More effective IT use is at your fingertips

Today’s office environment is more hectic, more stressful and more demanding than ever before. PAs are at the forefront of this, often having to work for two or three bosses, taking on a variety of diverse responsibilities and managing projects and teams.

In the midst of all this, professional training – and especially IT training – can sometimes fall by the wayside. After all, everyone knows how to send emails and create and edit documents and spreadsheets, don’t they?

While that may seem enough to get us through the majority of our day-to-day tasks, we have to consider whether this is the most effective way of working. In fact, a few time-saving solutions to help you work more efficiently are literally at your fingertips. Mastering certain shortcuts and tips from Outlook alone can save you up to an hour and a half every day. If you add in some of the time-saving features available in other popular Office programmes, such Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you might find you have enough time for an undisturbed lunch break, or even be able to leave the office at 5pm.

Microsoft Office has evolved over the years and is now a powerful work tool. Most of us use it every day and, as we have been using it for so long, we feel we’re fairly familiar with it. The problem is as creatures of habit we tend to use the same functions, that is the ones we’ve been using for many years. This means that we’re only using around one-tenth of the programme’s current capabilities.

For example, did you know that in Word you can make your text smaller and larger by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+ or Ctrl-? In Excel, a quick and easy way to create charts is to select your data and press F11. In Outlook, you can send an email by simply pressing Ctrl+enter. In a PowerPoint presentation, pressing B will instantly make your screen go black and if you have accidently closed a tab in your browser, Ctrl+Shift+t will resurrect it.

Microsoft Masterclasses specifically aimed at office professionals will help you discover thousands more of these time-saving features. You will also gain the confidence and ideas to start sharing your new-found skills with your colleagues.

Paul Pennant is Managing Director of Today’s PA, a specialist training company for secretaries, PAs and EAs. Today’s PA runs a number of courses in London, Edinburgh and Aberdeen; to find out more visit todayspa.co.uk