For most of my 20 plus years as a writer and editor, it hasn’t been necessary to collaborate with anyone on any of the pieces I’ve written. So it was a new experience for me recently when I had the opportunity to work with a community committee submitting a proposal for a large grant.

We were on a tight deadline, and 18 other people were contributing to the project, with many of them working on the submission document all at the same time.

When the link was sent to me and I realized I would have to use it in the cloud, I panicked a bit because I had never worked on a file in this way before. But because the deadline was looming I didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. So I dove in.

I’m very familiar with Microsoft Word, having used it at home and at work for many, many years. ‘How different could it be?’ I thought to myself.

That wasn’t the problem at all. It was the collaboration part — with multiple people working on the document at the same time — which as mentioned earlier, I had never done before.

So I muddled through — learning as I worked — and the proposal was finished on time and sent away.

It was untimely when only weeks later, the Microsoft Word Online course was assigned to me to edit. If only it had come before!

I learned what I know about Microsoft Word through trial and error over my years of using it. And I can do what I need to do using the program. But during the editing process for the new course, I discovered a few things I didn’t know that will make my work a little bit easier, such as the Format Painter function (the ability to quickly copy formatting from one part of a document to another) and using the Accessibility Checker. Plus I now know how to collaborate on shared documents properly! (My apologies to the folks who worked on the submission with me for some of the strange things I did!)

If you’re new to Microsoft Word Online, Velsoft’s course of the same name is a great place to learn how to use it and take advantage of these features and more. Even if you think you know Microsoft Word fairly well, I believe you’ll pick up a few things you didn’t know before — like I did.

Find out more here.