiple columns. Place the cursor anywhere on the page and either click on the Columns icon (top tool bar), or from the Format menu pick Columns. Select the number of columns (by moving the cursor across the appropriate number of columns in the dropdown menu). To balance the columns, click at the end of the text, and from the Insert menu choose Break and click on the Continuous button, then click OK.

What are your favourite shortcuts? E-mail creme@thetimes.co.uk

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