MS Word Tutorial for LaTeX Users
I have never seen a tutorial that I liked. That said, there are a few things you can do which will make it easy to become a Word power user:
1. The Microsoft Office Golden Rule
The single biggest thing you need to know for proper use of Microsoft Word is this:
Use STYLES!
Word is designed for you to create a "style" for the document (much like you can do with TeX) and to apply that style to the various parts of your document as applicable.
2. The Ribbon
The ribbon is extremely powerful because it is context-aware. If you select an image, it will show the Image tab. If you select a table, it will show the table tabs (one for "layout" and the other for "design"). If you select an image inside a table, it will show all of those tabs. That said, the ribbon can be very confusing when you first start - even Microsoft says so. (Note that the site linked here does have some good tutorials.)
In my opinion, one of the single most-important things you can do to become a real power user of Microsoft Word is to learn the ribbon. That includes learning the keyboard shortcuts for activating the ribbon, switching between its tabs, and activating the stuff inside them. Most users don't ever bother with learning this and then get stuck looking all over the place for commands that are really in logical spots.
To help learn the ribbon, Microsoft has an add-in you can install called "Search Commands" that will help you find where the commands you need are located. You can download it from here.
3. Keyboard Shortcuts
Get familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. You will usually find them significantly faster than using the mouse. (You will also easily impress people who are watching you who wonder how you are "doing stuff" so fast.) In addition to the ribbon hotkeys I mentioned above, many commands have their own dedicated shortcut keys. You can see what these shortcut keys are in the command button tooltips (when you hover the mouse over a button). If you don't see them, make sure the feature is enabled in "Options" -> "Advanced" -> "Display" -> "Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips".
4. Customize the Ribbon
As you use the ribbon, you will find that there are commands you tend to use more often than others. In Office 2010 and 2013 (not 2007), you can add and remove commands from the ribbon in the Options window. You can also export your customizations from there so you can import them into Word on another computer.
That said, I don't recommend customizing the ribbon. The ribbon is so complex that you can easily get lost in customizing it or mess it up completely.
Instead, you can customize the "Quick Access Bar". This bar can be set to be above or below the main ribbon and you can add any commands you need to it.
5. A few more miscellaneous tips
This is a list of a few little things that I have found really help, but you won't usually learn them until you are tearing you hair out in frustration. Learning them in advance is so much easier. (Right now there's only a few, but it would be nice to keep adding to this over time.)
- Many ribbon "Button Groups" have a small "pop-out" icon in the corner. These pop-out buttons lead to more options related to the group that they are in. You should learn what is inside these pop-outs, and when to use them. (Note that while some controls in the pop-outs will be duplicates of those on the ribbon, there are other controls that are accessible only from the pop-out windows.
- If you are having problems with image positioning, use the "Show Formatting" button to see where the image's "anchor" is located. You may get better results in some layouts if you move the anchor manually (click and drag it) to a better spot.
- Word has a very nice Equation Editor, and a lot of its symbol codes are copied from TeX (such as
\neq,\therefore,\bullet,\cup,\cap, and some of the arrows). However, others are different, and some can only be reach from the menu and not typed. In addition, despite the large collection of symbols available in the Word Equation Editor, it is still missing an awful lot of the ones you can get in TeX.
I have found this website to be somewhat promising:
- word.tips.net (if your version of Word is pre-2007; i.e., has the standard menu interface)
- wordribbon.tips.net (if your version of Word is 2007 or higher; i.e., has the ribbon interface)
Warning: comes with some advertising.
Update
5 years later and I have discovered pandoc and haven't had to look back since.