Word 2013: Better by Design

There's a reason why I call my two-day strategic planning session for Office 2013 “Black Holes & Revelations.” Word is full of mysteries. When you start to dig into them, if you are lucky, you may be rewarded with that elusive a ha! moment: a revelation. But just as often, the deeper you dig the more confused you become: a black hole. I've seen many projects stall because the team couldn't come to any agreement on what the default setting should be for Word Options. In order to avoid that, let's establish some ground rules:

• If you can leave the out-of-the-box setting intact without compromising the usability of the product, do it.
• Be respectful of how Word works in your current version. Although we sometimes look at the latest upgrade as an opportunity to fix mistakes made in the past, you have to be very careful about compromising the expected behavior. Case in point, if you begin typing a manual list, Word will convert it to an automatic list. Some of us are tempted to disable this feature to encourage our users to create their list using Styles. Changing the expected behavior in order to support a best practice sounds like a good idea, but this kind of thinking can backfire.
• If you change a default setting, allow the users the flexibility to change it back. Although we can hard code a setting through the use of policies, in general you want to allow people to personalize Word to work for them.
• Don't let your personal preferences cloud your judgment. I personally can't stand the mini toolbar and I'm always surprised when people tell me that they find it useful.

Ready to get started? Click the File Tab and choose Options. Word's options are organized into five tabs: General, Display, Proofing, Save, Language and Advanced. I'm going to step through all five tabs, pointing out the options that I think are worth discussing. If I don't point it out, then you can safely leave the default setting.