Tips for Using Microsoft Office

This post records fragmentary but important advice of Microsoft Office, and is updated continually.

Word

DO NOT MODIFY TABLE STYLE WHILE TRACKING CHANGES!

From university essay to professional report, from Word 2007 to 2016, my papers have been ruined countless times by this inconceivable bug.

Use 9pt for Arial font

Why not 10pt? Because Arial 10pt has different line height with Regular & Bold (12.8 vs 13.2). This means you’ll get diverse line height when using AutoFit Row Height.
Of course you can use the default font Calibri in version 2007 and above which is free from this issue, except that its space utilization rate is lower than Arial.
Open external linked file to speed up calculation

If you have tens of thousands of cells linking to a closed external file with formulae such as vlookup() or index() , you’ll suffer from the annoying "Calculating…" status message whenever you make any changes. You can mitigate this issue by opening the external source file from Data -> Edit Links -> Open Source…
Avoid simply using Delete key

When you hit Delete key, you are just deleting the contents but not the formats. Don’t be astonished to find a blank file with several megabyte size — the size is taken up by formatted cells. It is recommended to delete the entire rows/columns or using the Home -> Clear options. You may refer to this article for other common cause and solutions of large file size.

If you’d like to cram the PPT with piles of content, then be careful with native functions

PPT slides are designed for listing points concisely (basic layouts, bulletin points, SmartArt, etc.) and detailed information should be communicated with speech or written in notes. If you are making PPT for printing rather than slideshow, then textbox or shapes may better fit your demand.

If Outlook 2013 or newer gets stuck on startup, try disconnecting network before starting

New versions of Outlook try to retrieve configuration from the Exchange server on startup. If connectivity is poor, it will get stuck on the loading interface — sometimes for 10 min or more. When there is no network, it just skips the connection action and enters main interface, which saves much time for you.