23rd October 2001
We can multitask with these modern operating systems, but few people really understand what it means to have more than one program running at the same time. Take Microsoft Word, for example. I've seen far too many people close documents before they open new ones. "Uh, you don't have to do that." You also don't have to be a slave to Word's Recent Documents menu. If you want to save more than four at a time, you can bump the maximum to nine - or turn off the feature entirely. Click Tools | Options | General, then edit the "Recently used file list" field. And let's say you have a document that you need to access to at any given time. Use the Work menu. The what? First, you need to add it to your toolbar. In the menu, click Tools | Customize | Command | Built-in Menus. From the right-hand pane, drag & drop "Work" somewhere onto your menu. Go ahead and Close the dialog to return to Word's main window. Now, open one of your favorite documents, click the newly-created Work menu, and select the "Add to Work Menu" option. Essentially, this is a "Favorites" feature for Word that very few people know about.